The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-08-03

| ing house with sidetracks connecting with the main railway line At im- | portant centers of the growing indus l try are huge ice storage houses, built by the refrigerator car companies, With every convenience for icing the cars which are to carry the fruit northward. A plantation of this kind is divided by straight avenues into rectangular
 patches like city blocks. and to each
 patch is allotted given number Of
 pickers. The pickers are trained men, being taught to judge with close ac-
 curacy just when the peach is ready
 to be picked. Every peach has it's
 sunny side and it's shady side, and it is
 by the hue of the shady side that it's
 degree of ripeness is decided. In former
 days peaches had to be picked some
 days before they were quite ripe,
 so as to allow for transpor-
 tation, but at present, thanks
 to the refrigerator car ana fast
 freight, this is no longer necessary, and
 the fruit is left on the trees until it has
 come to full maturity, being taken just
 before it begins to soften.
 Each picker is provided with small
 canvas bag marked with his number
 and containing tickets bearing the same number He puts one of the tick
 cts in the bottom of each basket as he
 begins to fill the latter Thus II any
 basket on reaching the sorting table is
 found deficient in any respect as to the
 quality of the peaches or otherwise 1t is known at once who is responsible, and a field inspector gallops away on
 his horse to administer corrective re- bulSe to the individual at fault.
 For each gang of pickers there Is certain number of helpers, who fetch the empty baskets for refilling and tore away the newly filled baskets, carrying them to the intersecting avenues, where they are placed upon low wagons for transportation to the packing house. This building is an immense shed, loft overhead affording space for the storage of empty baskets and crates, while below are long tables, at which stand young men and girls who sort the peaches This is expert work, the fruit being transferred to canvas trays and sorted into three grades-'extra, No. 1" and "seconds.''
 All peaches that are too ripe for ship ment are put aside for the evaporator, while decayed ones go to the dump, to be destroyed later by fire Other hands pack the fruit, as fast as it is graded, into baskets, and nail them up in crates, six four-quart baskets going to the crate. There is final inspection, and the crates are loaded aboard the refrigerator car, which is sealed up, not to be opened again until the northern city is reached where the merchandise is to be sold. The utmost pains are taken to make the time as short as pos- sible from the tree to the car, and un- der ordinary circumstances not more than an hour elapses after the fruit is picked before the car is filled and sealed.
 Methods equally expeditions are prac- ticed elsewhere, though conditions vary more or less with the locality of pro- duction Delaware has an exceptional in being so near New York, Philadelphia and other great cities on the eastern seaboard. Immense quan- titles of peaches are canned in Dela- ware, a single factory at Seaford using three thousand baskets day in this way at the present time The people employed to peel the fruit are nearly all women.
 In Michigan there is wonderful peach belt, which runs along the east ern shore of Lake Michigan for a dis tance of one hundred and ninety miles, from fifteen miles south of St. Joseph to the north shore of Travers bay, and in width from five to ten miles. Unlike Georgia and Delaware, it is a region of small orchards, and this is one reason why the intensive meth cd of culture already described has been so admirably developed in that part of the country,
 Next to frost, the most dreaded foe of the peach grower is the "yellows"-a disease which has been found to be en- tirely incurable. When it appears the 1nly thing to do Is to dig up the infec- ted trees and plant others in their places. By this means the trouble has been wiped out to great extent, both n Delaware and Michigan, though here are always short-eighted plant 1 ITS who are reluctant to resort to so 'adical a method of fighting the plague. Washington Post.