In order to send this fruit to market, I was obliged to purchase 3,000 quart boxes, and 50 chests to contain them. These cost me $200. I could not fill all the boxes at each picking, but as one set of boxes was away off in market, it was necessary for me to have duplicates on hand, in which to pick other berries as they ripened, without being compelled to wait until the first lot of boxes came back. Sometimes it was a week or ten days before they were returned to me, according as the agent was prompt or dilatory. Thus, one supply of boxes filled with fruit was constantly going forward, while another of empty ones was on the way back. So extensive has this berry business become, that I could name parties who have as much as $500 to $1,500 invested in chests and boxes for the transportation of fruit to market. But their profits are in proportion to the extent of their investment.
While on this subject of boxes for the transportation of fruit to distant markets, a suggestion occurs to me which some ingenious man may be able to work up into profitable use. It is sometimes quite a trouble for the grower to get his chests returned at the proper time. Sometimes the agent is careless and inattentive, keeps them twice as many days as he ought to, when the owner really needs them. Sometimes an accident on the railroad delays their return for a week or ten days. In either case, the grower is subjected to great inconvenience; and if his chests fail to return at all, his ripened fruit will perish on his hands for want of boxes in which to send them off. It is to be always safe from these contingencies that he finds it necessary to keep so large a quantity on hand. Then, many of the boxes are never returned, the chests coming back only half or quarter filled. All this is very unjustly made the grower’s loss.
But a remedy for this evil can and ought to be provided. The trade needs for its use a box so cheap that it can afford to give it away. Then, being packed in rough, open crates, cheaply put together of common lath, with latticed sides, neither crates nor boxes need be returned. The grower will save the return-freight, and be in no danger of ever being short of boxes by the negligence of others. This is really a very urgent want of the trade. The agent sells by wholesale to the retailer, who takes the chest to his stand or store, where he sells the contents, one or more boxes to each customer. These sometimes have no baskets with them in which to empty the berries, and so the retailer, to insure a sale, permits the buyer to carry off the boxes, and the latter neglects to return them. In the same way they are sent to hotels and boarding-houses, where they are lost by hundreds. Again, the obligation imposed on a buyer to return the boxes to a retailer, is constantly preventing hundreds of chance purchasers of rare fruit from taking it; but if the seller could say to him that the box goes with the fruit, and need not be returned, the mere convenience of the thing would be sufficient to determine the sale of large quantities,—the purchaser would carry it home in his hand.
The maker of a cheap box like this would find the sale almost indefinite. It would be constant, and annually increasing. The same buyers would require fresh supplies every season. A mere chip box, rounded out of a single shaving, and just stiff enough to prevent the sides from collapsing, would answer every purpose. The pill-boxes which are made from shavings may serve as the model. Here is a great and growing want, which our countrymen are abundantly able to supply, and to which some of them cannot too soon direct their attention. If the cost of transmitting the boxes to the buyers be too great for so cheap a contrivance, then let the shavings be manufactured of the exact size required, and delivered in a flat state to the buyer, with the circular bottom, by him to be put together during the leisure days of winter. A single touch of glue will hold the shaving in position, and a couple of tacks will keep the bottom in its place. The whole affair being for temporary use, need be nothing more than temporary itself. A portion of the labor of manufacturing being done by the grower, will reduce the cost. If constructed as suggested, such boxes would be quite as neat as the majority now in use, while they would possess the charm of always being clean and sweet. Our country is at this moment full of machinery exactly fitted to produce them, much of it located in regions where timber and power are obtainable at the minimum cost. The suggestion should be appropriated by its owners at the earliest possible moment.
CHAPTER XVIII.
RASPBERRIES—THE LAWTONS.
TO strawberries succeeded raspberries. My stock of boxes was thus useful a second time. But raspberries are not always reliable for a full crop the first season after planting, and so it turned out with mine. They bore only moderately; but by exercising the same care in rejecting all inferior specimens, the first commanded twenty-five cents a quart in market; gradually declining to twelve, below which none were sold. I marketed only 242 quarts from the whole, netting an average of 16 cents a quart, or $38.72. In price they were thus equal to strawberries. In addition to this, we consumed in the family as much as all desired, and that was not small. I had heard of others doing considerably better than this, but had no disposition to be dissatisfied.
