. INDIANA HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 631 



do not obtain tlie knowledge that is right at their very doors. Many of 

 you here are experienced horticulturists. With this market Before us 

 comes another question that is of great importance in this industry, es- 

 pecially to men who are engaged in it for the first time, and that is 

 the marketing of the fruit. You can grow the finest apples grown in 

 the State, and you can grow the finest berries, and you can destroy the 

 entire value of them by putting them on the market. There is more in 

 my judgment in knoAving how to market a crop than there is in growing 

 it. A man may be able to grow fine fruit but may destroy his profit when 

 he comes to marketing it. Take this as an illustration. A man wi'Ote to 

 me once and said: "I have some very fine Maiden Blush apples. What 

 can you do with thehi?" I wrote back and told him that I could sell 

 them for him at a profit. This man shipped the apples to me. I was in- 

 dignant when they arrived to find that he had shipped them in a sugar 

 barrel without even sweeping the sugar out. He had sacks over the 

 top, and the apples were loose and had rolled all around in the barrel. 

 They were really nice but they did not look very nice fixed up in this 

 style. There were five barrels of these and 1 put them up at what i 

 thought they ought to bring and I didn't get a bidder. I thought I would 

 try my hand so I ordered them sent to the shop to be rebarreled. I took 

 other barrels and repacked them. Out of the lot I got seven three-bushel 

 barrels and I threw away all of the ones that were bruised. I now put 

 these on the market and they sold as fast as I could roll them out. 

 I got much more for them than I could have under the other conditions. 

 There was the profit destroyed for the man. As I have told you, these 

 were the finest Maiden Blush apples I had ever seen. 



I had another experience about like this with peaches. There was a 

 certain party raised quite a number of peaches and he wanted me to 

 handle them for him. I consented to do it. This man happened to be a 

 relative of my wife, so I thought I would show him what a bright man 

 his cousin had married. I told him how to put the peaches up and when 

 they came to me I was surprised. He had gone into the woods and cut 

 down a tree and hollowed it out and put boards across the ends and 

 put the peaches in there and nailed the covers over the sides. I was 

 very much surprised when I saw how these peaches had been shipped 

 and I could not handle them in this manner so I telegraphed the man 

 not to ship any more peaches. He wrote me back a letter that was not 

 very complimentary, and, if he was a relative of my wife's, we have 

 never corresponded since that time, and I think he set me down as the 

 biggest fraud he ever saw. I can't help that. If these peaches had been 

 shipped in the right kind of packages they would have brought the man 

 a profit. As it was they were entirely lost. This Is the method usually 

 adopted— that of selling through the commission man. There are dis- 

 honest commission men, I am sure. Well, I presume there are. I don't 

 know whether I ought to say that or not, but of this 1' am sure, and that 



