Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 September 1893 — FRUIT OF THE VINE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FRUIT OF THE VINE.

THE WATERMELON AS A FACTOR IN CIVILIZATION. Fart Flayed by the Melon in Southern Development How the Railroads Hare Created the Melon Business—lnfluence of the Savory Fruit. Product of the South. The watermelon as a factor in civilisation is not usually considered of prime, importance, but that some credit is due this product of the sunny skies and sandy soils of the tropical climes, there is no question. Commonly supposed as designed only to gladden the heart and satisfy as well as disorder the digestive apparatus of the African fellow-citizen and the Caucasian small boy, it nevertheless has a wider range of usefulness' in assisting to solve the economic problem in the Southern States. In this respect it of course must share the glory with the humble and ofttimes despised goober or peanut, which from an occasional and chance product haa risen to a position of grave importance. This pre-eminence has not been attained by accident, but by the most sh telligent and assiduous effort on the part of the railroad companies, which nave practically created the watermelon business Before the days of railroads there were, of course, watermelons. There perhaps never has been

a time when there were not watermelons, for according to the best biblical commentators the “melons” which the Israelites lamented in the wilderness, as having been one of the choicest and most regretted products of Egypt, wore watermelons. Some of the' earliest Egyptian paintings represent the vine in full bearing, and in one capital work in prehistoric Egyptian art a group of highly colored natives is represented seated in a circle, while one of the number distributes slices from a large melon which was unquestionably a watermelon. Ancient, however, as the

watermelon undoubtedly is, it assumed lta prominence as a factor in civilization only within the last few years, and after the railroad system of the South had penetrated every neighborhood. The question considered by the railroad men when they came to contemplate the watermelon as a possibility was to bring a luscious tropical dainty and its possible consumers into juxtaposition. Thousands upon thousands of watermelons were annually grown and wasted in the patches of the South while the pdOple of New York, Boston, Chicago, Buffalo

and Other Northern-cities were actually hungering and thirsting after watermelon. Their children were crying for watermelon. The sick among them craved a slice of watermelon in June and received the mournful answer: “The time of watermelons is not yet." To the astute railroad mind it was Slajn that if ways and means could be evised to bring the melon to the consumer at the time the consumer wanted it, and, while the melon was still fresh, an enormous business could be built up. After a long course of experiments, conducted at no little loss and expense, the problem was finally solved, and the watermelon trade of to-day is something colossal in its proportions. The difficulties in the way seemed at first almost insuperable. The Georgians and Floridans and other Southerners who raised the melon were Unfamiliar with the best methods of cultivating it, taught; they did not

particular also. When all this had been gained it was found that their melons were toq thin-skinned to bear transportatlon, and hundreds of car loads were lost in making this discovery. A melon waathen found which would bqar the rough'and tumble usage of a thousand mile journey; special melon trains were put on all the roads, and in watermelon time were made out, in order thafthese‘trains might be hurried through with the least possible delay and the fruit brought to market in good condition. Of course, all this Was not done from a philanthropic

motive. Railroad companies do not usually undertake enterprises solely from a desire to elevate the condition of mankind. The hope and expectation of the railroad men was to build up a business that would pay them for their trouble. They have succeeded in building up the business; how well it pays them is a matter concerning which they have not taken the public into their confidence.

While work on a Georgia melon farm is by no means pressing at most seasons of the year, when the melons come to a condition fit for shipping there is a good deal more haste manifested than is observable at any other season. Cotton in the boll does not spoil by a little waiting; sugar cane can be delayed a day or two at least; peanuts and sweet potatoes can be dug next week as well as to-day, but the watermelon is imperative; it will not wait a day, and to reach market in propor condition must be gathered, loaded and forwarded at once. A watermelon station on a down South railroad, in melon time, presents a busy Beene. Teams are continually arriving and departing, the wagons laden almost to breaking with the darkgreen fruit; gangs of laborers, their sable skins shining with perspiration, are loading the melons into the cars that stand in readiness at the station. Broken melons and fragments of rind lie about in heaps festering in the sun. Everybody revels in watermelon; the piokaninnies have watermelon and to spare, for watermelon about a wellknown melon station is almost as free as wbter; the train hands eat watermelon until they can hold no more; even the tramps are treated to watermelon so liberally that they regard it as a light and inconsequential meal. The professional joke maker finds an ample field for the exercise of hia talent in the proclivity of the oolored man of the South for watermelon stealing, but where watermelons are so abundant and so cheap, the theft of a melon from a field is regarded as ssarcely more criminal than the abstraction of a drink of water from a neighbor’s spring. Every year thousands upon thousands of samples a little too ripe for shipping are left to rot in the fields, and when this is the case, for an owner to object to the abstraction of a few melons would be regarded as churlish in the extreme. The private grower who has only a small patch for his own use will watch it with a shotgun, but the watermelon farmer has an abundance of which the

