478 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



MARKETING FRUIT. 



South Havei^, Feb. 9, 1874. 

 Mr. H. E. Bidwell made a few remarks, as follows on marketing fruit: 

 While waiting at the depot at Dover, in Delaware, last fall, and looking at 

 the stacks of empty peach baskets at the side of the railroad track, I observed 

 to a fruit grower there that those baskets looked as though they had seen 

 service. He remarked that they had probably been to New York one hundred 

 times within the past five years. I should have been ashamed to have told him 

 that in Michigan we covered our peaches with a veil and gave away the basket 

 with the peaches, — some being glad to do so if nothing would be said about 

 the contents. 



Now, gentlemen of the South Haven Pomological Society,! claim it does not 

 pay our society to give away 50,000 baskets, as we did last season, with our 

 $3,000 and 11,500 worth of tarlatan. One of the principal peach growers in 

 Delaware told me they had no trouble in shipping peaches in open baskets by 

 regular freight. They had done it several seasons. They simply instructed 

 the commission men in New York or elsewhere not to receive a package if any 

 of the peaches were removed. I asked him how they got their baskets all back. 

 He replied that they were charged separately, and paid for or returned. They 

 kept a separate basket account. It is an undeniable fact that the people who 

 buy peaches in New York live at a greater distance from the seller than the 

 people of Chicago do. It is another fact that the basket is of no practical use 

 to the buyer after carrying the peaches home. Can the people of Chicago bet- 

 ter afford to buy baskets to throw away than the inhabitants of eastern cities, 

 or can we better afford to give away the hundreds of thousands of baskets in 

 the future ? All you want is the resolution not to do it. I know after the 

 flush prices of last season you will hesitate to do it, but now is the time. 

 Ketrenchment is the order of the day. Neither you nor the buyer can afford 

 it hereafter, — better spend the money on your orchards. Grow larger, hand- 

 somer, and better peaches, — let more sunlight into your soil, trees, and 

 peaches, — leave off your deceptive tarlatan ; you can do better; it does not pay 

 in the long run; you have to pay for the deceits practiced under it. Let tar- 

 latan blush for green and rotten Hale's Early, or hide with shame other imper- 

 fect specimens; it cannot improve the beauty of our trade-mark peaches. This 

 Pomological Society was organized for the purpose of improving our fruit and 

 increasing the facilities of marketing. By doubling the size of our baskets we 

 can decrease our freight by boat one-half and commission one-quarter. We 

 make a great mistake in shopping to too many different commission men. A 

 man no sooner finds a way of disposing of our fruit than we try some one else. 

 This society ought to know who are good men, and have confidence in them. 

 Let fair dealing prove your men, and stand by them. We cannot afford to 

 have so many runners here every season soliciting trade. You have to pay 

 their time and expenses. Better sell your peaches at home at a fair price than 

 take the risk of a fluctuating market. Label your fruit with kind and quality, 

 so that all peaches will not be sold for No. 1 Crawford's. Another mistake is 

 made in picking peaches too green ; one-half the Hale's Early that were shipped 

 from this place last season were not worth the picking. Your Delaware and 

 Concord grapes are often shipped half ripe. Your winter pears are not fit to 

 put on the market in the fall without labeling them as winter fruit. You try 



