Big Grape and Apple Harvests.
I live in the centre of the great grape belt of the south shore of Lake Erie. Some years ago one saw nothing but wheat and barley in this region, with corn and grass on the hills to the south, but within ten years all has been changed. Now the whole country, hill-side and all, is one vast vineyard. Few raise anything else in their fields. I know one vineyard, twenty miles west of here, containing 300 acres. The vines stretch away almost as far as one can see.
At this season grape-pickers come here in vast crowds. They are from the cities, and are a picturesque lot of folk. They dress in every fashion, and represent almost every nationality. They board themselves and live cheaply. Our fields are just now full of these pickers—thousands of men, women, boys, girls—and our streets are full of wagons carting the grapes to the railway stations for shipment. Although your maps show us bordering on Lake Erie, water transportation is impracticable from here. The banks of the lake here are high and rocky, and speed on water is too slow for perishable fruit. Besides, one could go only to Buffalo or Cleveland by lake, and the great grape markets are Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago.
This year there is so much fruit other than grapes that the latter bring very low prices, and growers are despondent. Apples—"New York apples" are famous, you know—are so plentiful that people are not picking them at all. The trees are breaking with the load of them. They rot on the ground. One cannot even give them away. Thousands of bushels are useless, and every one says: "Oh, if some people in the cities only had them! We would rather see them do somebody good." Do you who live in the cities have to pay anything for apples now? If you do, it seems strange to us, for we can get nothing for them. They do not fetch enough to pay railway freights, not to mention picking and packing. The same is true of grapes almost. Activity reigns, but so do "the blues." I think almost any business is better than grape-growing.
Ernest Spencer.
Brocton, N. Y.