122 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The result is that we are developing such a wide diversity of state stand- 

 ards as to really threaten the efficiency of distribution through the diffi- 

 culty which distributors arc growingly experiencing in the marketing of 

 the farmers' product. 



For instance, about fourteen states now have apple grading laws 

 which differ among themselves. One of the important features of the 

 marketing work of the federal government, in whose inauguration it 

 was my privilege to participate, was the establishment of the Food 

 Products Inspection Service of the Bureau of Markets. The verj' simple 

 law establishing this service authorizes the Department of Agriculture to 

 inspect interstate shipments of perishable products at the great central 

 markets. How can we expect the inspector performing this service to 

 learn and to apply the many standards now in existence which conceiv- 

 ably might reach the number of forty-eight for each product grown 

 within the United States. 



At the meeting of the American Fruit and Vegetable Shippers' Asso- 

 ciation in Chicago on the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first of 

 Januarj^ as Chairman of the Legislative Committee, I presented a re- 

 port which was unanimously adopted calling for the extension of stand- 

 ardization and its simplification by the use of one set of Federal Stand- 

 ards. There was included in this resolution a request upon Congress 

 to authorize inspection at shipping point as well as at market in order 

 that the grower and local shipper might have the opportunity of develop- 

 ing to a greater extent his f.o.b. shipping point market and at the same 

 time lay a firmer basis for satisfactory trading with the distant receiver 

 and for the collection of claims from the carrier. 



I have brought with me a set of these resolutions, many of which are 

 of interest to yourselves as much as to the American Fruit and Vegetable 

 Shippers' Association, If the matters so touched upon commend them- 

 selves to you, as I hope they may, I recommend the passage of suitable 

 resolutions and their transmission to the Chairmen of the Committees 

 on Agriculture of the Senate and the House, Messrs. Gronna and Haugen, 

 the Chairman of the Sub-committee on Agriculture of the Appropria- 

 tions Committee of the House of Representatives, Mr. Sydney Ander- 

 son, and to your own senators and representatives. 



The State of Michigan, and its potato growers, during the winter of 

 1917-18 gave a very apt illustration of the opposition that sometimes 

 develops to standardization and grading. For purely advisorj' and 

 voluntary use, the Bureau of Markets issued in 1917 a circular describ- 

 ing the suggested United States potato grades. The experts on perish- 

 ables of the Food Administiation woi-e so impressed with these grades 

 that without consultation with us, under the broad authority conferred 

 by the Food Control Act, they made their use compulsory. I well re- 

 member the day when one or both of the Senators from Michigan and 

 practicallj^ every member of the House came to the Department to 

 protest against the grades to the text "they will ruin us." In less than 

 eighteen months after this experience, when all of the regulations re- 

 quiring the use of the grades had been removed, the president of a con- 

 cern manufacturing one of the best potato graders told me that his sales 

 in Michigan alone exceeded those of the whole United States for a few 

 years before. It is an old story of our fears making cowards of us with 

 respect to any innovation, no matter who handles it, or how carefully 

 it has been considered in advance by practical experts. 



