Document: Deep South; Fruit of thy labor

Document Deep South Pole or fields of cotton from forests and factories in the heart of Dixie. A revealing story of progress pioneering spirit documented with on the spot recordings and produced by the radio broadcasting services extension division the University of Alabama. For the next 30 minutes you will make a transcribed trip through the Deep South. You will see the significance of a new industrial solve a changing South. You will see how determined people are nature's plugging into prosperity a move that more than ever is making itself felt in our nation's economy. Fruit guide labor.

Her. Son philosopher once observed that fruits of the labor are the rarest pleasures of all. You know he had something there. And you can see it if you travel about the Deep South. Take a route any road. U.S. 3 0 0 1 number 1 11 say take a trip see for yourself what the citizens of Alabama of Kentucky and Tennessee have done and are doing to build a better South Land. Look hard in Paducah Kentucky developments that will double the city's industrial workers in New Orleans the nation's number two port in bauxite Arkansas the nation's number one producer of aluminum or in Macon Georgia a modern farm in Linden Alabama.

Cattle and they can South Carolina an H-bomb plant that will cost a billion dollars. These and many more evidences of a change in south. America. Why. Why is it that an invitation to go south is an invitation to opportunity. Good question. Well do you remember what Cher would Anderson said showdown Titian once said The soul should be a very lovely lamb. Nature has done her part. The blessings of Mother Nature. But the real secret of the South's success is climate. Things grow prosper and produce all this production. Whether tobacco or turpentine cotton or cattle people of Dixie are

proud. It's the fruit of their labor. And while it's not intended to be a pun you find that the harvest of this hard work is oftentimes just that fruit. And for join you you can drive through many acres of orchard apple trees that make the Old Dominion the third highest producer of apples in the nation. More than 10 million bushels. And in Georgia were auto licenses bear the title of the Peach State. You discover prize Peaches of several varieties darkest hours of the day delay. But from the state above the challenge and impressive challenge. It's rather interesting I think that South Carolina is the number one peach growing STATE OF THE UNION a little in very close competition with George you Joy. Did he have the joy joy that people talk about it on

three years and walking it to that role he just yeah it goes it varies from year to year but with the one year where I had the next you enjoyed using you know the NFL Most years we lead in the bread shipment for a species last year Georgia produced nearly 5 million bushels of peaches South Carolina top that mark by almost a million and a half bushels Together they account for six to the country's total production of fresh peaches. The Orient to the south one of its richest treasures the citrus tree in the tropical warmth of Florida it flourishes as a leading industry of our nation. And today an envy of the world. They said just move westward from Far East and in the eastern Mediterranean into Italy and Spain and then when they first Spaniards settle in Florida they brought this if just fruits and seeds along and planted

to grow old in the northern part of the state. You're in Lakeland Florida the heart of the citrus belt you seated in the office of Mr. Robert C. Evans general manager of the Florida Citrus commission. You listen as he tells you about the early beginnings of the citrus industry. Well as I recall it before the tiny amount of anything along an 18 night is I heard an estimate just elated yesterday that the crop I think of 1894 was estimated around a hundred and fifty boxes. True. We had a severe phrase in 95 it wiped out the entire industry. They came back strong and move the goals for the South. Yeah I won. The man with the ready wit is Dr. Wald to be Jones of the University of Alabama. You're with him on this trip. In fact you're with him and Mr. Evans now on the way to a group you pass a train a truck.

Look black men don't even bother to get them out of. Standing in and I must have been how many three years would you give this particular girl. About 63. It seems to be just Avenue in between a tree. There seem to be phallic close I suppose at avenue for the cops to move by truck and behind us and load up on crates how many trees would you say. Well at last count 20 million at that time. Oh yeah citrus fruit trash right.

