248 NEBRASKA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



common stock. The other, the special or fancy, will pay a fancy price 

 for fancy stock. At the present time the box package supplies the 

 special or fancy market almost exclusively, while the barrel package 

 supplies both, but more especially the common or general market. These 

 two classes of market will always exist, or as long as some people are 

 more successful in accumulating money than others. It goes without 

 saying that the demand for cheap or common fruit, at a fair price, will 

 continue to be very much greater than the demand for fancy fruit at a 

 high price, because there are many more people who are in moderate 

 circumstances than there are people who are able to pay fancy prices 

 for fruit. The proportion of fruit growers who are able to grow fancy 

 fruit is as small as the proportion of consumers who are able to pay 

 fancy prices. Location, soil, and the varieties best adapted thereto 

 may make it more profitable to grow staple varieties for the common 

 market. This cheap fruit — the main supply of the great middle class of 

 people — will be marketed in barrels to best advantage for many years to 

 come. 



The successful marketing of apples in boxes depends so much upon 

 skillful grading and packing and upon the possession of a large 

 quantity of fruit so packed, that it seems likely that very little impetus 

 will be given to box packing in the east except through co-operative 

 shipping associations. Here and there an exceptional grower may 

 find it profitable to pack fancy grades of certain varieties in boxes, but 

 it does not seem probable that box packing will make much headway in 

 the east except through the co-operative shipping associations, with 

 their trained businees manager and their trained crews of trained 

 packers. 



These conclusions indicate that the eastern fruit grower should be a 

 conservative on the subject of the box apple package. The drift is to- 

 wards the smaller package, but at the present time, and for many 

 years to come, apple growers who are so situated that they must 

 produce apples for the general or common markets — which means a 

 majority of the growers — will find the barrel more profitable. "With 

 the advent of co-operative shipping associations the box package will 

 become more and more common in the east, and eventually even for the 

 common grades of fruit. — [National Horticulturist, November, 1909.] 



