Proceedings of Seventeenth Xormal Institute 151 



The experience of the Ithaca city market and of the market 

 recently established at Olean, where producer and consumer come 

 directly in contact, indicates that such markets promote a grading 

 and standardization of products by the educational process of ob- 

 ject lessons. A producer, seeing his neighbor's stand bring better 

 prices because the material is better graded and handled, is stimu- 

 lated to grade his own produce and to see that it .is handled in a 

 more sanitary way. The experience of -both of thesfe places has 

 been that standardization is greatly needed. 



The size of bunches of various vegetables should be made uni- 

 form, although from the standpoint of the consumer, competition 

 in quantity as well as competition in price has its advantages. 

 But to build up a permanent patronage in such a market the pro- 

 ducer must standardize his produce and make good anything 

 which is defective. The best way to do this is to see that nothing 

 is defective in the first place. 



ORGANIZATION AT THE PRODUCER'S END 



While I am not so familiar with the work which has been done 

 in organizing producers, I have made & study of certain enter- 

 prises ; and, in trying to find the best goods for our consumers' 

 organizaition, and also in aiming first of all to deal with coopera- 

 tive producers' enterprises where possible, I have had some ex- 

 perience in this line also. 



The easiest problem, with the producer, is where an entire com- 

 munity raises one staple crop. One of the best examples of pro- 

 ducer's cooperative marketing is based on just such a type of 

 agriculture near Bowling Green, Kentucky, where strawberry pro- 

 ducers, -thoroughly organized in a cooperative enterprise, have 

 raised one type of strawberry, receiving their plants from Three 

 Rivers, Michigan, all of the plants being bought at one time and in 

 multiples of 500,000 lots. The product is marketed "during the 

 berry season, not merely by carload lots, but by trains per day, 

 and practically all of the business is handled through one central 

 organization. 



A cooperative creamery at Hickory, North Carolina, furnishes 

 eggs and butter, aiming to get more or less directly in touch with 

 the consumer. Its work has been successful because, in the frank 



