Smyrna times., 1894-10-10
For the Smyrna Times.
Onions or Ingerns.

The ever fertile minded and wide
awake editor of the Smyrna TIMES, in
the last issue of his newsy and ever
welcome weekly household visitor,
states, "0ur correspondent, r. H. c., in
touching last week on profitable farm
crops, dwelt at length on broom corn,
passing several others with brief re-
ference. There is one article of easy
culture very high in the city markets
which was not touched on by our cor
respondent but which is by the New
York Sun of Saturday." And then
proceeds to quote, "How absurd it is
for US to import onions from foreign
countries, say from Egypt, Spain, Cuba
and the Bermudas and other regions"
Onions can be and are grown in
nearly all the States composing this
Union of forty-five States, and Florida
and California ought to be able to grow
them as early as Egypt, Cuba, Spain
and the Bermuda Islands, but they
don't do it and the only reason the
writer can give is that there are so
many other things those States can and
do grow that are so much more profit
able. New onions from the Island of
III buO DlOnll vi NAdECu dS
large as yellow globe turnips in Oc-
tOber, sell in Philadelphia market for
$3.50 and $500 bushel crate, likewise
tomatoes grown in Florida, pulled
green, wrapped in coarse brown paper
and ripened by artificial heat sell for 25
and 80 cents a quart box measure, con-
tanning five and six tomatoes. 1t is the
earliness of the season that causes them
to sell at such enormous prices, when
later, very much better can be bought
at prices say for barrel of onions 81 so
and basket of tomatoes for 15 cents.
Sentiment and the idea of onions
grown in Bermuda and potatoes grown
in Florida as we'll as the earliness
of the season makes abnormal
prices. The writer has seen fifteen or
twenty vessel loads of onions, carefully
and conveniently strung together for
handling, lying in the docks at New
York city, grown and sent from the
State of Connecticut, to that market for
sale and pedded by hucksters all over
the city of Brooklyn and New York
city and sold for 10 cents a string to
families, which is good retail price as
the string will contain from fifteen or
twenty onions only. Onions are not
profitable crop to grow when they must
be sold for So to 60 cents a bushel or
$1.50 and $l.75 a barrel and expenses
of freight, carriage and commission, to-
gether with basket or barrel given with
the sale of the onions. Onion seeds or
onion sets are a very profitable crop to
grow, but should any large number of
farmers engage in their culture the
market would soon be overstocked and
prices decline so low as to make the
crop not worth growing.
Peanuts are an enormous crop in
Virginia, where they are made a spe-
cialty in growing them and very profit
able; and the writer has learned of a
merchant in Philadelphia whose inn
mense sales by the sack, amounts to
over a million of dollars. There are
quite a number of things much more
profitable to grow than wheat, corn,
oats or hay, but it requires more intel
ligence and better knowledge than is
possessed by the average Delaware
farmer, to engage in successfully grow
ing them. The writer is not oblivious
to the merits and goodness of the onion
and is fond of them any way you fix
them, fried, stewed or sliced raw, and
beefsteak and fried onions is dish par
excellence besides very appetizing and
antispastic in its effects on the human
system. R. H. c.