and

"fancy," "choice," "standard," "culls," detecting every flaw in the moving stream of fruit. It is the looks of the orange, not its flavor-that is uniform-which decides its fate at the hands of the sorter.

The table on which the sorting is done is set at a slight incline, and the divided stream of oranges runs in two files on narrow tracks of moving ropes. The smallest fruit fall through first, and so on to the largest, the oranges graduating themselves into their proper bins. There are twelve recognized sizes, from oranges which require 360 to fill a box, to the monsters of which only 48 are required for a boxful.

Every bit of spout, bin or table with which the orange, during any of these processes comes in contact, is padded, for the orange is tender, and a slight scratch will swell and fester in transit across the continent and make an unsightly even if a succulent thing when it reaches market. For the same reason the finger-nails of the packers who are mostly womenare kept cut short and filed smooth.

The packers, like the pickers, count their earnings by the number of boxes they handle, and at the same rate-two and one-half cents a box. They are of all types, from the wives, or widows of Americans who have come to California for their health and are poor, to Spanish, Mexicans, Japanese and Chinese. The work is mechanical, but grindingly steady. Every now and then the packers change places among themselves, so as to give all an equal chance at the large and the small oranges. As the boxes are filled, boys carry them off to a table, where covers are nailed on them and they are ready for shipment.

The system by which California citrus products are shipped and marketed is an interesting one. The hand of the city of Los Angeles is on the industry, and almost ninety per cent. of the entire orange and lemon crop of the southern section of the state is handled from the packing houses to jobbers throughout the country by this city's fruit agencies and associations. Although the fruit is. packed and loaded and fruit trains are

made up in the growing districts, the work is all done under direction from headquarters in Los Angeles. Like train despatchers, the executive heads there guide every car from the side-tracks in the orchards over branch and trunk lines to the markets of the world, diverting, as occasion may seem to advise, the shipments from a first-intended market to some other.

Hundreds of cars with only a general destination leave Los Angeles daily dur

and erratic things, and weeks of time and thousands of dollars may be needed to restore prices to a normal level after a seemingly unimportant slump. At division points along the great trunk lines the Los Angeles directors station inspectors. These examine the fruit as it comes along, and report its condition. If a car shows signs of going to pieces, then the men at Los Angeles must find a market for it at once.

The California Fruit Growers Exchange is the principal association for marketing the orange crop, handling at the present time about 55 per cent. of the total product. The Exchange is composed of more than eighty local associations, covering every citrus fruit district in California, and packing nearly two hundred brands of oranges and lemons. The several associations in a locality unite to form the local Exchange, which serves as a medium between the associations and the general Exchange. The latter consists of thirteen stockholders, all directors, and all selected by the local exchanges. The organization is thus controlled by the fruit growers themselves, for the common good of all the members. Each of the local associations owns packing houses, and each is allowed its proportion of the various markets of the country. The expenses of marketing are divided pro rata on a basis of actual cost, and each member of the exchange gets his share of the proceeds from sales.

ing the shipping months, and these must. be kept track of and guided into the city of the greatest demand. If from telegraphic reports the despatcher finds, for instance, that New York is receiving too much fruit and that there is therefore danger of a break in the price there, he diverts a part of the New York consignment to Chicago, Philadelphia, or some other point. He must see that every district has enough fruit, and that none has too much. He must get the top price for the growers, and yet sell all of the fruit. He must keep the market even. He must figure against the changes of weather in each district, and against the competition from Florida and Europe.

There are many factors which affect the demand for the fruit in each market. If too many cars of oranges are massed in one large city for even a day the prices will drop materially. Markets are ticklish

The exchange system is quite democratic. The members of the local associations establish their own brands, make such rules as they may agree upon for grading, packing and pooling their fruit. All members are given a like privilege to pick and deliver fruit to the packing house, where it is weighed in and properly receipted for. Every grower's fruit is separated into different grades accord

ing to quality, as already described. Any given brand is the exclusive property of the association using it, and the fruit under this brand is always packed in the same locality, and therefore is of uniform quality.

An idea of the increasing importance of the Southern California orange industry is found in the fact that two railroad companies, the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe, have just had completed more than 7,000 new refrigerator cars to operate over their lines beginning

with the present fall's shipments. Los Angeles will be the headquarters for the southern division of this new refrigerator car service, and the general headquarters will be in Chicago. The new cars are the best of their kind in existence. Each car cost $1,700, and the total order by the Southern Pacific through the Pacific Fruit Express Company means a cash expenditure of $11,000,000. Each car is built with a steel frame, practically prohibiting telescoping of the car in case of accident, and has double walls and all

WHERE THE YELLOW FRUIT IS PACKED.

RED SCALE.

the latest devices for preserving fruit in transit.

Not many by-products have yet been attempted with California oranges, because of the cost of transportation to the East, which makes the selling of the whole fruit alone profitable. Marmalade is made to some extent, but not largely, and orange perfumes, oil, essences, etc., are still the exclusive output of Spain.

Science has a good deal to do with orange growing, and experiments are constantly being made in tree culture. It makes little difference what seed may have been planted to start the tree, so long as it belongs to the citrus family the fruit will be absolutely true to the variety which is budded into it. The tree may be started from a seed orange, a lemon, sour or sweet seedling, or grape fruit; if a navel orange bud is subsequently grafted on, and the rest of the tree cut away, the fruit will be a navel orange. It is also possible to have grape fruit, lemons and oranges in any variety, all from a

single tree, by repeated buddings upon various limbs of the tree, after it is somewhat matured, and the distinctiveness of the fruit will be as perfect as the fruit of the original tree.

The budding is performed usually when the seed tree is two years old, a bud from a selected bearing tree being taken out and inserted near the ground in the young tree, and bound in in the ordinary manner. This bud will in time throw out a branch, which will be the trunk of the future bearing tree. The following season this branch is brought up straight, and tied to a supporting stake, and the rest of the tree is cut completely off above the scion branch. The entire life of the roots is now given to the transformed tree, and by the following year, the scion being four years old from the seed, though only two years from the bud, is ready to be set out in

the orange grove. It should begin bearing three years later, and increase in productiveness steadily for many years afterwards.

There is some subtle chemistry of soil and atmosphere which adapts the foothills of Southern California so admirably to the navel orange. Nowhere else does it thrive as it does here. The orange tree I will do well in a thousand different locations, but the flavor never is exactly the same. One may theorize about soil and temperature, freedom from fog and presence of sunlight; the one certain fact remains that the orange, so far as its preferences go, is a law to itself. Man can change its nature in a dozen ways, render it immune to moderate frosts even, but the deciding test of bearing and of flavor is one which the orange seems to decide for itself, according to whether it likes the place where it is planted.

Modern Ship Surgery

THE HE picture illustrates one of the most marvelous cases of ship surgery on record. The big 12,000-ton White Star liner Suevic, wrecked on rocks in a fog, was cut in two by means of dynamite and partly under her own steam came into harbor at Southampton, England, two hundred miles away. Two hundred feet of the steamer's length was left impaled on the rocks. The value of the portion saved, including boilers and cargo, was $800,000. All this goes to show what

wonderful strides have been taken in the building of vessels in the last quarter century. In the old days a ship once on the rocks was usually considered as being a total loss. The only hope of salvage was that she would hold together long enough for the wreckers to save her cargo and perhaps her spars and sails. There was rarely any thought given to recovering the ship itself as the hulls, constructed of wood, were too fragile to withstand the pounding of the seas on a lee shore. This was also partly true of the first iron vessels that were built.