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W. H. FOWLER, PLANT
WONDER-WORKER
N O visitor to any World's Fair
but pauses open-eyed over the
great glass jars of California
fruits, flowers, and vegetables.
The size of each product surprises
us, but more amazing is the fact
that they are not packed in as in ordinary
"canning". Each fruit, each flower,
each vegetable is seemingly swimming in
an absolutely transparent liquid. How
is it done? How done so perfectly that
not a petal is broken nor the faintest
tinge of color gone ?
Here is the maii| who could tell us—
if he would! IV. H. Fowler, processor.
There are only some fifteen processors
in the world, and this young man, who
has done and is doing the work for
Southern California, is making the rest
of the fifteen open their eyes with his
experiments and successful productions.
He has been at it for eight years, coming
from Santa Cruz to Los Angeles at the
urgent call of the directors of Exposition
Park, where is now the finest permanent
state exhibit ever assembled. In the
basement of Exhibit Hall Mr. Fowler
has been given every equipment and
facility for his work, and here he is continually
experimenting as well as preserving
each season's products as they are
brought in from the farms and orchards.
Of course the processes are sacred
secrets, invaluable, but these bits of information
he gave me:
"Not a drop of alcohol is used. The
jars are not even air-tight." He lifted
the glass top over one filled with fairylike
narcissus as he spoke. "Each color
in flowers must be treated with a different
chemical, the blue shades being the
hardest to preserve. And it is strange
that no two years' products in fruits and
vegetables can be kept by exactly the
same treatments, so I have no formulas.
Besides, I am working with some that
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no other processor ever has imagined or
attempted."
In an immense jar beside me was half
of a thirty-inch watermelon, cut lengthwise,
that was two years old, yet so red
and sugary-looking that I exclaimed, "O,
I want to eat that!"
"Well, you had better not," he said
with a smile. "But preserving that was
easy—all porous fruits and plants are.
That is, they are more quickly done.
Solid fruits and vegetables, particularly
apples, take a long time—from six
months to a year sometimes, and during
that time they must be treated frequently
and regularly. I keep an exact record of
each jar," waving his hand over the
crowded shelves and tables of the laboratory
where the jars were in all stages
of done-ness.
"One peculiar thing that I have never
been able to solve, is that flowers of one
kind and color—red roses, for instance—
do not respond to the same treatment. It
is as if each variety had taken in different
elements from sun and soil. Here
is a jar that has lost its record. I would
give almost anything to know just how
it was done!" wistfully turning toward
the light one filled with heavenly blue
larkspur as fresh as though blooming in
the open air.
Then we walked through the classified
exhibit room. What peaches! What
immense bunches of grapes ! What marvels
from the gardens! There were
chayotes, lemon cucumbers, cherry peppers,
Chinese cabbage, date blossoms,
seeds and fruit, Rosella plants, and ever
so many we have seen only in seed catalogues
as well as all our old gardenfriends.
Here is a bride's bouquet of orchids
and lilies submerged in moonlight and
trapped in glass! Don't you wish you
were the man that could do it ?