The trade in raspberries is increasing rapidly in the neighborhood of all our large cities, stimulated by the establishment of steamboats and railroads, on which they go so quickly and cheaply to market. It is probably greater in New York State than elsewhere. The citizens of Marlborough, in Ulster county, have a steamboat regularly employed for almost the sole business of transporting their raspberries to New York. In a single season their sales of this fruit amount to nearly $90,000. The demand is inexhaustible, and the cultivation consequently increases. In the immediate vicinity of Milton, in the same county, there are over 100 acres of them, and new plantations are being annually established. The pickers are on the ground as soon as the dew is off, as the berries do not keep so well when gathered wet. I have there seen fifty pickers at work at the same time, men, women, and children, some of them astonishingly expert, earning as much as $2 in a day. Several persons were constantly employed in packing the neat little baskets into crates, the baskets holding nearly a pint. By six o’clock the crates were put on board the steamboat, and by sunrise next morning they were in Washington market. As many as 80,000 baskets are carried at a single trip. The retail price averages ten cents a basket, one boat thus carrying $800 worth in a single day. All this cultivation being conducted in a large way, the yield per acre is consequently less than from small patches thoroughly attended to. There are repeated instances of $400 and even $600 being made clear from a single acre of raspberries.
The culture in Ulster county, though at first view appearing small, yet gives employment to, and distributes its gains among thousands of persons. The mere culture requires the services of a large number of people. The pickers there, as well as in New Jersey, constitute a small army, there being five or more required for each acre, and the moneys thus earned by these industrious people go far towards making entire families comfortable during some months of the year. The season for raspberries continues about six weeks. Many of the baskets which are used about New York are imported from France. Frequently the supply is unequal to the demand. If the chip boxes were introduced, as suggested in the last chapter, the whole of this outlay to foreign countries could be stopped. It is strange, indeed, that any portion of our people should be compelled to depend on France for baskets in which to convey their berries to market.
As my raspberries disappeared, so in regular succession came the Lawton blackberries. I had cut off the tip of every cane the preceding July. This, by stopping the upward growth, drove the whole energy of the plant into the formation of branches. These had in turn been shortened to a foot in length at the close of last season. This process, by limiting the quantity of fruit to be produced, increased the size of the berries. I am certain of this fact, by long experience with this plant. It also prevented the ends of the branches resting on the ground, when all fruit there produced would otherwise be ruined by being covered with dust or mud. Besides, this was their first bearing year, and as they had not had time to acquire a full supply of roots, it would be unwise to let them overbear themselves. Some few which had grown to a great height were staked up with pickets four and a half feet long, and tied, the pickets costing $11 per thousand at the lumber-yard. But the majority did not need this staking up the first season; but many of the canes sent up this year, for bearers the next, it was necessary to support with stakes.
The crop was excellent in quality, but not large. I began picking July 20, and thus had the third use of my stock of boxes. I practised the same care in assorting these berries for market which had been observed with the others, keeping the larger ones separate from the smaller ones. Thus a chest of the selected berries, when exposed to view, presented a truly magnificent sight. Up to this time they had never been seen by fifty frequenters of the Philadelphia markets. But when this rare display was first opened in two of the principal markets, it produced a great sensation. None had been picked until perfectly ripe, hence the rare and melting flavor peculiar to the Lawton pervaded every berry. They sold rapidly and netted me thirty cents a quart, the smaller ones twenty-five cents. There appeared to be no limit to the demand at these prices. Buyers cheerfully gave them, though they could get the common wild blackberry in the same market at ten cents. Now, it cost me no more to raise the Lawtons than it would have done to raise the common article. But this is merely another illustration of the folly of raising the poorest fruit to sell at the lowest prices, instead of the best to sell at the highest.