In the olive tree allegory, the earliest text has 67 occurrences of the singular fruit but none of the plural fruits. The plural is found 10 times elsewhere in the Book of Mormon text (for examples, see under 1 Nephi 8:1). And except for here in verse 74, all other instances in Jacob 5 of the singular fruit occur with only singular forms, as in the following examples:
The example of fruit in verse 74 is the only one in Jacob 5 that takes a plural form (namely, were). The editors for the 1920 LDS edition decided to eliminate the subject-verb disagreement in this verse by emending the subject fruit to the plural fruits. It seems quite reasonable that if there is an error in Jacob 5:74, it would more probably involve the loss of a plural s rather than was being accidentally replaced by were. There are a number of places in the history of the text where fruit has varied with fruits:
Even so, there are a number of cases similar to Jacob 5:74 where the original text had the plural were instead of the expected singular was. In each of these cases, the earliest text has an overtly singular subject, but the underlying meaning is plural and therefore the verb can be in the plural:
Although fruit is in the singular in Jacob 5:74, the larger passage refers to the fruit of different trees and branches that have been reunited; thus there is an underlying plural sense for the singular fruit, with the result that the verb can be in the plural. In other words, the subject-verb disagreement in “the fruit were equal” is acceptable and should therefore be restored to the text. The RLDS text has left the original usage unchanged, an indication that the disagreement in number is not especially egregious.
Summary: Restore the original singular fruit in Jacob 5:74 (“and the fruit were equal”); although the subject is singular in form, its implied meaning is plural and thus fruit is acceptable as the subject for the plural verb form were.