, and packed
ready for shipment. The cans or boxes are seven inches long, four wide,
and two and one-half deep. A view of the sterilizing-room is presented
in Fig. 38.

[Illustration: FIG. 38--VIEW OF STERILIZING-ROOM]

The culls, which are put up as tips, are small-sized and crooked heads
which, although of equal value as a vegetable, are not shipped to
market, as they would detract from the value of the first quality, and
are considered by both farmers and canners as by-products. These are cut
to three and one-half inches in length, and then go through the same
process in canning as the first quality, except that dry steam only is
used in sterilization. After going through the blanching process the
tips are put in round cans, four inches in diameter and five inches
high. After soldering up these cans they are put in the retorts, which
are three feet square, each containing five hundred cans, and treated
with steam two hundred and fifty pounds to the inch. The cans remain in
these retorts half an hour. Then they are taken out, vented, put back
again, and remain under the same pressure another half hour, when the
work is completed.

By rigid economy even in the most minute detail, and by the skill
required in the knowledge of canning, asparagus can now be had at a
reasonable price at all seasons of the year, which is a boon to both
producer and consumer. At $14.00 per one hundred bunches for No. 1 and
$7.00 per hundred bunches for No. 2, or culls, asparagus is one of the
most profitable of agricultural crops, and even at one-half these prices
it is a much better paying crop than potatoes at 50 cents per bushel.

[Illustration: FIG. 39--INTERIOR VIEW OF A CALIFORNIA ASPARAGUS CANNERY]

_Pacific Coast methods._--Canning and preserving of asparagus in
California is carried on on as grand a scale as are most other
undertakings. An idea of the extent and importance of this comparatively
new industry may readily be conceived when it is considered that one
establishment alone, The Hickmott Asparagus Canning Co., on Bouldin
Island, in the San Joaquin River, has recently shipped an entire
train-load of canned asparagus from San Francisco to New York. This
train consisted of fifteen freight-cars containing 600 cases each,
making a total of 9,000 cases, averaging forty-eight pounds each, thus
making an actual weight of 432,000 pounds. By far the larger portion of
the yearly asparagus crop in California is canned or preserved