After the pineapples are peeled and cored they go through a second trimming process with a pruning knife, by means of which all the “eyes” and small pieces of peeling are removed.
They are then placed in the slicing machine, from which the slices are automatically deposited onto a traveling web band about ten inches wide, moving at a medium rate of speed along the centre of the packing tables, which are about thirty feet long. On each side of the moving web are wooden shelves, the one immediately in front of the packer being used as a sorting tray. On the shelf back of the web are arranged the trays of empty cans, each tray stamped with the grade of fruit it is to hold. Above this shelf is a second one, on which are empty trays to receive the cans of fruit as they are packed. As soon as a tray is filled with a dozen cans, it is taken away by a man to be filled with syrup and cooked.
As the sliced pineapple is deposited onto the traveling web, the girl next to the slicing machine, usually an experienced and efficient worker, selects the most perfect slices—those having no flaws or imperfect edges, and whitest in color. The next worker selects the next grade, and so on down the table, the residue, unsuitable for canning, going into the pulp tub. When she has a sufficient number of slices of the proper grade, she makes a mound of them, turns an empty can down over the mound, slips it off the sorting tray and places it right side up on the tray for filled cans.
After the cans have been filled with the sliced pineapple and syrup, they are taken to another machine which automatically places the cover on the can and seals it.
The sealed cans are then taken on a tray to the cooking vat, where they are lowered in boiling water onto a slowly moving platform, which carries them, submerged, through the water for just a sufficient length of time, gauged automatically, to cook the fruit. The tray of cans is then raised, again automatically, onto a continuation of the moving platform, which immerses them in a cold bath, in which they are kept for a sufficient length of time to cool them. The cans are then sent to the labeling room, where they receive their various brands, according to grade and to the customers for whom they are intended.
All machinery is geared at a low rate of speed; the only process which holds any menace is the peeling and coring machine, which must have the careful attention of the operator to keep his fingers from the knives.
The cores, which formerly were thrown out with the waste, are now also sliced into inch lengths, cooked, canned and sold to confectioners, who coat them with chocolate and sell them as pineapple candies. As these cores have about as much taste as juicy wood, it is at least a question how much of pineapple the ultimate consumer is favored with.
The women workers in the canneries are divided into four classes: trimmers, packers, labelers and miscellaneous, the latter doing duty at the slicing machine, the pulp troughs and in packing the cores.
The new workers are usually started at trimming and at packing cores, the youngest ones performing the latter work or tending the slicing machines. All of this work is done in a sitting position in one of the canneries; but the other two establishments have no seats for any of their employes.
At the packing table, however, the workers stand shoulder to shoulder, sometimes in the height of the season as closely packed as they can work: ordinarily, however, there is ample room for each individual. At one cannery there are seats back of the packers, but they are so arranged that it is impossible to do more than lean back against them for a moment or two, and even this throws an additional strain on the workers’ feet, which it is necessary to brace against the floor or the framework of the fruit table.