Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/53

Rh nearly all grew and seemed not injured, excepting on the southwest the bark of the peach-plum died, as judged, on account of the warm 2 o'clock sun while the trees were yet frozen. In a few years the damage was scarcely noticed.

The first year of bearing I sent two carloads of peach-plums, wrapped in papers and carefully packed in twenty-pound boxes, to the Chicago market. The weather was warm in transit, they were delayed, and arrived in bad condition, and were sold for about the freight bill, commission, and other charges. I made other ventures of this kind and learned in the clear school of experience that the peach-plum did not carry well, and could not be profitably shipped so far east. Our commission merchants tried many such experiments, and I do not know that any one ever made anything shipping peach-plums East, and I do know there were many losses, and the business was abandoned.

Early in the seventies I built the Acme fruit evaporator, bought a Lily pitter, which pitted three thousand five hundred pounds in ten hours, and, after the failure of my shipping scheme, dried the entire product of my orchard. For some years, starting at sixteen cents per pound, the business paid nicely, then prices dropped to fourteen, twelve, ten, and down, until 1890 they were a drug in the market at six cents, unsalable, and were held over, some for three years, and were then reprocessed and sold at a loss. The fashion had changed, the fad was off, people were tired of pitted plums, the trade turned to prunes, the call now was for prunes with the pit in, as it was claimed to give the true prune taste, which the pit alone could do. This was disastrous. What should I do with my plum orchard? Here was a condition serious. I was theorizing: "Was it possible to graft new heads on these trees successfully?" This was questioned; orchardists shook their heads and thought it too big an undertaking. Some