Connecticut western news., 1891-10-29
CALIFORNIA FRUIT.

Fo Reason Why It Should Not Be Su-
 perior to That Imported from Europe.
 The fruit canning season opened a few days ago, and the members of the new canning combine are cogitating over their prospects. A few facts are patent to all The fruit crop is large and the quantity of canned fruit put up this year will be larger than last year, if the prices offered by canners are sufficient to call it out.
 By the time the whole fruit crop is picked, in the east and on this coast, 1obbers will be able to reckon it up with some approach to accuracy and to determine what they can afford to pay for canned fruit Of course there is a price at which they will take our whole product People will eat all the canned fruit that is offered if it is cheap enough. But when the markets are glutted con- sumers grow fastidious.
 The competition which we are about to witness will prove beneficial if it awakens our fruit growers to the knowl- edge that the peaches grown in New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware are ex- cellent, and if our canned peaches are to conquer the market of the great val leys they must be at least equal if not better goods than the grocers of Chica- go can get from New York or Philadel- phia. It is wasting time and money to ship inferior goods. & f
 Of two fruits we have practical monopoly. One of these is arricots, which are not grown in commercial quantities in the east. In this state we raise them in carload lots, and there is no fruit which is more luscious or more wholesome when it is properly canned. Whether the business of can- ming them has reached perfection, or whether, in consequence of the absence of competition, it is carelessly conduct ed, persons not in the trade are not able to judge.
 But one thing experience teaches when canned apricots are dear or are inferior in quality people consume canned peaches instead. It rests with the canners to decide whether we shall receive the full benefit of a market o1 which we now enjoy a monopoly. The prune is another fruit in which we have no eastern competition. It is impossible to convert the eastern plum into dried prune that will sell. Oul plums are naturally suited for drying Between the California prune and the German or French prune it is some times hard to choose. The European fruit has generally a fine flavor, but the California fruit is so much larger and better looking that quite often it sell! for more money in New York and Chi cago. The prune promises to be quite as profitable a fruit to raise in this state as the apricot.
 We shall this year have something like 5,00O,000 pounds of prunes avail able for export, which is equivalent tt 25, 900, 900 pounds of plums; the prune are now worth about ten cents a pound or two cents for the green fruit, bu California prunes were wanted last yea at fifteen cents at Chicago, and the. have sold as high as twenty cents Yer! few of our horticultural products sel as high as this.
 In fruit, as in everything else, it i quality that tells. It is the best good that bring in money; second class good frequently net loss. California is fit ted to become the orchard of the world But it will not become SO until human ingenuity and human skill are enlisted in helping nature. There is a vagu idea, especially among newcomers t. this state, that fruit grows itself, an, that any man can be @ fruit grower No person of common sense imagine that he can make a boot without ap premiership, but there are lots of peo pie who imagine that they can becom successful horticulturists without study observation or labor.-San Francisc | Call,