The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, November 15, 1917, Page 14

A== The Plight of the Apple Man'-, An Astonishing Story of Conditions in the Idaho Fruit Belt---Apples Rot for T —— N ——— SRN PSS Lack of Cars to Ship Them to Market While Cities Hunger for Fruit HE poet said: “Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink.” Apply it to Idaho food supply. ¥ood, such as apples, onions and potatoes everywhere, and scarcely a car to move them. Up in the Boise valley and the Payette valley, apples hang so heavy on trees today that the limbs are touching the ground. Never did Idaho have a better apple crop. And the market is good. Yet, because of the car shortage, within two weeks Idaho apple growers will lose 40 per cent of their apple crop, which will simply freeze and be destroyed. The country called for food produc- tion last spring. Right nobly did Na- ture and the farmers of Idaho respond. The Oregon Short Line, which has a monopoly of southern Idaho in freight- age, must have known of crop condi- tions. Yet, in the ‘past three days, I have seen orchard after orchard, one- half picked—possibly not more than one-third, because there are no cars. Storage rpoms are bursting with fruit. Apples piled in ficlds, apples boxed up, apples/under trees covered with straw. Buggies and automobiles out in yards and the sheds full of apples., New warchouse after warchouse built to take care of the apples which should right now be on the market. Where 30 cars are demanded in a town in a week the producers get one. Apples are selling at $1 a wagonload like I have paid two cents apiece for in I7orth Dakota when bought by the box. Ye wheat growers! Suppose your fields of fine wheat were half cut, and what you had threshed you could not get to the terminal elevators. Iow would you feel if your wheat were perishable, and 500 miles away a good market, and yet no cars to move it? Last year there was practically mo fruit crop in these Idaho valleys. That put the farmers behind finanoially. A big apple crop this year promised to pay up part of the mortgage. Over 80 per cent of the farmers are mortzaged. And mnow with a “mortgage lifting” crop on hand they can get mo cars to move it. Apples sell here at $1.20 on board cars. After a careful investigation I have found by this delay that it actu- ally costs the producer here 95 cents a box to put his apples on board a freight car. The price of boxes doubled this year. Pickers are getting 40 cents an hour. Packers are getting six cents a box. Add to that the freightage to depot, storage and selling commission and fixing up of freight cars and it leaves only 25 cents profit on each box of apples. A 10-acre tract, well water- ed, in a good year, produces three car loads. WHAT 1S THE GROWER GOING TO MAKE ON iT? Six hundred boxes to a car will give this year, by a 25-cent margin on each box, net more than five hundred dol- lars profit. ©Out of this profit must come the cost of the spraying, the irri- gation, the tilling, the fertilizer, the interest, the taxes, depreciation, hired man’s and the farmer’s wages. Please tell me where the farmer is going to malke any money on apples this year, even if he could market his entire crop? The conditions are abnormal. There is less profit this year than almost any year heretofore. Then all the uncer- tainty of the market. If in a week many cars can come, the market may go-down to $1 a box. 2 I have just come from a trip over more than two valleys. Nature has been exceptionally good to southern Idaho. Twenty years ago what was nothing but sage brush and volcanic ash, is now the garden spot of the world. Idaho can raise everything, al- most, except dates and oranges, The political lemon crop has. been exceptionally good. These various garden spots are tapped by the Union Pacific system, called in Idaho, the Oregon Short Line. The road was practically given to its promoters by the government. Inci- dentally, in passing, let us not forget that the Union Pacific was the line which moved the Rocky mountains many miles west on paper to steal the extra bonus from the government, so it was charged. The Pacific Fruit Ex- press company has a monopoly on the refrigerator car system. There are 12,000 cars on the railroad tracks and only 300 for Idaho. Right now 1 hold in my hand a telegram from R. F. Bicknell, state food administrator, appointed by Hoover. He declares that more food can be saved within the next 15 days in ldaho by plenty of cars than can be conserved in the whole state within the next year. The Commercial club and the farm- ers at Filer, Idaho, wired as follows: “They have potatoes and onions in that little town weaiting shipment for a thousand cars. For two weeks they have had only ten cars. All track storage is filled. No cars available today. Three hundred car loads will perish in a few days by frost.” Apples piled on the ground like potatoes. Apples like these often sell for $2 or more per box in the Middle West. Freight car and apple box shortage causes the present situation. to the different mills. He was referred to a Mr. Geddies of the Oregon Lum- ber company at Odgen, Utah. Geddies at first refused to deliver any boxes. After much interchange of corre- spondence, even though commission men all over the state were being promised boxes, this association, just like the Equity boys in North Dakota _when they tried to get their grain to the Minneapolis Chamber of Com- merce, had obstacles put in their way. This association of Idaho producers could not get boxes. Shearer tele- Apple grading machine in action at Dr. McBride's orchard near New Plymouth. It pitches apples like basballs, tossing the larger sizes into nearby receiving pouches and the smaller apples into the more, distant pouches. And the little town of Filer is just one incident. It is