The Story in a Box of California Oranges
For several hundred years oranges have grown in this country. For about the last forty years men have made a business of growing them.
Oranges and lemons are called citrus fruits on account of their content of citric acid.
The two predominating varieties in California are the Washington Navel and the Valencia orange.
The California Navel orange is in the markets of the country from December 1st until about June 1st, when the California Valencia type takes its place and remains until the latter part of November.
It is a fact, therefore, that oranges are now picked fresh every day the year round in this country, and that the California oranges you buy in the summer are not fruit that has been held in storage, but are as fresh as any fresh fruit that the retailers offer.
Most California oranges and lemons are picked from the trees by gloved hands, so that the finger nails of the pickers will not injure the skin, for even a tiny scratch on the skin of an orange or lemon is sufficient to open the way for germs of decay.
Mr. G. Harold Powell, formerly connected with the United States government, was the discoverer of this source of great loss to the citrus industry. The use of gloves in the picking is thought to save the growers approximately $1,000,000 yearly.
When the oranges have been picked they are sent in boxes to a packing house where they are put through an automatic washing machine which thoroughly scrubs all dust and dirt from the skin; they then pass through a dryer and thence along a belt to men and women who roll the oranges over for examination and distribute them to other belts according to their color and the condition of the skin with regard to blemishes of all kinds. The oranges then pass over automatic sizers—that is, V-shaped rollers revolving horizontally. The oranges continue along these rollers until the space between the rollers has widened to the point where each particular size drops into a labeled bin. The sizes are designated by numbers, such as 150, 176, 250, etc., these figures signifying the number of oranges that may be packed in a regulation size box in which the jobbers and retailers buy the fruit. In other words, size 150 is a larger orange than 250.
The quality of an orange is judged in the packing house merely by the color and the condition of the skin. Size has something to do with it, but this is only one consideration. Many of the smaller oranges are just as good to eat and sometimes very much better than the larger sizes, and the condition of the skin, unless it happens to be broken in any way so that germs of decay can enter, ordinarily has no depreciable effect upon the flavor. The public, of course, finally judges an orange by its sweetness and tenderness, and a large, well-colored, smooth fruit is likely to reach the market in better condition than the rougher fruit which has a marred skin.