{"product_id":"antique-kings-cadets-crate-label-clarksburg-ca-1930s-soldiers","title":"Antique 1930s King's Cadets Asparagus Crate Label 🎖️ — Clarksburg California, Marching Cadet Soldiers","description":"\u003ch2\u003eWho Grew King's Cadets Asparagus? 🎖️ A Family Named King Raised a Regiment to Sell Its Asparagus\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSize:\u003c\/strong\u003e 9 3\/4\" x 9 1\/2\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"max-width:315px;margin:0 auto 20px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:177.78%;height:0;overflow:hidden;\"\u003e\u003ciframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/y07etcjWv78\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer;autoplay;clipboard-write;encrypted-media;gyroscope;picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp\u003eMost asparagus growers put a bunch of spears on their label. The Kings of Clarksburg, California put a crown on theirs, then marched a column of cadets past it. The brand name KING'S CADETS runs over CALIFORNIA GREEN ASPARAGUS, and the ribbon under the coat of arms names the family firm that grew and packed the crop, F.S. and F.E. King. They turned their surname into a royal house, with a jeweled crown, a heraldic shield and a parade ground of young soldiers in green and white, all to sell a crate of Delta asparagus. It is a pun you can frame, and the King's Cadets label is kept today by the Center for Sacramento History and by the UC Davis Library's Lug and Can Label Collection.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e🖼️ What the Label Shows\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA column of cadets marches in perfect step, and the cartridge box on one cadet's belt is lettered KI.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe brand's coat of arms is a jeweled crown over a shield, and on the shield, where a lion or an eagle would stand, sits a bundle of asparagus. Its ribbons carry the packers' names and their town. The sheet also prints BRAND and CALIFORNIA GREEN ASPARAGUS.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e👑 Why a Crown, and Why Cadets\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBoth halves of the joke are printed on the sheet: KING'S in the brand, KING in the packers' banner. From there the picture writes itself. A king needs a crown and a coat of arms. A king's cadets are the young soldiers of a royal academy. And a regiment on parade is the image of straight, even, upright ranks, which is just what a grower wanted a buyer to think about the spears packed inside. In a produce market a buyer's eye ran along a wall of stacked crate ends in seconds; a marching column in gold, green and red was built to stop it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e🌾 The Kings of Clarksburg\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe two Kings grew their own asparagus and packed it themselves, and the label says so in those words. The UC Davis Library catalogs the King's Cadets label under its creator, \"F. S. \u0026amp; F. E. King,\" filed under asparagus and Clarksburg, Yolo County. The Center for Sacramento History keeps a King's Cadets label in its photo collection, described as an asparagus crate label with rows of marching cadets. The King name ran on other Clarksburg asparagus as well: a King's Diet brand label names F.E. King of Clarksburg alone.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e🏞️ Clarksburg, the Town on the Levee\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eClarksburg sits on the Sacramento River in Yolo County, south of the state capital at the northwestern edge of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. It takes its name from Robert C. Clark, who settled there in 1849 and is credited with the first peach orchard in Yolo County. Its post office opened in 1876 as \"Clarksburgh\" and dropped the final h in 1893, the spelling this label uses. Delta people called the townsfolk \"rimlanders,\" because Clarksburg was built on a natural levee between Sutter Slough and Elk Slough.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMuch of the farmland around it had to be made. In 1911 Isaac B. Parsons of the Bank of Hayward began buying land near Clarksburg for the men who formed the Netherlands Farms Company, and in 1916 the Holland Land Company was incorporated to carry the project on. When it began reclamation that year the ground was wet and soft, covered in tules seven to twelve feet high. The company built thirty-five miles of levees, 150 miles of canals and a main pumping plant that moved 175,000 gallons a minute, then tried crop after crop on the new ground: alfalfa, asparagus, barley, beans, celery, lettuce, potatoes, sugar beets and wheat. In the 1920s it divided 15,000 acres into smaller farms, sold to buyers screened for \"agricultural ability\" and \"civic responsibility\" in the hope of a model town.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA sugar refinery went up in 1933 and processed beets for sixty years. As vineyards spread it was restored in 2000 as The Old Sugar Mill, now a winery center in the Clarksburg wine district, recognized as an American Viticultural Area in 1984. The asparagus ground of this label is wine country today.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e🚂 Delta Asparagus and the Pyramid Crate\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Delta's first commercial asparagus crop was grown on Bouldin Island in 1892 by Chinese farmers, and that year Robert Hickmott built the Delta's first successful cannery there. In August 1900 the Hickmott Company sent the first trainload of canned asparagus east, at least twenty carloads to New York. By the mid-1920s canneries stood in Isleton, Walnut Grove, Rio Vista, Ryde, Antioch and Pittsburg, and Delta asparagus acreage grew three and a half times between 1918 and 1930. Asparagus was the Delta's signature crop for most of the twentieth century, and Isleton, downriver from Clarksburg, was once called the Asparagus Capital of the World. Refrigerated rail cars, the \"ice cars,\" then shifted the trade toward fresh spears shipped across the country. CALIFORNIA GREEN ASPARAGUS on a wooden crate end belongs to that fresh trade.