Vintage 1940s Hustler Bartlett Pears Crate Label 🍐 Courtland, CA, Classic Newsboy Americana!

Who Packed Hustler Bartlett Pears? 🗞️ Hustler Brand California Bartletts, Sacramento River Assn., Courtland, California

Size: 11" x 7 3/4" ~ Little to no wear.

"EXTRA! CALIFORNIA BARTLETTS!" A grinning newsboy in a flat cap holds up the day's big headline, and it's all about pears. Classic newsboy Americana! This is a vintage 1940s Hustler Brand crate label for California Bartlett pears, packed and shipped by the Sacramento River Assn. of Courtland, California, printed by the Schmidt Litho. Co. of San Francisco, and never pasted on a box.

🔍 What's on it

HUSTLER in big red letters with Brand in script, over the newsboy on a black ground, holding up a paper that reads EXTRA, CALIFORNIA, BARTLETTS, with another folded copy of the same paper tucked under his arm. Along the bottom, PACKED & SHIPPED BY SACRAMENTO RIVER ASSN., COURTLAND, CALIFORNIA and NET WEIGHT 46 LBS., all inside a blue border, with the printer in tiny type at the lower right, SCHMIDT LITHO. CO. S. F. The back is plain.

📰 Extra, extra!

The newsboy is a perfect salesman for a label called Hustler. Newsboys bought their papers from the publishers and sold them on the street on their own account, independent contractors really. In New York in 1899 they were paying 50 cents for a hundred papers and selling them for a penny apiece, and when the price went up they went on strike. The story goes that a good newsboy made around 30 cents a day hollering the headlines on the corner. Over the years the corner newsboy slowly gave way to newsstands, vending machines and kids being required to stay in school, but on this label he's still out there hawking the big news: the California Bartletts are in!

🍐 Courtland, the Bartlett Pear Capitol

Courtland sits on the Sacramento River in the Delta, about 17 miles south of Sacramento. It was named for Courtland Sims, the son of James V. Sims, a landowner who opened a steamer landing there in 1870, and the local historical society calls it the "Bartlett Pear Capitol of the World." Long before roads wound through the Delta, the river was the highway: pears were packed in wooden boxes like the one this label was made for, hauled to the docks, and floated down the Sacramento River to San Francisco. The town still throws a Pear Fair every summer, a tradition since 1972. The Bartlett itself goes back to Enoch Bartlett of Massachusetts, who spread the variety under his own name starting in 1812.

The same Hustler label, with this exact printing, is in the Boston Public Library's collection, and the Center for Sacramento History holds a copy too.

🖨️ Schmidt Lithograph, San Francisco

Schmidt was one of the big West Coast label printers. It started in San Francisco in the 1870s, came back after the 1906 earthquake as the Schmidt Lithograph Company, and ran under that name until 1966.

🏡 Display

Imagine hanging this vintage advertising on your wall as home decor in any room! That newsboy looks great framed in an office, a den or a kitchen, and it's a perfect gift for a newspaper man or woman, a journalist, a pear lover, or anybody from Courtland, Sacramento and the Delta.

Crate labels are a reminder of a bygone era, and the lithography on them is unparalleled even to this day, in my opinion. Museums and art institutes have galleries dedicated to them, and more and more collectors are seeking them out to preserve their history. Once the limited supply for sale is gone and on display with collectors or in galleries, they will be very difficult to acquire.