At Chicago's huge Palmer House one day last
fortnight, 50 businessmen attending the annual convention of their
trade association, opened the meeting by chanting in unison: WHERE'S
THIS YEAR'S PECK OF PICKLED PEPPERS PETER PIPER PICKED? There was not a
man present that could not reel off Peter Piper without a bobble, and
older hands did not boggle Theophilus the thistle-sifter. But full as
they were of percussive alliteration they were no mere funsters. They
were members of the 46-year-old National Pickle Packers Association
representing 85% of an industry which has done a business of as much as
$50,000,000 a year . Last week the harvest began in Wisconsin and Michigan. Hundreds of Peter
Pipers—itinerant pickers, farm laborers, owners of small cucumber
patches—worked their way on soil-stained knees between rows of tender
vines, carefully pulling off little fellows to be made this winter into
gherkins, midgets, tiny-tims and other one-bite numbers, bigger fellows
to be brined into dills and koshers. For 1939 pickle prospects are good. Probable gross: slightly better than
1938's $40,000,000. Pressing problems for this year are a shortage of
dills and
a dearth of one-bite pickles. Last year's summer rains played hob with this year's little
fellows. Cucumbers grew overnight from midgets to larger sizes before they could be
picked. This year's prospects are better. Largest pickle packer in the business is Heinz, with an estimated gross
between $5,000,000 and $10,000,000 a year. Heinz policy keeps it out of
the trade association but it works closely with N. P. P. A. whose
biggest members are Widlar Food Products , Libby,
Mc-Neill & Libby and Squire Dingee. Biggest pickle States today are
Wisconsin and Michigan but the oldest is New York where Dutch burghers
packed dills not many years after Henry Hudson debarked from the Half
Moon. Some pickle points: > The industry's best sales plug in recent years has been the claim that
pickles contain vitamins, particularly Vitamin C , fill a dietary need for people who do not eat enough fresh
vegetables and fruit.> Summer is biggest pickle sales period. Reason: picnics and basket lunches.> The pickle business is peculiarly sensitive to depressions and unemployment. Reason: its
steadiest consumer is the working man who likes a pickle in his lunch box. > According to pickle lore Thomas Jefferson was a pickle-eater, may have
composed the Declaration of Independence while sucking on a dill, and
Julius Caesar led spiced cucumbers to his legionaries. > Pickle planting has been reduced from 81,620 acres in 1938 to 47,652
this year and prospects of reducing a carry-over of some 5,756,663
bushels are the best in three years.
