in the northern section than it does in the warmer climate. Sugar corn appears under all circumstances to develop a finer quality of the article in the higher latitudes, and this is probably due to the influence of sudden growth and development from a short and hastened summer. Even in Maryland corn grown on the slopes of the western mountains and at the foot hills of the Blue Ridge is, in so far as sugar corn is concerned, a sweeter and better article than that grown in the lowlands near the sea. It is from this fact also that Maine has gotten its reputation for the quality of its sugar corn. Northern New York shares this excellent reputation; Illinois and Wisconsin are turning out very fine qualities of this article, increasing each year, and in the order of progression with time, we may expect to see Bismarck, Helena, and Portland, Oregon, or Olympia, Washington, vieing with Portland, Maine, in the quality of their canned sugar corn, although the Pacific cities last named and that location may suffer somewhat in quality from the moist effects of the Japan current.

The same remarks in respect to the location of tomato factories in the middle section will apply to the consideration of locating sugar corn factories in the northern sections. The median line which we first mentioned will at all times have the preference in the minds of practical men, because the three great requisites of the business come together there natuarlly, that is crops, population and transportation facilities. But it means more than this when further considered. Because of the facts we have recited it is reasonably certain that competition of prices will be more keen along this line of tomato factories, always more numerous than those of corn factories, and we would be willing to risk the assertion that fluctuations and speculations in canned tomatoes will always exceed that which will develop in corn. It is certain to be, and that which is certain is worth consideration.

PEAS.

The third one of the great staples of the canned food industry, considering the vegetable essentially, is the green pea. The packing of this food has assumed very large proportions. In respect to this article the animus of the industry appears peculiar. When a new firm starts in an agricultural section to put up canned foods, the height of its ambition is generally bounded by a desire to pack tomatoes or corn, according to the latitude it is in; but it seems to be the fact that every canned food packer, after learning how to pack corn, gets the pea packing hornet in his bonnet, and will not be content till he packs peas. Nothing but the difficulty and the excessive care in packing good green peas has prevented the packing of this excellent article from having been greatly overdone. We witnessed years ago such a development of the packing of green peas that it looked as if the market would be swamped with the

amount; but that conservation of forces which seems to take care of all things in this world managed to prevent its being overdone. In the first place, at the outset of this rush to pack peas, because the packers did not give the right care to their work, not knowing what was necessary to be done to make good peas, a large quantity of the pack in some sections was sacrificed at such cheap rates that it considerably curtailed the pack of the following year. Then again the famous pea fly came around and the crop was blasted. For many years the packing of green peas was restricted to certain places on the Atlantic coast, especially Baltimore and its neighborhood, and to a small degree central New York State, but the early advent of the Chisholm pea beater permitted the packing of green peas at almost any section where tomatoes could be packed, and the later addition of the pea viners and separators made a large number of hands unnecessary in this special work. Green peas can be grown well and packed anywhere from the thirty-fifth to the forty-fifth degree of latitudes, but the location and character of the country wherein they are grown have very much to do with the quality of the peas. Recent experience has taught that if green peas are not planted in cold weather and before the warm spring changes commence, that the pea fly may develop beyond management, and further that what the peas need most in a growing condition is a moist, mild climate. It is for this reason that the growing and packing of green peas developed so largely in the Chesapeake region, and primarily around Baltimore because the need of many hands in both the field and canning factories required contiguity to a large city to get such a supply of labor in the days before they had machinery to do this work. Peas can be grown well and economically in the interior, even in a dry section, but the quality of the pea itself, the integral composition of the green pea varies with the soil and climate with which it is raised. In a dry climate, especially, where there is alkali water in the streams, where there is much lime in the soil, the peas will absorb too much lime, and though they seem to be young and tender, will swell more in processing, but not turn out so tender as those that come from a more moist climate and softer water. It is probable, therefore, that the fixed locations of great pea canning establishments will be the humid coasts of the oceans, both east and west, and upon the interior lands contiguous to the great lakes, and, perhaps, in the future in the sections where the United States Government may prosecute irrigation for a national benefit.

This is a matter which should be considered by every one proposing to make pea packing a considerable part of the business. The packing of peas, it will be found when we come to consider that

(NOTE-The above prediction was made nearly 20 years ago and is borne out tolay in the fact that the great pea-canning factories are located in the identical regions indicated.)

special article, requires more care than any other article in the vegetable list, and as our green peas have a competitor in the European article of French green peas of the very finest quality, it is essential that only the very best effort be directed to the production of this article.

Colorado and Utah have been packing very good peas for years, mainly on irrigated lands, and the volume of their packs has assumed fairly large proportions and is growing each year. In the last few years California has added peas to its long list of canned foods, and is gradually increasing the output until we may soon expect it to rank among the leaders in pea canning. The long season and varying climate make pea raising and canning a possibility over a longer season than other States enjoy.

It is not out of place here to remind all canners or intended canners that after the effects of the world war begin to pass off, competition from Europe, in canned foods, may be more intense than before. Canned foods came fully into recognition in all the countries at war, because the armies found themselves dependent upon them. Even during the war many nations opened up canneries to provide provisions for their armies, and the practice will grow. The many factories there produced goods on a small scale, as compared with ours, and mainly for export to America. They now see the great opportunities in this line and at home.