loss of a few specimens would not be missed and could easily be spared. Africa’s sons, then, may rejoice in the fruit of their native land, for, by all accounts, the watermelon originated in Africa, and to the present day it is confidently affirmed by travelers that the largest and finest melons in the world are still grown in the heart of the Dark Continent. Both to African and Caucasian, however, the taste' for watermelon is natural rather than acquired. Men must get used to oysters; •the taste for tobacco is acquired only by long, and sometimes disagreeable, practice; the love of the codfish of Newfoundland, of the lobsters of Massachusetts Bay, and the vipers of the Apennines must be cultivated, but all human beings take naturally to the watermelon, and, it must be added, almost as naturally to the stealing as to the eating, A prominent authority on. the subject, dealing with it in epicurean fashion, says the best way to •njoy a watermelon isjirst, to stekl it:

secondly, to put it in the spring until dinner time, thirdly, to take it out, break it open by pounding it on a rock and eat only the heart, one watermelon being deemed a moderate portion for . one man. Extent of the Business. If this were the cage and such a usage so far as eating were to provail in the sections to which the watermelon is shipped, the business would certainly increase to far greater proportions than at present. Even now, when it is as yet only in its infancy, the* watermelon business is something enormous. During the season of last year one road alone, according to the Globe-Demo-crat, brought over 1,800 car loads into St. Louis, while probably three times that quantity altogether arrived in this city. The stupendous nature of the business may be guessed at, but not estimated, by the reflection that every large city in the North takes and eats watermelons quite as liberally as the metropolis of the Mississippi Valley. Some statistician with a keen nose tor exact figures has estimated that at the very least calculation there are annually raised in the United States alone 150,000,000,(J00 watermelons, and when to this immense aggregate are added the immense quantities produced in Mexico, Central and South America, in the West India islands, in South Europe, in Palestine, in Turkey, in nothing of the product of Africa, some idea of the importance of the watermelon as a factor in the world’s food sppply may be gained. Watermelon may not be particularly nourishing—in fact, scientists tell us that it is not—but, as Amateur Scientist Sam Weller once remarked in reference to “weal pie,” it is very filling for the price, and, after all, no inconsiderable portion of the human race regards filling as of somewhat more consequence than nourishment.

As a factor in commerce the watermelon. however, is by no means despicable. Millions of dollars change hands in this country every year for and in consideration of watermelons. Thousands of people make a part or the whole of their living from the national prediction for this delicious fruit. The growers have sometimes made fortunes, but the growers are not allowed to monopolize the benefits arising from its production. The laborers who do the actual work on the watermelon plantations live by means of the melon, so also do the swarms of men who perform the labor of harvesting the melons when ripe. After being forwarded to market, three or four sets of people make the wholo or a part of their living out of the melon: restaurant keepers and hotel men look to it to furnish them a fair profit, while the middlemen or dealers also come in for a share of the modest price that is demanded of the actual consumer. The dealers in sweetmeats share in its benefits, for a choice comfit is manufactured from its rind, while the druggists find in its seeds a much-used medicine. Even after its edible portion has all been consumed, the melon still helps people to a livelihood, for the enormous quantity of rinds accumulated daily in all portions of a large city during the melon season demands extra garbage carts and those mean extra rivers and additional employment for men who might otherwise bo out of work. But the usefulness of the melon is extended into quarters where its influence is unsuspected. The vast business done by the railroads in the watermelon season enables them to pay more employes, more brakemen, more conductors, a greater number of engineers and firemen, who, in turn, distribute their wages among grocery men, and

butchers, and bakers, and tailors, and snoemakers, and teachers, and preachers, and newspaper publishers, and so dozens of people who never eat watermelon and who, therefore, regard the melon as a thing entirely extraneous to their own sphere, are more prosperous because the watermelon is grown. Even the bloated bondholder and the man who owns railroad stocks are directly benefited by the watermelon. The broker In Wall street, the banker in London, the capitalist in Hamburg and Bremen, never think of attributing any portion of their wealth to the watermelon, but with the money derived partly from hauling it from the South to the North the interest on bonds is paid and dividends on stocks are declared. The watermelon, therefore, becomes, in one sense, an international issue,, for the London banker drinks champagne because the people of St. Louis and New York and Chicago eat watermelon.

THE END.

LOOSE IN THE PATCH.

BEFORE THE DAYS OF THE WIRE.

ON THE WAY TO MARKET.

WATCHING THEM GROW.