It is always advisable to wash the tomatoes before sorting them, as it makes the sorter’s work so much easier. After the tomatoes leave the sorting belt they can pass under a few strong sprays which will put on the finishing touches. Warm or hot water is sometimes used in washing tomatoes, but cold water does the work just as well. Neither will accomplish much more than wetting the surface unless the tomatoes are agitated. Some devices which I have seen are almost worse than nothing, as they merely consist of a long water bath through which the tomatoes are conveyed by means of a large worm or helicoid. The tomatoes are not only washed insufficiently, but are contaminated by rubbing against the surface of the worm, which soon becomes coated with a film of mold, and, being enclosed in a cylinder, this worm cannot be cleaned as it should be. It is essential that every part of the equipment with which the tomatoes come in contact be readily accessible to the brush and the steam hose. Mold accumulates very rapidly, clings very tenaciously to the surface on which it grows, and a damp surface in a dark place is ideal for its growth. Plain Sorting Belt The type of sorting belt used most commonly is the ordinary plain wire or metal belt 18 to 24 inches in width and about 10 to 12 feet in length. Canvas belts are also used quite frequently, but the packer can now obtain wire belts of such strong, sturdy construction that they give scarcely any trouble and are very satisfactory in every way. Eighteen to twenty inches has been found to be about the best width. Number of Sorters The number of sorters which should be employed on each belt depends upon whether they are going to do both the inspecting and trimming, or the inspecting alone, and also upon the rate at which the tomatoes are fed to the belt, the length of the belt, and the quality of the fruit. Some pulp makers prefer to feed the belt at a uniform rate regardless of the quality of the fruit and to vary the number of sorters, employing about 14 or 16 to a belt when the quality is poor, and about half that number when the tomatoes are almost entirely sound and need very little trimming done to them. Others prefer to use the same number of sorters and trimmers on the belt all the time and to vary the speed of the belt according to the quality of the fruit, using a variable speed transmission for this purpose. When running on solid fruit, with very little decay, the maximum speed can be employed, say 40 feet per minute, and when running on stock that is not so good the speed can be decreased to about 10 feet per minute.