STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 57 



sale or indirect market, in which the grower sells to a commission 

 man or to a travelling buyer, and in which under no circum- 

 stances does he come into direct contact with the consumer. 

 The other is the private retail, direct market, in which the grower 

 turns over his fruit more or less immediately into the hands of 

 the consumer. It is sometimes difficult to keep these two mar- 

 kets separate — sometimes a little hard for a man to see whether 

 he is carrying on his business in the one or in the other. Yet 

 the two are fundamentally and entirely distinct, and the differ- 

 ences between them, even when not easily observable, are of first 

 importance. In the wholesale market fruit is handled somewhat 

 roughly in large packages and in comparatively large quantities. 

 It is stored for long periods in warehouses ; it is opened on the 

 docks ; sold in the market places ; hawked about on the push- 

 carts by the Italians, and in general treated as a commodity of 

 common commerce. In the direct market the grower carries 

 his fruit fresh and clean from the tree or from his own storage 

 house into the hands of the buyer and holds himself personally 

 responsible for the quality and condition of the fruit until it is 

 delivered. The differences between these conditions cannot be 

 easily overestimated. 



Now it is not difficult to see that in the direct or personal 

 market Ben Davis is placed at a disadvantage. If a man has a 

 private customer whom he is anxious to please and to whom he 

 wants to sell apples again next year, he certainly will not be so 

 unwise as to give that customer Ben Davis this year. The man 

 who cares for quality is not going to buy Ben Davis but once. 

 On the other hand, in the wholesale market Ben Davis takes the 

 lead, as everybody already knows. It will stand any amount 

 of storage and misuse and still come up smiling and sound at 

 the end of the journey just as good as ever. These statements 

 are matters of common knowledge. 



The question then, of whether it is best to plant Ben Davis or 

 not is seen to be very largely a question as to whether a man 

 expects to sell his apples off the trees to some stray buyer or 

 perhaps ship them to some commission man, or whether he 

 expects to sell them in his own town or in Boston or in New 

 York to his own private customers. It is a question of market 

 and not of variety. 



