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Show & Hello America! i his is Spain s tended toward just one end now, since America has adopted the green olive; that is, a lare, piquant fruit that will at once tease and satisfy American appetites. In the fall of the year the olives are ready for plucking. The ex- into this country. That is his tariff tar-iff on the industry. But the American Amer-ican people collect a much greater value. The fruit is not merely a sentimental souvenir from old Spain. It is an appetizer that adds to the nourishing and energizing value of meals. Nature Endows Land Spain has imprinted her name on the green olive through a natural nat-ural aptitude that was granted het America in slow, old Andalusia. You do. however, find romance and a product that rush and so-called . efficiency could never produce. 1 There is no olive trust in Spain. 1 Some of the growers cultivate olive : groves that are generations old and about which family traditions have grown up. Some of the trees even i have names of endearment that re-- re-- call episodes and epochs of family ' history. I J , STLES in Spain! I Columbus at the Span- lsh court! Lz jdx Conquistadors in Mexico! Mex-ico! Cortes, "on a peak In Darlen." ' Balboa, regardiny the Pacific with startled wonder. Dreams, romancn, Intrigue, adventure! ad-venture! Spain BeemB to comprehend compre-hend tbem all. And through a great deal of the loveliest periods of American history runs the fanciful fanci-ful thread of Spanish Influence. Spain is not now a warlike nation, na-tion, nor is she a particularly energetic en-ergetic one, according to the general gen-eral notion. But she Is still In the imagination of the world the home jf easy delight, of passionate pleasure, pleas-ure, of the sauce and joy of alluring allur-ing existence. We do not look to Spain for iron and steel, for dye-ptuffs dye-ptuffs or hemp. We look to her or novelists and poets, for drama and sophistication, for the appetizers appe-tizers of life, the piquant overtones that lighten the humdrum necessities necessi-ties of every day. We do not look to Spain for the dystems by which we run our factories, fac-tories, hut for the fancies with They came with ladders, broad pieces of cloth, soft collapsible baskets and patient burros equipped equip-ped with paniers for carrying away the grass green fruit. The olives are plucked with care so as not to bruise them, laid in the cloth and eventually loaded into the paniers to be carried into the curing houses In the city. If burros are not used, there are oxcarts with high wheels and cloth-lined interiors. The grower supervises the harvesting. The purchaser notches the quantities quanti-ties received on an olive stick that is later split and divided with the grower. An Ancient Ledger This olive branch ledger is one of the numerous relics of ancient time you will And in the groves. An upright slash in the stick stands for one kilo, a slanting notch for Ave. The Roman X is used for ten. When the time for settlement comes the split halves are fitted together. If either, has been tampered tam-pered with the fact is at once apparent. ap-parent. The method of accounting is old and primitive, but it is as safe as a cash register. None of the plucked olives is pleasant to eat. This is the strange appears and their final color and flavor are attained. After that they are packed in casks with brine and allowed to ferment for a long pe-riod pe-riod in the bright Spanish sun before be-fore they are shipped to America to be bottled and sold. There is but one other process in the gathering, curing and packing pack-ing of green olives. That is the careful inspection and sorting. There is no fruit more perfect for the reason that no imperfect fruit is permitted to slip through to the consumer. They are separated into twelve sizes in the curing houses. Any that are spotted or marked ar rejected. Inspected Again When finally the olives get to the United States, they are bottled In large packing houses by American girls with facile, flying fingers, the olives being carefully placed in each bottle. The girls also inspect them in order to reject any that have succeeded in getting past tha previous rigorous examinations. The Spanish green olive finally brings with.it In perfection the Spanish sun and mernvsMPa of Spanish Span-ish care that make fitting reminder "CASTLE" OF AN OLIVE GROWER & , ' 1 -! t-y &, Ji ' HARVESTING OLIVE CROP United States. The entire industry, indus-try, though conducted in Spain, is virtually