Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 July 1896 — TALLYING PINEAPPLES. [ARTICLE]

TALLYING PINEAPPLES.

Quick Work Done in Handling the Fruit on the Wharves. The pineapple season lasts from about March 1 to nbout Aug. 1. New York gets pineapples from the Florida keys, from the West Indies, and from the Bahamas; some come in steamers, some in sailing vessels. Pineapples from Havana by steamer are brought In barrels and crates; pineapples brought in sailing vessels are brought mostly in bulk, not thrown In loosely, however, but snugly stowed, so that as many as poslble may be got Into a vessel. On the wharves here pineapples brought In bulk ure bundled with grout, celerity. Men in the hold of the vessel fill bushel baskets with them, and hand the baskets up on deck, where they are passed along and set up on the stringpiece of the wharf. The trucks In which they are to be carted away are backed down handy. A box of suitable height, and which is ns long ns the truck is wide, is placed at the end of the truck. A man standing near on the wharf lifts the baskets from the stringpiece and sets them up on this box. Two men stand at the box, each with a basket of pineapples in front of him, to count the pines and throw them into the truck, which has racks at the sides; lengths of board are placed across the end as the load rises. Two men stand in the truck to level the fruit as it comes into them.

The two counters are experts and they work with great rapidity and steadiness, keeping pineapples going all the time. Each man picks up two pineapples at a time, one with each band, and gives them a toss into the truck, both men counting as they go along, one after another, “one,” “two,” “three,” “four,” “five,” and so on up, each count meaning two pienapples. When they strike “one hundred,” the tallyman makes a straight chalk mark on the end of the truck; that stands for two hundred pineapples. While he Is making the chalk mark the other counter keeps right on and he may have got up to "two” or "three” again, for it takes a second or two to make the chalk mark, but by that time the tallyman is at it again chiming in with “four,” and away they go together again, counting up rapidly toward another hundred. If a man on the load finds a speckled pine, he drops it i over the side of the truck into a basket that stands there, and says: “One out.” The tallymnn tosses in one without counting, to keep the count good. As fast as the counters empty the baskets they push them off the box, and the man at the stringplece seta up a full one in its place and the counters keep the pineapples going without cessation. At the fifth hundred the tallyman makes a mark diagonally across the four he has already made, in the commonly used method of tallying freight; but these five marks here stand for a thousand pineapples. On a double truck there are usually carried «pm 4,500 to 5,500 pineapples; on a ngle truck, from 2,000 to 3,ooo.—New York Sun.