FIFTY-FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 121 



With respect to marketing, the subject of standardization, at least 

 for our purposes this morning, can best be considered under four topics 

 as follows: 



1 — of production methods 



2 — of products 



3 — of containers 



4 — of trade practices and terms. 



1 OF PRODUCTION METHODS. 



The standardization of Production, Methods is important not only 

 to obtain efficiency as to quantity of production, but as to quality and 

 uniformity of production. 



To attain standard marketing qualities, the beginning must be made 

 on the farm and in the orchard and truck garden. Great progress has 

 been made with respect to the adoption of commercial varieties. There 

 are hundreds of varieties of peaches and thousands of varieties of apples, 

 but in any given section it is safe to sat that not more than a dozen 

 are of real commercial importance. During the last fifty years there has 

 been a constant reduction and a focusing upon those kinds that com- 

 bine, in the highest degree, the good qualities that the consumer desires 

 with the characteristics necessary to make possible successful transporta- 

 tion to market. 



Production processes must be standardized if a standardized product is 

 to be obtained. An interesting step in this direction with respect to onion 

 production came to my attention in 1919 when one of the American 

 Fruit Growers' Japanese tenants in the Coachella Valley, below sea level, 

 beside the Salton Sea in the torrid Colorado Desert invented a land 

 marking device, on the roller principle, whose use makes it easy to have 

 every individual onion plant in a field of any size, planted in a two-row 

 arrangement with exactly four inches between each onion in the two 

 rows. Here begins the most essential form of standardization of perish- 

 able products in an attempt at uniformity in size. 



Illustration of progress in a similar direction, but by different means 

 with respect to oranges, has been furnished by the work of Mr. A. D. 

 Sharnel of the U. S. Bureau of Plant Industry. There are many unpro- 

 ductive drones among the trees in many groves due to variability in the 

 character and abundance of production of the buds on any individual 

 tree. As a result of Mr. Shamel's work highly productive trees are 

 being used by the nurseries as a source of budwood and trees that make 

 small yields on account of having a large percentage of unproductive 

 branches are having such branches removed with the result that greater 

 uniformity and greater yields have been obtained. 



2 OF PRODUCTS. 



The standardization of products for marketing purposes rests four- 

 squarely on standardized production, and can never break the limita- 

 tions imposed thereby except to a certain extent. 



We are confronted by a great danger in the United States in the stand- 

 ardization of products. Standardization is a field within which each 

 of the forty -eight states may legislate with propriety with respect to 

 intrastate business. The federal government can function with respect 

 to interstate business, but thus far has done so only to a limited degree. 



