t)4 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



The second point, which is very important, is that the ma- 

 jority do not have any place to store apples, because of the 

 fact that the cellars are too warm and the apples will not keep, 

 and in other places, where they live in flats, there is no place to 

 keep apples. You will see that the hotels, restaurants, boarding 

 houses, and retail stores, generally, buy in barrel lots, while 

 fruit-stands and individual consumers buy in box lots. There 

 is also a great variety of difference of consumption. For in- 

 stance, if I make plain the point, you will see the different kind, 

 different quantity and different grades of apples that one can 

 buy. Let us take a restaurant and consider the dift'erent grades 

 it will use. They want a very fine apple to bake, a second to cut 

 up to put into pies, and lastly they can get along with a poorer 

 apple which can be used for apple sauce ; so you see there are 

 three grades for the restaurant. 



I think the people in general do not realize the problem of 

 distribution of these apples which the various consumers de- 

 mand. You will notice that the cities will vary as to the kind 

 and quality of apples they want. Let us see what the apples 

 are used for. Apples have been used for four purposes : 

 Apple pie, apple sauce, apples for eating and apples for baking. 



The International Apple Shippers' Association has recently 

 published a receipt book of 197 different ways for using apples, 

 but the people, in general, have not been educated to the use of 

 apples in these 197 ways. 



A great many times you know people say, "There, if the 

 prices were only lower, the consumers would rush in and eat 

 them." If that is not so, look in your own home. 



I kept track of one of the largest retail stores in the city of 

 Boston, and made this little examination. This year eating 

 apples were selling at 40 cents a peck ; last year at the same 

 time they were selling at 25 cents a peck, and still tht sales 

 did not increase last year because they bought in half-peck lots 

 and this year in peck lots. I could tell you of another example 

 of one of the largest retail stores in the east. They went 

 down in Maine and bought apples at from 15 to 20 cents a peck. 

 They put in a lot of apples and soon had the market drugged, 

 because the people had not been educated to use apples in the 

 different wavs. 



