Daily capital journal. (Salem, Oregon) 1903-1919, 1910-04-23
WONDERFUL
SHOWING OF
OREGON LAND
ORCHARDS, ESPECIALLY APPLE
ORCHARDS, HAVE RAISED THE
PRICE OF LAND FROM TEN TO
TWENTY TIhlhrs.

Apple-mad are Oregon and Wash
ington. Pomona at the present
moment is indisputedly the best
loved goddess in the northwestern
Pantheon and that, too, where lum-
ber talks in millions and billions,
and fisheries and agriculture and
the thousand other industries by
which men live and prosper and tint
ing the sky with pecuniary promise. "
The stories of fruit culture, while
true, read like the fiction of boom
ers, and the profits sound equally
unreal. Last year the Oregon apple
grower sold a large share of his har-
vest at SO a box of forty-eight ap-
pies, and this year the market was
even higher 1t seems incredible to
read that thrifty Scots in Glasgow
and Aberdeen pay 20 and 80 shil-
lings a box for Newton pippins from
Oregon and yet that is fact of
commercial record, and it is equally
unreal to read of the tremendous
values in land. Slopes a few years
ago covered with fir timber, sold by
lavish government, timber and all,
to homesteaders for SO an acre, are
yielding their owners from $500 to
$1,000 an acre: sometimes more. It
is a common thing to see 5000 an
acre paid for this land after the tim
Der has been removed, but the
stumps and general debris of log
ging operations still covering the
ground.
An expenditure of from SIS to
q &c hA
fruit trees can be set out and then
these trees yield fruit. And yet
Yakima and Wenatchee valleys in
Washington, once accounted worth
less, now selling readily at $4,000
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 $3.50 to $3.50 a box at the
ailway station, while the cost of
production and packing is about SO
cents.
This apple madness is not con-
fined to the apple grower, but it per-
meates every stratum of society, and
every body is more or less infected
Will dpplGlllSs Ill ulOSJ DuSlu6SS
houses in Portland the Seattle apples
are on exhibition in the office, and
the business man is more ready to
talk "apples" than anything which
more nearly concerns him. There
are said to be 200 business men in
Portland alone who own five, ten,
twenty or thirty acres of apple land
in the Hood river valley or else
where.
Some are holding for speculative
purposes, but lawyers and merchants
and all kinds of people have their
little places farmed by an agent, and
hold to present jobs till the mature
trees shall warrant them in giving
their sole attention thereto. One of
the largest apple growers in the
hood river valley district worked for
years for a railroad company at $125
a month, and he has repeatedly re-
fused 100000 for his apple
orchard, which net him $4,000
year
1t Is the boast of the Hood river
valley that a bad apple can no more
leave the valley than a camel can
pass through the eye of a needle. No
orchard 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 gath
cred in the growers apple house,
cold storage plant, each box is num-
bered to correspond to the number
held by the grower, record is
made of its contents, and it is in
spected and marketed under direc-
tion of the growers union. Says Mr..
Mumford:
Where the box is bound for, ordi-
narily, 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 plat
form and its stamp on any box is a
guaranty of perfection. When a
Russian colonel in Vladivostock finds
a blemish on a Hood river apple the
union deducts the price Of its box
from its bill against the consignee.
It is the boast of the northwestern
orchard men that any apple they
ship can be taken from the box and
eaten in the dark. "No worms"
Ii is the standard, of quality and the
trustworthiness of the guaranty that
makes the price. The apple crops of
Hood river, Yakima, Wenatchee and
lot of other places, are bought on
ne trees, in advance of the harvest,
by dealers in New York, London,
Hongkong and numberless other
cities. without the sending of any
agent TO inspect the quality. A name
for reliability is indeed an asset Of
worth, y. X. Mumford in Harper's