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the packing sheds the spears were washed, trimmed, graded and boxed in the distinctive \"pyramid\" wooden crate. Asparagus is thicker at the butt than at the tip, so the crate was built wider at the bottom than the top to keep the spears from shifting, and asparagus labels were made to fit its end.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e👥 The People Who Cut It\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe asparagus harvest took a great deal of hand labor. It was done first by Chinese immigrant workers, then by Japanese, then by Filipinos. In 1930 the Delta had more than 350 asparagus camps and about 7,000 harvest workers, some 5,500 of them Filipino. Stockton asparagus workers founded the Filipino Agricultural Laborers Association in March 1938, and on April 22, 1939 it won wage increases and union recognition from asparagus growers after a strike that paralyzed the asparagus industry. That is the harvest a Delta asparagus label went to market on.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e🖨️ The Printer: A Sacramento House, Printing for Its Own River\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe lithographer's line reads CROCKER-UNION, S.F., followed by a small numeral. The name joins two California printing houses. Henry Smith Crocker, brother of the Central Pacific Railroad's Charles Crocker, founded his printing concern in Sacramento in 1856, and the story goes that his first office was little more than a tent with a small sign. He moved the business to San Francisco in 1871, and in 1885 built a five-story printing plant, then the largest on the West Coast. The Crocker company bought the Union Lithograph Company in 1922; Union kept its own name until 1936, and from then the work carried the joint imprint Crocker-Union. A printing house born in a Sacramento tent put its name on asparagus grown just down the river.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e📅 How Old Is It?\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe printer's name is the clock. The sheet carries no printed year and no ZIP code, but the Crocker-Union name went on the firm's work in 1936 and stayed about a decade, so this label was printed in 1936 or after, no earlier than the late 1930s. The small numeral after S.F. is not a year.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e📦 Why It Survived Unused\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEvery wooden crate end needed its own pasted label, so packers kept stacks of them ahead of the season. These never reached a crate. Their backs are plain paper, and their colors are still strong.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e🔍 Condition\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNew old stock: an original lithographed paper label, never applied, with a blank reverse.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e🏠 Living With It\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e🖼️ Frame it square for a kitchen or dining room; the yellow ground lights a wall.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e🌾 Hang it with other Sacramento Valley and Delta crate labels as a regional group.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e🏡 A gift with roots for anyone from Clarksburg, Yolo County or the Delta.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e🎖️ For collectors of military and parade imagery, a full column of cadets in dress uniform.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e🥗 For a cook or gardener who grows asparagus, the vegetable's own coat of arms.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e🏷️ What Is Printed on This Label\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eKing's Cadets\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBRAND\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCALIFORNIA GREEN\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eASPARAGUS\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGROWN AND PACKED BY\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eF. S. AND F. E.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eKING\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCLARKSBURG\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCALIF.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCROCKER-UNION, S. F.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🎖️ About these\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe supply is finite - nobody's packing the Kings' asparagus under this label again, and once these last unused ones are gone, they'll be very difficult to acquire.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"relatedBlock\"\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🔎 More From The Vintage \u0026amp; Antique Gifts Archive\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/antique-1930s-pick-crate-label-loomis-ca-chicken-rooster-farm-decor\"\u003eAntique 1930s Our Pick Crate Label 🐓 — Loomis Fruit Growers Association, Loomis California, Rooster Art\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/antique-1930s-san-marcos-sunkist-crate-label-goleta-ca-treasures-gifts\"\u003eAntique 1930s San Marcos Brand Sunkist Lemon Crate Label 🍋 Goleta Lemon Association, Santa Barbara County California\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/antique-orange-cove-fruit-crate-label-california-1920s-treasures-gifts\"\u003eAntique 1920s Orange Cove Fruits Crate Label 🍇 Grapes and Oranges, Orange Cove District Central California\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43619722002664,"sku":"VAG-7910912917736","price":8.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0597\/2718\/4037\/files\/il_fullxfull.4054592590_hz97.jpg?v=1785357557","url":"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/antique-kings-cadets-crate-label-clarksburg-ca-1930s-soldiers","provider":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","version":"1.0","type":"link"}