And how many acres and acres. Now some of the older grow more trees. Let's find I had a pika growing up. Whack it. History has a sack over s showed I. Wonder if we might have a chat with you about picking up pick up about me. Wow let me come up on top with you while you're picking those up with a whole bunch of us. We're just talking to a man in another part of the growing his sad years too old I think I got really good it even got more about 50 boxes how many do you pickin today. How many 75 80 How do you move your hand foot

fashion. That is just a lot of how many how many of them you make in a day. By God I've got a lot of well on the saying let's move down a lot of just little bit now so you can get a and a lot of lines. How long have you been picking on me. How did you learn how to do to happenin. You know when you're dead young stand around on one foot in another point started in Dunedin and you'd write you're down in this country. Yeah I didn't get into the pagan business of love but after you grew up in a bad mix you may get two or three hundred boxes a day

and moving around real good. You know you know I'm going to get that many. Well I don't want to pay for the years are you paid by the box. Yeah. He added more and more you pay by credit and along we stand here and talk with you or let you go get today thank you. As you walk between these regimented rows of our industries. You remember the crosshatch pattern you saw in the crest of a small hill. And as the highway moved down among the group. You could see the cluster and you could tell this fruit came not without labor labor graft patient planting. Cultivation. And fighting Frost tree disease. You could tell to that early spring beauty.

Mr. Evans when all 28 million years are en Bloom It must be quite a sight. You can smell a fragrant blossom all up and down the highway. Yeah what time of the end of a bloom all that begin. Sometime in late January and January and February and early March is a crop that we harvest beginning in October. Well the people in June it seems to be a favorite mare in mind if a going to have on your show got planted after Marilyn Lally and the yellow sometimes African nature and ecology bloom. Then I think I started to wonder just didn't get dug out from what had to matter in June. You're on your way now to a packing house. The next stop for the freshly picked fruit

Dr Jones ask about pickers and how much they make per box and how much they get put boxes in established price. Yes a price. Point twenty five cents a box around 15 cents a box. But they are forcing thanks. Oh wait. That's right. Looks to me like it bought a stable most.

It. Doesn't look like most. Students are not having trouble getting pride in our. Own. Curriculum education school was constructed of citrus Well the fruit of their labor.

And if you should ask what does a citrus industry mean to Lakeland into Florida. There's your answer. And modern brick and glass among the foliage of its fortune. Yes you can see what part this amazing industry plays in building a better South. But now you notice the citrus groves are seemingly located in special places sometimes on certain sides of the hill more often near lakes or bodies of water. You wonder about this and so does Dr. Jones. Yeah it looks to me like it but we don't see any. That it slopes down here but what is it different when one of the place where you're going to get good circulation.

So yeah panic roll on the south side of the lake. Like a lot of protection from the a call from the northern leg going to pick up from the law and transmit to the street and makes and where it's like rather and settle in the low place. That's really no plan a packing house is a building uptown as an activity of many machines and of workers with nimble fingers. It's a place of conveyor belts and wooden platforms of shimmering water rolling brushes and a bouncing balls of citrus fruit. It is a place for

grading for sorting out the large from the small and the good from the bad. It's the place for packing for shipping and it's a place of noise. We're. Out of. The. Game. Now though. And we. Will. Leave it right. And. Now standing on the right. You know is that we're jumping around 800 bucks. Going to. The. Automatic.

Jumping in. To take. The first operation that make you. The. Candidate. So. The. Right to get an element of the ball. Then it can. Sound. Like. The. Country. Will get it. Right it will. Take. The. Down the. House take it down the old.

Topic. If we want to. They can back anything they want to. 20. 0 0. 0 0 dollars. An hour. I think it does think about 20 percent. Back on the bill. On. The. Loading platform we get. Peanuts. Twenty. One. Twenty. Was our. Boss. That was Bob with Bob Dole and you notice the cooperation and all. Then. The buzzer you heard hold of the activity the bouncing ball has

come to a standstill. The conveyor belts stop the machines pause to idle and the workers with the number of fingers stretch why the packing house only explains that it could be that one of their many bins has been filled or that any one of four hundred sixty Motors has encountered a malfunction. At any rate the delay is temporary and soon the activity resumes. Last year you learned this particular packing house packed a million and 3000 boxes of citrus to do this the firm employs 175 workers mostly women degraded and packs of fruit. About the same number of men work on the outside loading giant trailer trucks and box cars for shipment North to you and to the world. You were surprised to learn that Florida out produces all of the citrus growing areas. In fact Florida it's a pass California your nearest competitor in the 1945

46 season and is today producing about 70 percent of the nation's output of fresh citrus fruit. This phenomenal growth just didn't happen. It took the interest ingenuity of Floridians with foresight to make it so. Well in 1935 the conditions and the set disinterest in Florida were pretty bad and left a little wife that has really got a little with you that has the right here and some of the leaders in the industry felt that there was a need for it and have the tie thing in the morning program and also a research program that would be supported by every one of the good of the industry and. Like all other endeavors you can't get everyone to support such a project. So they went to the Florida legislature and had it set up as a legislative act.

