Apples Going To Waste

Why Connecticut's Crop is Too Great to Market.

The Connecticut apple crop is so large this fall that the farmers are at a loss to know what to do with their fruit, and thousands of bushels of the finest kind are rotting on the ground, says a dispatch from Greenwich to the New York Tribune. Twenty-five cents a bushel is about the best price that can be obtained for sorted, band picked apples. If barrels could be procured, the farmers say they might ship large quantities to England and even to the Philippines, but they cannot procure them. Everything in the shape of a barrel commands a high price, the most dilapidated old things that will hardly hold together selling for 35 cents each.

Another trouble in harvesting the fruit Is the inabillty to secure help to pick it. No farm hands can be hired, the men preferring to work in the shops and factories of the cities. Every cider mill, however, in the state is running to its utmost capacity. This is about the only use that can be made of the surplus, and there are not enough mills In the state to consume it all before the season is over. Most of the cider will be made into vinegar and sent south, where a large price is paid for it by the proprietors of the pickling factories.