The Fargo forum and daily republican. [volume] (Fargo, N.D.) 1894-1957, 1910-04-02
APPLE mad OREGON"
Eyes of the Whole World Are Upon
the Apple Growers Of the
Northwest.

fApPtc~HidQ dIS OTSSbu ana .WdSnlng-
ton. Pomona at the present moment
is indisputably the best-loved god
dess in the northwestern Pantheon,
and that, too, where lumber talks in
millions and billions" and fisheries
and agriculture and the thousand 9TH
er industries by which men live and
prosper, are Uniting the sky with Pc
cuniary promise" The stories of fruit
culture, while true, real like the fic-
ton of boomers, and the profits sound
equally unreal. Last year the Oregon
apple grower sold a large share of his
harvest at So a box of forty eight APP
pies, end this year the market was
even higher. 1t seems incredible to
read that thrifty Scots i'm Glasgow
and Aberdeen pay 20 and 30 shillings
a box for Newton pippins from Oregon
and yet that is a fact of commercial
record. and 1t is equally unreal to read
OF the tremendous values in land.
Slopes q few years ago covered with
fir timber, sold by lavish government,
| timber and all, to homesteaders for
So an acre, are covered with young
apple trees yielding their owners from
$500 to $1,500 an acre; sometimes more
1t lis a common thing to see 5000 an
acre paid for this land after the timber
has been removed, but with the stunps
and general debris of logging opera
tions still covering the ground. An
expenditure of from $75 to 500 Is re-
| quired before the young fruit trees can
| be set out, and then one must wait
four years before these trees yield
fruit. And yet there are young or
| chards i'm the Yakima and Wenatchee
valleys in Washington, once accounted
worthless, now selling readily at So
900 and $4,000 an acre from which the
buyer nets SO per cent the first year
after his purchase. The apples from
the best Of these districts command
from S1.50 to $3.50 box at.the railway
platform, while the cost of production
and packing is about So cents.
This apple madness is not confined
to the apple grower, but IL permeates
every stratum of society, and every
body is more or less infected with
"appleitis." In most business houses
| In Portland and Seattle apples are on
exhibition In the Office and the BUSH
ness man Is more ready to talk "ap-
ple' than anything which more nearly
concerns him There are said to be
200 business men in Portland alone
who own i've. ten, twenty or
thirty acres of apple land in the Hood
river valley or elsewhere. Some are
holding for speculative purposes but
lawyers and merchants and all kinds
of people have thair little places farm
ed by an agent, and hold to present
| jobs till the mature trees shall war
rant them in giving their sole atten-
L IN ~ las
pie growers in the Hood river valley
district worked for years for a railway
compeny at $125 a month, and he has
repeatedly refused 100000 for his APP
pie orchards, which net him $4,000 a
| year.
1t is the boast Of the Hood river val
| lev that a bad apple can no more leave
| the valley than camel can pass
through the eye of needle. No or
chard man can take his fruit else
where for shipment. No man in the
| district can pack his own apples, but
when the picking is under way and
| thousands of boxes have been gathered
in the growers apple house, a cold
storage plant, each box is numbered
| to correspond to the number held by
| the grower. a record is made of its
1 contents, II 10 4ASpGGlGu anu UldE-
keted under direction Of the growers
union. Says Mr.. Mumford:
/ where the box is bound or, ordin-
arily, the grower has no notion
neither does he care The union finds
the market. conducts the sale and pays
him for his apples at the platform.
and it's stamp on any box lis guar
anty of perfection. When Russian
colonel in vladivostock finds Flemish
on Hood river apple, the union de-
ducts the price of its box from its
/ bill against the consignee. 1t is the
boast of these northwestern orchard
men that any apples they ship can be
! taken from the box and eaten in the
dark. mo worms" 1t is the standard
of quality and the trustworthiness OF
4 the guaranty that makes the price.
The apple crops of Hood river Yakima,
Wenatchee and a lot of other places,
are bought on the trees. in advance
of the harvest, by dealers in New York,
London, Honglkong and numberless
other cities, without the sending Of any
Il agent to inspect their quality. name
for reliability is indeed an asset OF
worth. -. K. Munford in Harper's
Weekly.
II
i We Buy Scrap iron.