|
COPYRIGHT 2001 Hiaring Company
The lead article in the January, 1931 issue of The California Grower (now W&V) is a discussion of the arrival of the thousands of cars at the New York "juice grape market", which, as I recall, was actually in New Jersey across the Hudson River from mid-Manhattan. Of course, there were yards on the west side of lower Manhattan but I do not think that they could handle very much of the California grape crop. The author of this article--a Dr. Alonzo E. Taylor of Leland Stanford Jr. University--was illustrating the need for the "Standardization of Grapes", by which he meant the packages and carloads needed to be graded by quality, e.g. Calif. #1, Calif. #2, etc. He did his "research" by walking down a line of opened freight cars that were on the sidings, among the prospective buyers that were viewing the grapes displayed. He was dismayed by the sight. The quality of the grapes (amount of mold and rot, color, maturity, and adherence to type), the fills of the lugs (some were overfilled and some under) and general overall appearance was very unappealing and differed greatly from a norm or average. One day it "had been announced to be exposed (sic) for sale 340 cars". Each shipper had to pay $5 per day for the use of the car and its refrigeration (demurrage). His comments were that until the packages were filled with high quality fruit and properly filled, prices would be all over the lot and it would be difficult to obtain top prices for top fruit. His aim was to get the shippers to send only such grapes that were graded according to a standard and to have said standards well policed.
Great idea and like children, the great idea was easy to conceive but hard to deliver.
California was suffering from a dearth of rain. Rainfall as measured from the first of July, was 25 to 50% of normal and the snowfall was even...
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
|
Bookmark this article
Print this article
Link to this article
Email this article
Digg It!
Add to del.icio.us
RSS
