“I think it will not do to complain of high prices now!”
“No,” replied my wife, “the tables are turned. Half a dollar a quart! How much I pity those poor people.”
And as she said this, I handed her a quart bowl of the luscious fruit, which I had been sugaring heavily while she was studying out the figures in the agent’s letter, and I feel persuaded no lover of strawberries ever consumed them with a more smacking relish.
The agent spoke in his letter of the admirable manner in which our berries were forwarded--all alike, all uniformly prime large fruit--not merely big ones on top of the box as decoys, and as the prelude to finding none but little runts at bottom. This established for us a reputation; our boxes could be guaranteed to contain prime fruit all through. Hence the agent could sell any quantity we could send. Indeed, it was impossible to send him too much. Thus we continued to pick over our vines from three to four times weekly. As the ripening of the fruit went on, the sight was truly marvellous to look at. When the season was at its height, the ground seemed almost red with berries. Then the famous doctrine of squatter sovereignty was effectually carried out on my premises, for there were twenty girls and boys upon their knees or hams, engaged in picking berries at two cents a quart. Industrious little toilers they were, many of them earning from one to two dollars daily. Some pickers were women grown, some widows, some even aged women. It was a harvest to them also.
The small boxes were packed in chests each holding from twenty-four to sixty, just nicely filling the chest, so that there should be no rattling or shaking about, or spilling over of the fruit. The lid, when shut down and fastened, held all snug. These chests were taken to the railroad station close by, the same afternoon the berries were picked, and reached New York the same night. The agents knowing they were coming, had them all sold before they arrived, and immediately delivering them to the purchasers, they in turn delivered to their customers, and thus in less than twenty-four hours from the time of leaving my ground, they were in the hands of the consumers. This whole business of conveying fruit to distant markets by steamboat and rail, is thoroughly systematized. It is an immense item in the general freight-list of the great seaboard railroads, constantly growing, and as surely enriching both grower and carrier. For the former it insures a sale of all his products in the highest markets, and in fact brings them to his very door.
