Passaic City record., 1893-01-07
PACKING ORANGES.
A WINTER EMPLOYMENT FOR
NORTHER NERS IN FLORIDA.
Separating the Fruit With Reference
to Size by Mechanical Means
Wonderful Ouickness
of the Packers.


New York Times. Go to the dock OF
the Ocean Steamship Company in New
York or Boston on any sailing day and
the visitor will find the intermediate
cabins of the vessels filled with lot OF
lusty New Yorkers and New Englanders,
all Of whom are bound for the orange
country. They are the packers who
leave the farms and the bleak New Eng
land hills to tarry until April in the
orange belt of Florida. They have had
monopoly of the business for some years,
strangely enough, and they nearly all
come to and return from their stamping
grounds by way of Savannah.
The packers work in pairs, at least
sometimes in trios. One man takes the
oranges as they are brought to the pack
ing house from the groves, and he does
the sorting, so far as color goes. He
stands in front of long trough, in
which are number of traps of different
sizes, those at the top being the smallest.
From the traps long arms of canvas,
subsidiary troughs, stretch out to empty
orange boxes.
With box of freshly plucked oranges
in front of him the sorter picks them up
one at time, and drops them into the
trough in front of him, the bright fruit
on one side of the trough and the rus
set on the other. The smallest of the
fruit makes but short trip, for the first
trap opens and it falls to the yawning
box trough the canvass trough. The
largest of the fruit makes the entire jour-
ney to the foot of the long trough and
there it finds resting place in the box
designed for the big fruit. There are a
half dozen traps on the journey, and
each will permit of the passage of only a
certain size of fruit through it. That is
the way the oranges are assorted both
for color and size. the latter work, it
will be seen, being wholly automatic.
So when one sees a box of oranges that
are branded 176, it does not mean that
some one has laboriously counted out
176 oranges and deposited them care
fully in the box. The machine of such
primitive make, just described, has done
that as accurately as man could, and it
one cares to try it he can 60 over one OF
the packed boxes of fruit, and he will
find in it just the number that the brand
calls for, no more and no less. The
medium sizes of these-150, 176, 100,
200, and 220 to the box-are the desir-
able ones, and they will 50 remain until
some granger finds way to make the
very big and the very small fruit fash
ionable.
The Northern boy who has combined
business with pleasure by going South
to pack oranges during the days of ice
and snow in the North is the one who
wraps the fruit So nicely in the bit Of
tissue paper that always covers fruit that
has the least sort of pretension to be
classed as ssgood." He is machine al
| his work, and almost as rapid as any
machine that has as yet been devised tc
| take his place. Both hands sre used
while at his work, and as he stands a
the box he is packing he sways backward
and forward with weaving motion such
| as would seem to be conducive to sea-
| sickness.
The left hand grabs bit of the tissue
paper from stand at his elbow, while
the right hand fetches an orange out ol
the mass that has been through the
trough and properly sorted. Both hands
meet directly over the top of the. boz
that he Is packing. There is twist Of
| the wrist, and before one can believe il
possible, the orange has been wrapped
tightly in its paper cover and deposited
in the box ready for the market. 1t takes
an incredibly short time for the work
| The layers in the boxes are as true as q
die with the cIumpled ends of the
Wrappers meeting as the rows of the
oranges are laid in the boxes, so that
when tae top layer is in its place the
| twisted ends of the tissue do not show,
and very workmanllke job has been
| turned out.
That packing is not for purely spec
tacular purposes. It has practical
side. The use of the paper prevents the
fruit from bruising its neighbor during
the period. of transportation and market
ing, and the result is that when the
| packing has been done honestly and well
| the fruit reaches the market sound, un.
bruised, and in every way desirable.
The dishonest packer, can, of course,
work in lot of soft fruit in box in
this way, but he is sure to hear from II
if the merchant gets much such mate.
rial, as every box is branded, and can be
traced to the packer. So there is very
little Of that sort of deception, simply
because it does not pay.
The picker is more dangerous as a
means of getting soft fruit to the market.
An orange picker is not picker in the
strict meaning of the word. He is Q
clipper. When he does his work prop
erly, he climbs up into the tree with his
canvas bag on his back, and with the
PRUNING shears he carries ia his hands
he cuts the fruit very carefully from the
twig, through which it has drawn sus
tenance from the tree. Before he starts
| up tree, he may slip a lot OF fruit, thai
has fallen from the trees, into his bag.
His work is done by the box, and the
more fruit he can snatch from the