At the outbreak of the war in 1914 Belgium was ready to supply fine canned peas to America at lower prices than our canners could produce them, and shipments had actually reached New York. After restoration the intensive farmers of Belgium, Holland, France, Italy, Spain, not to mention Austria-Hungary and other countries, will be called upon to supply an ever-increasing number of commercial canneries, and the response will make our American farmers bestir themselves. There is undoubted evidence that canning will become a great industry in Europe, if not in the whole world.

In a general sense the canned food industry may be divided into classes of species, viz.: Fish, Fruits, Meats, Milk, Sauces, Soups and Vegetables.

Vegetables as used in this arrangement differentiate from fruits, which also belong to the vegetable kingdom. We have mentioned and discussed above the general question of the vegetable section, and we propose now to glance in the same way at what are known as the fruit sections of the United States and North America.

FRUITS-APPLES.

Considering fruit in the important matters of quantity and public favor, we think it safe so say that apples hold the prime position. The apple to all other fruits appears to be as the rose to all

other flowers-the most universally known and the general favorite. In the canning industry the assertion can be made that the extent of the fresh apple crop in any season fixes the value of all other fruit crops, and in this respect it is of great importance to all fruit canners to watch closely the conditions of the apple crop and the quotations of apples throughout the season. Two things are steadily developing in the American apple business; one was, previous to the war, the increased annual call made upon this country by Europe for our apples, and the other is the steadily increasing demand for apples in gallon, or, as they must now be called, “No. 10" cans, for what are known as commercial purposes. These commercial purposes are mainly foreign shipment of this fruit in tin, the use of canned apples in the pie-making establishment, and in hotels and dining-rooms. The canning of apples has become almost a specialty in the industry, and, therefore, a location in what is known as an apple section would naturally cause a canning factory so located to regard apple canning as a possibility to an increase of their business or line. Such factory, however, should be located as near as possible to the consuming market, that is, either towards the greater center of population, or the foreign exporting ports.

The principal apple sections of North America at present are: New York State, Ohio, the Missouri Valley, Pennsylvania, North Pacific Coast up towards Vancouver sound, and then the Tennessee, Virginia and the upper Mississippi Valley sections of the country; their importance being relatively about in the order given.

Canada is an important apple-growing section of North America, and England is an interested market for most of the surplus apples of the Dominion.

There are two classes of apples used by the canners. The summer apple which is usually too watery to keep when barreled, and, therefore, when the crop is large can be bought very low for canning purposes, and, of course, will keep indefinitely when tightly sealed; and the winter apple, coming in very many varieties and growers are steadily developing new ones.

The canned output of apples, according to the report made by the Government, under the authority of the Food Administration, amounted to 1,280,637 cases of all sizes, but it is to be remembered that the No. 10 can largely predominated.

PEACHES.

Next to apples, peaches hold the position of quantity and favor among canned fruits. The great peach-growing sections of the United States are much more limited than are the apples. The season is shorter, for peaches must be secured while in their best condition, or they will spoil. There was a time when peaches were common every summer along the Atlantic coast as far as Maine:

but the orchards have died out more and more with the passage of time, disappearing from the northern sections and developing more or less in the South. It is within the memory of the living when New Jersey had many fine peach orchards; to-day it may be stated that it is not possible to successfully cultivate peaches in New Jersey, and the same deterioration and depletion is rapidly proceeding in the Maryland and Delaware Peninsula, which twenty-five years ago was considered the very paradise of the peach.

The great peach section of the Atlantic upon which the eastern locality has to depend is Georgia. In the interior of the country in the eastern half of the Mississippi Valley, peaches do not appear to be a crop that can be depended upon, as they have a full crop only about once in six or seven years, on account of the uncertainty of the climate. Ohio and Kentucky should have great peach orchards, but when the wintry blizzards blow unobstructed from the great prairie lands of the Northwest, they bring such low temperatures with them that the peach crop is more often a failure than a success, and as these trees are sub-tropical in their nature, the tree itself suffers from these untimely visitations.

Michigan, however, although more northern, is more fortunate in this respect, bcause it is comfortably cuddled in the embraces of the Great Lakes, and gets protection from the ameliorating influences of the very waters which surround her. Michigan, therefore, is a prosperous northern peach region, and this peculiar influence of the Great Lakes affects the contiguous lands easterly along the borders of the Great Lakes, so that New York State for a few miles within the southern margin of the lakes is quite an important fruit growing section. The Missouri Valley, especially in Kansas and Arkansas, is also a considerable peach growing section, but a large quantity of the peaches native there are of the Spanish variety, which do not find the same favor as their lighter brethren. When, however, we get down into Texas we reach another section where the peach is at its best, and the eastern portion of Texas is becoming more and more a great peach growing section, and when population increases sufficiently in the southwest region and transportation facilities are increased, Texas will compete with California in this and other fruit growing. But of all sections of the United States, California is the paradise of fruit and of peaches especially.

The peach and its cousin, the apricot, grow in immense quantities with almost perennial conditions in the golden State of California. For many years the East has almst depended upon California for a large portion of its canned fruit, the dependence being mutual. The extraordinary difference of value upon which freight has to be paid by rail has to a large extent precluded the shipment of any but high priced, and, therefore, the finest quality used in tin. So that peach packing has divided itself into two classes: High