Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1900-10-13

cannery. This particular drief Is sur
rounded by fruit orchards. The men
shake the apricots from the trees and
pile them in boxes to be weighed, after
which they are carried out to the open
air cutting tables. where the women
and boys pare and halve them, filing
little shallow drying trays with the rich
fruit. As each tray is filled the cutter
hurrieS with it to the clerk and is
credited with punch on his record
card. An expert can cut up about 6,000
apricots a day.
The fruit is next placed in the sulphur
closet, where it stays two or three
hours. This bleaches 1t and prevents
it from turning brown in drying, as 1t
otherwise would. From the sulphuring
process the trays are trundled in little
cars to the drying fields. some three
acres in extent, where they stay under
the broiling sun some five days, the
dew at night preventing them from at
tanning the toughness of leather Then
the sacks are shipped to a packing con-
Germ in San Jose where the dried fruit
is assorted and packed in boxes. Thlr
one drier handles about 300 tons of
apricots, 100 tons of plums and 250
tons of pears, the crops succeeding
each in the order named. About 200
persons are employed-100 women and
the rest boys and men, Caucasian and
japanese.
The big fruit cannery Is busy eS-
adjustment, employing 600 women and
about 200 men. There are no Chinese
employed. Il maintain" says the pro-
prietor, that one intelligent white op-
erative can accomplish nearly twice as
much and do it more neatly than two
Chinese" Small cottages are provided
for the workers, which they can hire
at merely nominal prices. For instance.
if three girls take cottage, they get
1t for So a month; if they remain all
the season, which is from late in May
until late in October, they get their
money back, 50 their lodging costs
them nothing. \ girl may make from
$40 to $50 a month and so back to her
country or city home in possession Of
quite n nice little sum at the end of the
five months.
/
hand, as in the drier. 1t is then dumped
into shallow troughs filed with run.
ming water to cleanse the pieces. Here
girls take them with great rapldity
and place them in fruit cans, which are
carried off by the men and filled with
clear strip. Tops are then placed on the
cans and the edges soldered. A little
Ill go 1t
cans must pass through the cooking
machine. As they come out slowly on
revolving plane workmen hastily re
touch the little air hole. The cans ara
then cooled with sprays, after which
they are ready for the labels All
| around the great room are girls busily
| employed at little tables with small
paste brushes and rolls of gay labels
! They know by the marks on the tops Of
the cans just what fruit is in them and
| the grade. They work very rapidly
and are paid - cents for every 100
! cans labeled. Some of them can label
400 cases a day, which means So, This
! particular place turns out 10000 cases
/ of fruit in a season.
| There is a can and a box factory at.
| tached to the establishment and the
/ place is one whir Of activity from $50
/ in the morning to I or s I'm the evening,
/ Every day $1,000 gallons Of canned
fruit are sent forth. and some - bar
rels of white sugar are used in making
the sirup. SO rapidly do they work
/ that the whole process from orchard 10
box car can be completed in less than
( two hours.
There is no state where the fruit
crop is SO bountful as in California, no
place where canning Is done on such q
/ Wholesale scale. one kind of fruit
succeeds another, so that nearly five
months are devoted to handling I'm sue.
cession cherries. Strawberries. rasp-
berries, greengage plums. aprcots,
peaches. egg plums, pears late
peaches, tomatoes and other fruits and
vegetables 1t makes your mouth wa
ter To look Mt them. far more to taste
OF them. ELIZABETH HoLLIs.