The pioneer packing company of Fresno, known as the Fresno Raisin & Fruit Packing Company, is doing at this time a large business. Every day five or six carloads of raisins are sent away, while a string of from twenty to thirty, two and four horse teams are waiting outside of the weighing shed to have their raisins weighed and received. These raisins come both from large and small vineyards from all over the country, but principally from the colonies, where they are the products of twenty-acre vineyards. Some of the best raisins in fact came from the smallest vineyards, where they had the best care, and where the owner has given the vineyard all his time. Mr. H. W. Shram, the superintendent of this large and old packing-house, has had years of experience in the packing business, and has followed the Fresno raisin business from its infancy. As soon as the raisin boxes are unloaded they are immediately weighed. It takes eight men to attend to this part of the business, one weighing and one clerk to keep accounts. The dried wine grapes, such as Zinfandel, Malagas, and even Sultanas, are immediately wheeled into the stemmer-house to be separated from the stems and cleaned. This stemmer is one of the largest in the State, and the only one of its kind as regards construction. It stems, cleans and assorts, in from three to four different grades, sixty tons of raisins a day. Nine men are working this machine, some feeding, others pushing wide but shallow boxes under the spouts, others again wheeling them away when full. The steam engine of ten horse-power and boiler are fired principally with separated stems, refuse raisins, and stones of peaches and apricots. The separated dried grapes are packed and shipped in eighty-pound sacks, and go in this way to the East, or even to Europe. Every day one or two carloads of these dried grapes are shipped. The Muscatel layers, however, go first to the sweating-room, before anything is done with them. This sweating-room is one hundred by fifty feet, and has the walls and floor filled around with one foot in thickness of sawdust, so as to prevent the outside air from entering. This sweating room is constantly filled with raisin boxes from floor to ceiling, and seldom contains less than forty tons of raisins at one time. It takes from ten to thirty days to equalize the moisture in the raisins as well as to properly soften the stems so that the grapes will not fall off. This is of the utmost importance. If it is not done the stems will break and the berries fall off, and instead of a first-class layer raisin we would only get a first-class loose.