American, for it has grown up in response to an American Ameri-can demand. For centuries the olives of Seville, as those of France and Italy now are, were devoted chiefly to the manufacture of olive oil. Then, about 1840, a small number num-ber of green olives found their way to the United States- and by a peculiar pe-culiar affinity seized the imagination, imagina-tion, the eye and taste of Americans. Ameri-cans. The importation commenced to climb from that year until now the enormous quantities mentioned above are shipped over in Spanish ships for eager American consumers. consum-ers. The olive industry of Seville has been transformed by the United Unit-ed States. There is now scarcely an American Ameri-can -home into which the Spanish green olive does not come soon or late to bring reminder of the mariners who discovered America, of Ponce de Leon, who sought the spring of youth in Florida and who furnished glamorous tales for the later delight of winter tourists who seem actually to have found it there. Half Million Revenue Uncle Sam collects about half a million dollars a year as the result re-sult of the shipment of green olives j ' : ' .. . Ua ) k :-:?-: .... r.. v isr ' . i ' , -; i mmmm TYPICAL SPANISH OLIVE TREE porters come out from Seville and look over the crop. They offer a price, which is haggled over with veteran facility by the grower. Finally the crop is bought, as it is, on the trees and arrangements are made for its harvesting. Harvesting Picturesque Then there flood into the groves a multitude o lamilies that seem to be taken from the cast of some gigantic grand opera, say a stupendous stu-pendous production of the Barber of Seville. Grandmothers and granddaughters march side by side wearing bright kerchiefs and mantillas man-tillas on their way to the groves and work. Stalwart youths, dreaming dream-ing of the bull rings or of evening appointments under the sharp-t ringed Spanish moon, stride ber.ide senoritas who are short and dumpy, tall and slender, medium height and lithesome, but all of whom have dark eyes, the spirited 'countenances 'coun-tenances and the lurking merriment merri-ment that have won them poetic fame. ( ' t A 1 A x by nature. There is no spot in the world, so far as- known today, where green olives of the requisite size and flavor can be grown except ex-cept in Andalusia, in the neighborhood neighbor-hood of Seville. The dryness, the hot climate, the equable temperatures tempera-tures which know no extremes of cold, no biting frost and no snow, cannot be found in this combination anywhere else in the world. The soil that long centuries of such climate cli-mate have reduced to the chemical composition that gives the green olive the basis for its intriguing flavor cannot be found anywhere else, nor can it be created by a substitute sub-stitute for the slow and esoteric processes of nature.. Slow, Old Andalusia The influences that after centuries cen-turies of geologic formation and climatic cli-matic change produced the conditions condi-tions that make the Spanish green olive possible are mirrored by the slow, changeless methods of their culture and harvesting by the Spanish growers. You do not finJ ihe rush and elEciency of modern which we beguile our evenings. We do not, it seems, look to Spain for reality at all We seek dreams of her. But we import her green olives. There, perhaps, is the actuality for which we count upon her now. j The Story of Seville Listen, if you will, to the story of Seville. There you have a tale whose chapters are largely written by America and the source of several sev-eral American chapters that were written by Spain. Within a radius of thirty or forty miles of Seville are thousands of ancient, gnarled olive trees, of sUintcd growth, upon which grow myriads of large Queen olives or smaller manzanillas. which are never allowed to come to maturity, but are plucked green. Some years five million gallons of them are plucked. Ninety per cent of the appetizing green olives are exported to the i J BURRO TRUCK, 1924 MODEL SOLDIERS AND SEVILLIANS New stems are grafted onto old trunks in order to produce big and numerous fruit3. None of the trees is allowed t o & r o w to a normal beigi.i. for the olives would b-:: ; smaiii-r They are watched and . anomaly of the picturesque and busy scene. Ail of ihem must be .ured in huge vats for several hours before the tanniu in their flesh (lis- j of the romance and ecstasy which Spain has projected through the history of America oince the conti-i. conti-i. out was dif-.jowred. |