Wilmington daily commercial. [volume] (Wilmington, Del.) 1866-1877, 1873-11-04

/
sUMER.
| Correspondence of the Commercially
| WYOMING, DEL, Nov. 3rd, 1873.
Few persons outside the fruit growing district
of this Peninsula have an adequate idca of the
magnitude of interests involved in the peach
/ CROP.
The man who sits down, in his dining room in
the city before table on which there is basket
OF luscious Crawfords, rosy and seductive, full OF
| melting curves and delicious reminders, little
thinks in his enjoyment of the expense and la
Dor manifold that At length brought them from
| remote orchards over weary miles OF railroad
to his own door, and to contribute to his esthet-
| 10 taste and luxury.
must CONFESS myself, though Delawarean,
| and living in the heart of the peach growing
| district, did not comprehend this subject until
recent visit to MI. j. Colby Smiths Oak Mills,
| at Willow Grove. Here were manufactured 90, :
| 900 peach boxes during the season of three
months. These boxes we're feet long, and 7x14
inches in width; each box consisting of two
square pieces for heading and covered by eight
| Stats. Upon neat calculation, this heading
would have covered 80 acres of land and the
| slats, laid end to end, would have reached 272
miles, or from Dover to Cape Hatteras, or from
Wilmington to Boston or would have shingled
the highest peak of the Sierra Nevada, giving a
thatch to the head Of Joaquin Miller, while he
penned new songs of the Sierras.
MIR. Smiths mills gave employment to 80 men
and boys, upon this work alone, aud 80 head OF
horses and mules were requiring to haul the
lumber involving in the manufacture. Often
trees would he growing in the morning, cut and
sawed into Stats and made into boxes before
noon, and filled with peaches, trundlng in cars
at headlong speed through the sultry night
bound for Philadelphia and New York and thence
over q hundred DETECTING roads, distributed
through all the provinces
The greatest number OF these boxes made in
one day, was 2 $50, requiring 20, $50 pieces Of
stun The greatest number nailed by one en-
ployee. was by Walter Moore, a lad Of IA years,
who nailed 800, taking 1880 nails and $500
pieces Of stuff
In the manufacture Of these boxes, 6I5 tons
OF nails were consumed.
When one considers that nearly all these boxes
werel filed with peaches and shipped from one
station on the Del. II. II. at Wyoming the mar.
vel increases. Think Of the countless orchards
under an August sun; their millions on millions
OF trees bending their blushing honors to the
ground; the thousands OF men and boys engaged
In picking these same praches; the men who
aesort them and put them in boxes-and the
men engaged in making the boxes, the steam
mills and the water mills saving the lumber,
the hundred OF weary mules that sweat and
groan under great loads from the forests where
tired men still WELD the axe as the sun goes
down unblinking in the West Think of the
long dusty roads, and the caravans Of teams,
hurryng with their luscious fruit to the depots !;
the shouting and turmoil about the cars the
enlItlhB OF the po1ebi the Wnoop OF tne en-
gines as they seize upon the trains and hurry
away to the North-as black eagles swoop down
from the mountains and bear away with shrill
scream the firstliDgs Of the tocks. Then comes
= lull at the station, but the cars clatter away,
till the great brown night swallows them up to
disgorge them at dawn, amid the confusion and
riot of Jersey City.
And the peach, Sir, you sit down to eat in your
cool dining-room st noon, has been through
twenty hands before it reached your own, and
has been bought and sold dozen times. and
comes blushng to your rapture as IL 1t had not
smiled as bewilderingly upon hundred men!
To some it brought q price, and to some it
brought ruin. II it gives pleasure for the mo-
meDt it is all you must expect Of anything and
80 Amen to the peaches. SoRIBLERUs.