14 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



"Again, we should not only have fruit of good quality, good size, and 

 first-class general appearance, but it should be packed honestly, in an 

 attractive package, and arrive in market in good condition. 



"Last, but not least, I would recommend a much more thorough distri- 

 bution of our products. I do not believe there is as yet any real over- 

 production of good fruit. But our system of distribution is so defective 

 that it leaves onehalf of the families in the states lying west of us, where 

 fruit is not grown to any great extent, without any fruit at all. When the 

 time arrives that our fruits find their way into every farm-house and 

 every laborer's cottage all over the great west, also to each miner's cabin 

 among the mountains, and to all the new homes building in the far 

 west, then, and not till then will we receive the highest price attainable. 



" We are still in our infancy in solving the problem of glutted markets 

 and providing an effectual remedy." 



Unable himself to attend, Mr. R. Morrill of Benton Harbor sent to the 

 secretary the following paper upon the same topic: 



" This subject has, within the past few years, become one of vital 

 importance to all fruitgrowers, and calls for our serious consideration, and 

 in order to work out any remedy we must study carefully our marketing 

 system (or lack of system), our manner of distributing our product, and 

 our methods of packing and handling. 



" In the first place I will venture the assertion that we have not yet 

 reached the point where we produce any surplus of fruit of any kind, at 

 any season of the year, except perhaps in the case of apples in occasional 

 years; and that if called upon to supply all the markets accessable to us, 

 with good fruit {i. e. fruit fit to eat), we could not do it at any price, and 

 the fault is all our own. We have been very diligent in planting and 

 growing large tracts of fruit in our fruit regions proper; but few of us 

 have spent very much time looking up an outlet for all this crop, which is 

 sure to come and is nearly always upon us before we are properly prepared 

 for it. Then we load it all up, good, bad, and indifferent, and hustle it off 

 by the most convenient route to the large markets, hoping against hope 

 that we may realize something from it, and all of us doing the same thing 

 at the same time. No wonder the market is glutted. 



" Now, either one of two things would save us. If every man would 

 feed his trash and inferior fruit to his hogs, or throw it away, we would 

 have less fruit to put on the market and more cash to put into our pockets, 

 because the supply would not be so heavy, the quality higher, and a higher 

 price could be maintained. It seems very difficult to get the fact into the 

 brains of some fruitgrowers, that inferior fruit is the one great snag 

 against which they invariably run in all our large city markets, Snd they 

 place the snag there themselves. Nobody asks or wants them to. The 

 commission man begs them not to send it; the buyer curses them, the 

 consumer becomes disgusted and uses a great deal less of it than he would 

 if he could get what he wanted at all times. 



" There are two kinds of inferior fruit. One is all poor, for which the 

 owner should be thankful if he gets enough to pay expenses. The other 

 is the kind which is very inferior at the bottom of the package and very 

 fair or choice on top. A great many men grow this kind entirely, and we 

 annually hear mourning from their camp. They say, ' The market is 

 glutted,' ' Fruitgrowing don't pay,' and ' The commission men are 



