Edith Daley Herbert Packing article

Herbert Plant Has Tremendous Fruit Output

By Edith Daley

[July 19, 1919 San Jose Evening News]

George M. Herbert of the Herbert Packing Company and B. H. Barthold, the superintendent, can point with pardonable pride to the fact that to them belongs the record of the largest cherry pack in the valley-25,000 cases of high grade fruit. Already more than half the pack has been shipped. This company is a comparatively new one, starting last year as the Smith-Frank company at the time of the tomato pack. This does not mean inexperience. George M. Herbert has been in the dried fruit industry for a quarter of a century, and Mr. Barthold is an expert in “green fruit” and canning.

Vast additions and improvements have been made recently. The entire fruit section of the plant seems to be an island of industry completely surrounded by a sea of offices and warehouses and cooling rooms in process of completion. The plan calls for approximately 115,000 square feet of floor space, and when everything is finished the 400 employes will be increased to at least 60. Herbert is also an orchardist, and the firm owns more than 30 acres of richly productive land.

With the best machinery obtainable and competent workers handling 2000 cases of fruit per day, the season’s output will be at least 250,000 cases. “Of course you can say,” remarked Herbert, with a smile, “that we have the best plant and the best workers and the best fruit. That must be the case, for letters and telegrams are coming to us from all over the United States, Canada, and Europe, asking for the Herbert Packing Company’s brand of fruit.”

Mr. Barthold, the superintendent, grows enthusiastic over the big boilers and the 300 feet of spur track, the 40,000 square feet of warehouse space, the surrounding blocks of property owned by the company, and the fact that his is a “six-line plant.” The outside property means that the cannery will never be crowded and that all further improvements contemplates can rapidly be brought to completion. You learn how the syrup is made downstairs and then pumped upstairs in order to come down again and be “dished up” into the cans by the rotating “syrup-eating” machine so nearly human it is uncanny! (If anything can be uncanny in a canning factory!) There is a big comfortable free bus that makes the trips to East San Jose every day for the benefit of 35 of the employes. There is a cafeteria and a kindergarten! At the cafeteria everything is served from breakfast to dinner-a substantial hot dinner at night. There’s everything from a sandwich to home-made pie a la mode-and at moderate cost. There are dignified tables; but the long white counter is so attractive to the women workers that a sign has been found necessary. It reads: “As far as possible we want the counter for the men.” Sitting at a counter to eat is simply one of man’s inborn rights and no amount of suffrage can change it! The cannery kiddies are a happy lot. Today, in charge of the child-loving woman, they were all taking a make believe ride in the big bus that was safely moored in the “yard”.

Then that superintendent proved that his is not only a packer but a poet! We went upstairs to view the sunny offices and he called my attention to the “view”. It was an attractive picture to look down over the immensee fruit room with its rows and rows of cutting and canning tables, splashed with bits of silver from the cans and the pans where the women in their blue aprons and white caps worked interestedly and happily. The blue and white and silver gleams of that picture with the contrasting soft colors of the apricots would make a poet of any superintendent with wide-awake eyes! This cannery welcomes visitors. They have a “special conductor” to show you through and tell you all about it. They spell welcome with capital letters, especially for eastern friends “en tour”. They are proud of California’s fruit industry and their part in it and will be glad to show it all to anyone interested.

Green fruit is only half the story. A short distance down the Monterey road is the big drying plant with well built sheds, cement floored, and bleaching houses of brick construction, fireproof and water-tight. Tom Taggert is in charge here, and you learn that with what looks to the visitor like “simple equipment” there will be an output of dried fruit aggregating 2500 tons! Prunes will run about 1500 tons; peaches 400 tons; pears 300 tons and apricots 400 tons.

Sun-ripened fruit, cut and spread on trays by clever workers; pyramids of trays each roll along the little railroad track to the bleaching houses, 50 trays apportioned to each “house”. That process takes about four hours and is principally for the purpose of preserving the attractive color of the ‘cots. Without the sulphur bleach they turn dark in color. During the hours in the “bleach” the apricot fills with an exuded syrup. Then all the trays come into the light again and for about four days lie in the golden sunshine, absorbing more sweetness rather than giving it up. After that, they go to the packing and shipping plant at Sixth and Empire Streets to carry California fruit messages from there to the whole wide world!

Labor has presented no problem to the Herbert Packing company. Things are well-handled in this regard, but when the peaches begin to roll cannery ward in carload lots there will be more women workers needed. There is work to do-work for everyone. Labor isn’t any fly in the fruit. The real “terrors” in the cannery are the price of sugar and “shook!” Both necessary-and both going steadily upward, hand in hand! Where sugar used to be $4.00 a bag it is now $9.00! “Nevertheless,” said Mr. Barthold, “there’s lots of sugar and there’s always help enough and there’s money in the world-and we are going to have a big year!”