Apples and Prunes, Not Peaches: The Hard Truth About Shipping Fruit East

In an official report printed in the Oregonian, Mr. Dosch, horticultural commissioner, speaks as follows:

"My observations at the Columbian Exposition, and more recently at the Trans-Mississippi Exposition at Omaha, lead me to the conclusion that the apple is the commercial fruit par excellence of the whole world as a fresh fruit, followed by our fine prunes as an evaporated product."

Here we have the judgment of a man practically familiar with fruit conditions in this state and an enthusiastic promoter of orchard enterprise, after careful study of the Eastern and European fruit markets. It carries all the more weight from the fact that it is in precise accord with others familiar with the facts of production here and of demand elsewhere. There will, probably, be many slow to accept this verdict, but that the end will see its complete enforcement The Oregonian now has no doubt.

Apples and prunes, we believe, are to be our commercial fruits, and the more perfectly we concentrate our orcharding energies upon these staples the greater will be our reward and the sooner it will come.

It is a hard blow to local pride to be told that there is no market — at least no certain and profitable market — in the East for our fine cherries, peaches, pears and small fruits. These are the varieties which we have believed to be our best and our surest sources of profit, and to which much of our energy in horticulture has been directed. Intrinsically, the excellence of our fruit is all that it was ever believed to be; but the conditions and times of production make it unavailable for the Eastern market. Grown in a soft, moist climate, it has not the toughness of skin and the structural fiber necessary to a good shipping fruit. Its extreme efficacy and juiciness — the chief points of its merit — make it unfit for distant transportation during the warm season, when it is ready for market. Again, its season is short, coming on after the early fruit of the Southern states and before the late fruit of California. It goes into the Eastern market — when it can be gotten there in merchantable shape — at a time to swell the mid-season glut and when prices are at their lowest. Manifestly, under these conditions, Oregon is not to make much of a figure in the Eastern green fruit trade.