In 1860 factories began to spring up in all the great fruit and vegetable raising sections of the country. The Middle West loomed up as a manufacturing centre. Thomas Duckwall erected the first canning factory in Claremont County near Cincinnati, and Albert Fisher fol lowed at Cincinnati. A few years later a can nery was started at Circleville, Ohio, and at Indianapolis, Ind. From that time up until 1880 factories sprang up all over the Middle States like mushrooms.
California then began to be heard of, and rapidly came to the front as a producer of canned fruits, now being in the lead in the pre serving and canning of small fruits, such as the plum, pear, peach and cherry, and such vegetables as asparagus, tomatoes and peas. The dried fruit industry, in which prunes and raisins lead, and which has reached its fullest development in California now exceeds in volume the production of canned fruit.
The canning of fruits and vegetables has grown more rapidly in the last 30 years than any other branch of the industry, due to the greater territory in which it may be carried on and to the unlimited cultivation of these articles. The canned vegetable branch of the industry yielded products of $29,000,000 in 1899, $53,000,000 in 1909, and $84,000,000 in 1914. The dried fruit production of 1909 was $22,000,000, and about $35,000,000 in 1914.
The tomato has proved the most popular of canned vegetables and the manufacture in 1909 was valued at $18,747,000, rising to $25, 532,000 in 1914. Corn and peas represented a value of about $15,000,000 each, and beans $16, 500,000. Of fruits, peaches now lead, apples having fallen into fifth place. Of dried fruits, raisins and prunes are far in the lead. In 1915 leading canneries contracted for the largest acreage recorded to that date-190,106 for sweet corn, 140,000 for tomatoes and 102,000 for peas, this last figure being a reduction from the 1914 acreage, contracted for, of 126,000.
Fish.— All the known processes are used in the preservation of fish, which of all foods is the most rapid to putrefy. Smoking and drying are the older methods, and they are still in use. The Hollanders put up fish in cans long before the Soddington and Appert methods were known. About 1845, sardine canning was successfully established on the coast of France. Prior to 1843 the canning of fish in the United States was little known, but in that year lobster and mackerel canneries were successfully established at Eastport, Me.,
and the business grew rapidly till 1860, when the supply of lobsters decreased and the preju dice against the canneries resulted in the enact ment of strict laws restricting the time of operation of canneries and the canning of short lobsters, so that in 1895 the last factory so engaged suspended, and in 1900 there were no lobsters canned. Mr. Underwood established the first lobster-packing factory in this country at Harpswell, Me., in 1848, and in 1853 started a factory for packing salmon at Bathhurst, N. B., at one time the only source of supply. Quantities of this fish were sent to California prior to salmon being taken from the Columbia River. He died in 1864, and was succeeded by the firm of William Underwood Company, of which his grandson, H. 0. Underwood, is president. Prior to 1864 salmon-canning was carried on to a small extent, but after that year the industry grew rapidly; factories were established on the Pacific Coast at Washing ton, Cal., on the Sacramento River, and in 1866 on the Columbia River. Perhaps the most striking illustration of the growth of this busi ness is in that almost universally used article, canned salmon. In 1864 the firm of Hap good, Hume & Company, consisting of William Hume, G. W. Hume and A. S. Hapgoocl, canned a few cases of salmon on the Sacra mento River, where William Hume had been a hunter and fisherman for several years. William Hume carried the samples around to introduce them, using a basket for that pur pose, from which the salmon were sold. In 1866 the business was transferred to Eagle Cliff, Wash., on the Columbia River, where William Hume had been prospecting the year before, and there (in 1866) the first Columbia River Royal Chinook salmon were packed, thus introducing to the trade what is unques tionably the finest food-fish known. That year they packed about 4,000 cases of 48 1-pound cans each, or 192,000 cans. Most of this was shipped to Australia, selling at about $4 in gold (which was at a heavy premium at that time), and a• small amount was shipped to New York, around Cape Horn, bringing $5 per dozen there at wholesale. In 1883 there were in Alaska 5 canneries, which in six years increased to 37 with an output of 714,196 cases.