But we are a state agency and set up by the legislature and under that program and excise taxes imposed on each box. So there's proof it is produced and this provides the income which now amounts to pretty close to 4 million dollars a year. If we use quad advertising in promoting Florida citrus fruits throughout the United States and Canada and foreign countries mostly in the United States revenues up ready by their state by their rules. Well it's a state although it's a state agency it is a home. I operate a somewhat similar to a private organization. The commission consist of 12 members all of whom must be glorious and some of them work you know and then leave them to the floor. You learn too that one of the most important functions of the Florida Citrus commission is

research. And because of this research program Florida developed the one thing that has been a boon to our own citrus industry. Ahrens concentrate you know yourself how popular it is and how widely it's used. A neat compact little cam that reaches you in its frozen state. Just enter the contents add water three times the amount and presto. Real honest to goodness orange juice fresh from the grove. How did it come about. Well you have the pleasure of meeting a member of the research team that accomplish the feat. His name is McDowell Dr. Algy McDowell Director of Research at the Florida Citrus commission. Dr. McDowell finds it easier to condense orange juice into a neat can of frozen concentrate the dew condensed the trials and triumphs of their discovery into story form. It was really quite a long story. And a research. Problem and it was. Hard to condense it so that it will be brief and at the same time informative.

During the past war World War 2. The British were buying large quantities of what we call a hot pack concentrate that was a. Concentrate which was sterilized and put in the cans and shipped to Great Britain under Lend-Lease. For feeding two infants and two expectant mothers and their. Health Program. Just bad bottoms as that may have seen you and Dad bought it so they dispense just want to concentrate on one bottle and cod liver oil in another bottle. To get like medicine. We were looking forward to the time that more frozen food lockers would be in existence in this country. And we invest in the product which could be frozen and placed in those lockers and immediately that we had such a product we would remove the necessity for keeping it for. Sterilized. Past

arise in other words we could have a natural product. Oh well we prepared some concentrates which were not pasteurized. I tasted all right except I had lost their characteristic zip and. Saying that you associate with fresh orange juice. We didn't quite know how to get around this until one day we came up with the idea. Over coffee writing and other words we concentrated the orange juice more than we normally would have and then. Cut back that over concentrated orange juice with freshly squeezed juice to which nothing had been done. This gave us the flavor that we were looking for. And when we froze this product. It was stable. And would remain frozen a story almost indefinitely.

How long did it take you and your associates dock to McDowell. I believe the United States Department of Agriculture worked with me on this. How long did it take you man of research to develop this discovery. Well we started in 1943 and we're still working on it. True but I made this development along Florida's 8 year old product a wrist one half of the current orange crop in the Flamingo state. The production of orange concentrate has doubled itself nearly two hundred times since 1946. What of the future then. Dr. Jones wonders if there seem to be any problems ahead. But another thing that I was reading by the time they're writing get your leg I know this well as you seem to be pleased with the end. Yeah.

You're going to give us a great deal of mole. What are you going to have any marketing problems with. That's an interesting question and I might begin an answer to begin answering it by saying this that since 1920 every din here in our production is double double and I think 31 I love and 20 and they think 40 with double 30 and they can fit to double for it. I hand the grandest little upward with all the new growth we are going to have a lot of proof. But even before they freed of 1895 we find in the old records still lying around that they find here in this industry were worried about a surplus and wondered if we hadn't reached the peak of production. Even when we had less than 200000 boxes and that kind of talk been going on for years and yet we have managed to market all of this fruit

through research methods and marketing methods improvements and we are in better shape today than we've been for many years. So it seems that all the worry about how are we going to get rid of the spirit of the American public if they answer that question. This has been program for document deep solves a series of actuality documentaries depicting the increasing importance of the South and the economic development of our nation. This week fruit of the labor the sensational story of Florida citrus. Your narrator was Walt Whitaker document Deep South is written and produced by Leroy Bannerman with Dr. Walter B Jones as a senior consultant.

Document deep solve is produced by the radio broadcasting services extension division. University of Alabama and is made possible by a grant from the fund for adult education an independent agency established by the Ford Foundation. And this is Keith bars reminding you that this has been a radio presentation of the University of Alabama. This network.