Historical Perspective

 

 


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by Carolyn Gilmore, Editor/Publisher, Cranberries Magazine


Kudos for your site, which serves a real informational need in our cranberry community as we struggle with an oversupply in a sluggish market. And, although the situation has its unique ramifications in the later part of the millennium, it has happened numerous times before in our industry.

Here's something from The Mattapoisett Courier, in the "Cranberry News" column (precursor of Cranberries Magazine), June 10, 1910, titled Many Bogs for Sale: "There appears to be plenty of bogs for sale this year. The prices asked are high and many of the bogs which are on the market are not in the best of condition. It is probable that there will be considerable of [sic] and selling and the tendency of the small grower to sell and the large grower to buy is marked."

Interestingly, the column had no cranberry real estate listings. Then, as now, apparently cranberry property changed hands without coming on the open market. Prices from the 1909 crop ranged from $4.50 to $7.00 a barrel. Early Blacks, "were not very well received as they were not in the best of condition" and were priced at the lower end of the scale. Still, even at the lower end of the pay scale, it would only take two acres at 40 barrels an acre of earlies to purchase a new $350 Model T.

In December 1909, the column reported "the United Cape Cod Cranberry Company declared its regular semi-annual dividend of three percent on preferred stock. This is the first dividend on the common stock and shows the healthy growth of this company, with its broad and far-seeing policy. This company is now reported to own over four hundred acres of vines, beside its rough swamp and valuable water privileges." This was the biggest cranberry grower in the world at the time.

The "largest grower of cranberries in the world" today, Northland, in its press release dated April 7, 1998 [sic] declared, "For the three month period ended February 28, 1999, the company reported net income of $67,000 or less than $0.01 per share."

We've had our ups and downs, but the cranberry industry will make it through the century's last harvest.

 

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