the same all over the scuthern part of the state. Not enough cars for the produce, and a shortage on apple boxes! The car shortage is bad enough, but, according to A. J. Shearer, the secretary of the Idshc-Oregon Fruit Growers associa- tion, they ordered 400,000 apple boxes last May. Thirty thousand were prom- ised THEN and they haven't yet se- cured complete deliveries on the first promise—to say nothing of the other 379,000 boxes. The box shortage has developed into a scandal and the federal authorities are investigating. It seems that the mills in the month of May send their solicitors everywhere to the producers, promising all kinds of deliveries at reasonzble figures. ‘This year, for some strange reason, mo box representative came to the farmers. Shearer applied Apples exposed to freezing weather on loading pla}!:fnm in the Payette valley near Fruitland. All warehouses filled o overflowing. - - graphed in a stinging threat, hence the 30,000 promise. Three big commission " firms in Bdoise got all the boxes they want- ed. 3 NOW FARMERS: PUT THIS IN YOUR MEMORY: Apple grower after apple grower in this country was promised boxes from the com- mission houses, if they would sell their fruit through the commission men. IT WAS A DELIBERATE PLOT TO BREAK UP THE PRO- DUCERS’ ASSOCIATION. The picking was hung up on account of no boxes. It is the same old story— Big Business hangs a mill stone around the farmer’s neck and says: *“Swim, you sucker, swim.” Add on to this box shortage, when they can get them by federal intervention, that the price of a box is 100 per cent more than it was last year, upon an inferior box, and you really have some idea of the pro- ducer’s grief. 7 As I walked through the Producers’ association office in Payette, Idaho, I glanced along the walls of this big room and saw banners where the Idaho apples had won sweepstakes at various fairs. It is claimed :around hers that the Idaho apple can not be surpassed. At the various fruit depots along the railroad track, boxes of apples were jmmd and crammed in and piled up on immense platforms. Building paper was tacked around the butside apples as a temporary protection. The Jonathan apple predominates. It is a delicious, luscious, juicy bite, and should be on the markets befors Thanksgiving. ‘On the way back by the orchards, I-saw many-an orchard pastured down by stock, which is quite significant. It means that the grower has practically decided to . quit the apple business. ; Many a fruit grower, dus to the lack of marketing fagilities, such as freight > PAGE FOURTEEN cars, refrigerator cars, etc, though raising the finest fruit in the world, has about decided to quit the fruit business. The effect is certainly dis- couraging. Abundance of apples going to waste, rotting by the ton. These same apples would feed thousands of people. Farmers are blue. Many fruit growers figure on pulling out their orchards and putting in alfalfa—be= cause it pays. I talked with Dr. C. M. McBride of New Plymouth. He has forty acres of most beautiful trees from sixteen to twenty years old. He has about a $20,000 plant, This includes storage facilities for ten cars of fruit, grading machines which quickly pick the light apples and drop them 10 feet away into canvas baskets, and, like "pitching quoits, of course, ' throws the hedvy apples nearer into other assorted can- vas sacks. He ‘says many a farmer has provided storage for his winter apples only, figuring he could move his fall Jonathans at once, hence the congestion on the farms. The doctor told me he had 80 car loads of apples on his ranch and that he would lose, anyway, 10 car loads. And it was a question if he could pick the rest of the 20 cars and market them all. The doctor is a retired professional man from northwestern Iowa, who came to this country as a pioneer 16 years ago. He says the railroads have practically killed the apple business. FARMERS SEEKING RELIEF JOIN NONPARTISAN LEAGUE 1 talked with C. S. French. He came from Chicago 20 years ago as a retired merchant, investing, with his son Fred French, in erchard land. . Ee is planning, now, on pulling up one-half of his orchard. He has 50 acres in apples and prunes. Alfalfa pays, apples do not, because of transporta=- tion. To me it looks almost criminal for railroads to hold up these fruit growers, making them oput in new floors in old box cars, paper the whole car, put in stoves, hire a man to go along to keep the stoves going, in order for them to get temporary relief. Pay= ing wages and expenses 10 a2 man ace companying the car will .average ovep $75 a car. That is the last straw. Then in addition to all this grief, these producers’ associations somes times have the commission men hand them a solar plexus. Occasionally the commissioin men in a sneaking way find out the destination of a car load of apples belonging to a producers’ ase sociation. These commission men will then send a car load of other Idahe apples to ‘the same place, sometimes in the same train, and bid this individual farmer's car load of apples against the association apples. In other words they take two farmers by the heads and pound their heads together. The associations have to guard against this by diverting the car from its original destination. I never was 8o impressed with a country in all my life as Idaho. God has certainly given it an abundance and some one certainly *plays the devil” with the market. Yet the brave ery and patience of these Idaho farms ers is truly magnificant. Is it any wonder that among the; apple growers the Nonpartisan league is spreading with appalling rapidity? They are going to: have something te say about these railroads and cold storage plants next year. If I were as Idaho farmer 1 would mot pull out my trees but 1 would wait until the Non« partisan Jeagne Gominates the state. -1 N