Year: 1877

.sTHERE,S MILLIONS IN TYP


PEACHES AND BLACKBERRIEs THE ROYAL


ROAD TO FORTUNE.


COLUMBIA, s. c., August An the alb.
sence of both investigating committees, 20.
lumbia has suddenly relapsed into its wonted
condition of summer dullness. A round Of
the State-House Offices this morning utterly
failed to secure single item of interest other
than an invitation to help myself to the con.
tents of basket of peaches in the Secretary
ofState's office. Your correspondent was as
hungry for "items," however, as for peaches,
and managed to secure few Of the former
at the same time that he refreshed himself
with the latter. Col. Sims supplied both.
The fact is, interviewed my host, the Secre-
tary of State, unawares, and obtained much
interesting information from him, of more real
value to the readers of the Nesrs and Courier,
if they would only act upon it, than all the
arrests that have been made in the State for
the past one hundred years.


ABOUT PEACHES.


The basket of peaches was the subject Of
conversation. About half peck of ripe, de.
licious fruit was stored away therein, and the
whole had just been purchased for the sum of
five cents The supply hereabouts this year is
largely in excess Of the demand, and the pro-
ducer is only too glad, in.his ignorance, to OBJ
tain for peck the price of a pint, if the pint
were only properly handled and sent to the
right market. Only think of itl Thousands
of bushels raised in this section are to-day be-
ing fed to swine, or worse yet, are suffered to
rot on the trees and on the ground, despite the
fact that every bushel is worth to-day seven
dollars in New York and other markets of
the North. Scrub varieties are of course not
taken into consideration, but it is fact that
Col. Sims is himself now busiy engaged in
shipping to New York large and small crates
of this fruit raised in York county, every
bushel of which brings him the handsome re-
turn of seven dollars. Deduct from this
amount three cents per pound, or one dollar
and half per bushel for freight, and you
have, or he has, net profit of five dollars and
a half per bushel remaining as the reward of
the trifing amount of labor expended in set.
ting out and protecting his trees. "And this,
mark you," he said, "is the first Of August
when the fruit farms of Pennsylvania, New
Jersey and New York and elsewhere at the
North are also pouring in their supplies BY
the carload"


THE SELLING PRICE.


How do you account for the good price
your peaches command? I naturally inquir.
ed. To this the answer was simply that our
seasons are far in advance of that further
north, and we have the advantage of offering
fruit in its greatest perfection as ripened be-
meath the bot suns Of July and August against
the smaller and inferior fruit of the section
named. We commence the season by ship
ping good first fruit as early as first of June,
while the Northern peaches are yet green and
nearly month behind hand, and by the time
the earliest Northern peaches are got to mar
ket those of this section, which are better ma.
tured, have begun to arrive, and they 80 far
excel their "early" arrivals in respect of quail
.ity- as to- control the market and command
the best prices always. Our fruit steadily
improves, in flavor, size and appearance as
the summer advances, and the fruit grown in
higher latitudes is always behind time by
several weeks in all these particulars.


A NEIGHBoR's EXAMPLE.


Despite these signal advantages, however,
it is perhaps not too much to say that one
could count off on his ten fingers, with mar.
gin to spare, the number of our farmers who
avail themselves of this golden opening for
enterprise and consequent prosperity. They
manage the matter better in Georgia. 1t was
stated in the News and Courier that Colonel
Sims has just returned from visit to the last
annual meeting of the Georgia Horticultural
Society. There, he informs me, he saw speci.
mems of ffty-six varieties Of peaches grown
upon one place, and the exhibitor had on the
grounds upwards Of one hundred and fifty
specimens of other fruits. The Georgia plant
ers have had this matter under attention for
several years, and the number Of those who
profit by it increases yearly. Carloads of
peaches and other fruit grown in middle
Georgia, and as far south as Thomasville, al
most on the Florida line, are shipped North
every summer, and every bushel of it passes
through the entire length of South Carolina
in its route to market. The difference is from
two hundred to FIVE hundred miles of trans.
portation in favor of the planters of this State,
and if the Georgians can ship with profit,
much more can their less energetic neighbors
on this side the Savannah.





A great deal of the fruit rejected for pur-
poses of shipment can be dried with but little
care and less expense, and this, too, commands
a good price-a better price, my cotton.plant-
ing friend, than the canned peaches for which
you pay such round price throughout the
winter. You do pay fifty cents for every 90
called quart can you purchase for your winter
use, do you not? Well, it may add some.
what to your enjoyment of these leathery,
sweetish.sourish, unwholesome northern raised
delicacies to know that they are canned at a
cost of less than $3.50 per dozen, and that
there is not quart in any can in the whole
dozen! Of the latter fact you can readily
assure yourself by experiment, and as to the
cost of canning, COL Sims was informed by a
manufacturer, to whom he applied for the in.
formation, that he could only sell his fruit in
canned form, at wholesale, at the rate Of $1.5O
per dozen. The inference is fair one that
the manufacturer makes some profit, and that
each dozen costs less than that sum for the
expense of the cans and the canning.


PuNN1NG CONCLUSION.


To fix the thing in your mind, it may be
stated briefly in the form Of pun. The Yam
KEGS can, and the Dixies can't, and thereby
hangs the whole secret of their wealth and
our poverty. But, besides our sin in the mat
ter of peaches, there is also the sin against
To explain: 1 suppose no quar-
ter of the globe has been more favored in the
matter of blackberries than has this the late
ly PROSTATE State. The old fields and the
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