Springfield Weekly Republican

THE CHEAPENING OF FRUITS.

We believe that this is the first year in the present epoch of prices that Concord and Isabella grapes have sold on our streets in large quantities at eight, ten and even twelve cents. Concords off the stems were marked one while as low as five cents, but nice grapes in boxes of three pounds nominally have been purchasable through the season at from 25 to 40 cents. These prices are due as much to the increased culture of grapes as to its being a good fruit season. But prices have by no means touched bottom, and, with a still wider culture and cheaper freights, we ought to have in a few years fine grapes at two cents a pound. They have been three and five cents in New York, this season, and can be raised in the vineyards of that state and California at a profit at one cent a pound. The extension of the grape culture is indeed so rapid that the vineyards of central and western New York are said to have fallen off greatly in value per acre on account of the diminished return from the crop.

All our fruit-growing seems to be in its infancy, or at least undeveloped. Fruit is the most excellent of food,—delicious to the taste without being stimulating, bulky, and so satisfying the craving which stimulant is too often set to satisfy, always ready for eating, beyond the art of cooking to improve, and salutary for the health in every way. It ought to enter into the national diet much more largely than it does, and so far as it does will be sure to keep out something worse. The beer-drinking nations, for instance, don't eat fruit, and in the German restaurant or railway station the pyramid of apples is as conspicuously absent as the jar of ice-water. But the apple, especially with us in New England, is sadly neglected. The old farms in the hill districts which used to bear a very edible native fruit, besides other fruit that made good cider, are going rapidly to decay, with small effort being made to supply their places with new orchards. In some districts, especially in Worcester county, the profit of fruit culture has been found out, and probably the highest-priced farming lands in New England, except the market gardens around Boston, are thus occupied.

It will be a good while before we grow enough grapes and those of the right kind to fall into the manufacture of light American wine, at prices so low as to make it a staple element of the common diet. But, in the mean time, we are missing a very palatable and tonic beverage in neglecting cider. Bottled cider is being manufactured and drank more extensively every year, but at prices 50 per cent dearer than the French common wine. The cider is the best of the two, but we can have it just as cheap, if not cheaper. If the apples were picked and made up with care, and with the same degree of skill and intelligence that the cheese factories have introduced into the manufacture of another staple, the farmers would find it a source of great profit, and the consuming public would have a cheap, salutary and harmless beverage.

These are an illustration of a class of opportunities which lie open to New England agriculture, but which, from their apparent triviality, or from the conservatism of the farming class, go long neglected. In many of the old-fashioned staples we are greatly outdone by the West, and we may as well accept the benefit of their cheaper production elsewhere. But the great cities growing up all through the East will always prove a ready market for all the summarily perishable productions of the soil, and these must continue to be raised among us. The more extensively and cheaply they are raised, the more rapidly will the market for them increase, and the demands of consumption.