FORTY-FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT. 75 



attend these sessions and pick up the different facts and problems that 

 are offered. 



Now, I am going to suppose, first, that you want to know what is 

 the essential trait or feature that will make you able to market your 

 crop best. Marketing a crop is a specific form of merchandising. We 

 are nothing but manufacturers. We manufacture a perishable product 

 and it has to be sold the very day it strikes the market. At least this 

 statement is true in regard to berries, while the man who grows apples 

 has something to work on — he has more time. Then call to your own 

 mind some successful man in your own vicinity — someone more success- 

 ful than all the rest, and find out how he became successful. You will 

 find that it was by absolutely square dealing. If you ever found one 

 of the merchants in your own town who was not a square dealer, would 

 you go in his store the second time? No, some other merchant will get 

 your trade after that. Therefore, I would say that the only sure way 

 to insure a steady market supply for your fruit is to be absolutely 

 square in your dealing. If you cheat a man, can you expect him to 

 come back and bu}' goods with your name on them? Are you going 

 to ]uit your name on top of a fraud and then let some men discover it? 

 I do not think you are; still, there are some people who are just foolish 

 enough to try it. In my own town there were six or eight people arrest- 

 ed for violation of the law this last year. They did not pack their 

 goods straight. A little, perhaps, would be excusable. The average 

 buyer would not cause the arrest of any man if they were swindled just 

 a little. Then, we sometimes use the old excuse, that of laying it to 

 the boys and the boys are petty smooth in doing it sometimes — it is 

 done so well. You must be on tlie square, whether you are packing one 

 barrel or one thousand barrels of apjiles. Every buyer is willing to 

 look at the face of the article and if it is as good as it appears, you 

 Avill have no difficulty in establishing a steady market. If you are a 

 small packer and can combine with some of your neighbors and all pack 

 lumorably so that the goods are as good as they look, you can gain the 

 advantage of shipping your best qualities in carload lots and build up 

 a good reputation. At the present time, often the man who wants 

 1 0.0(10 barrels of ajiples, will buy crops and put his own pickers in the 

 orchard and do his own ]ucking and packing. The buyer does this 

 simply because he Avants to know that when he puts these apples up to 

 his trade he can stand behind them. He wants to build up a steady, 

 honest trade. This can be applied to the individual as well as to the 

 l)ig company who orders from ten to fifty thousand barrels. The men 

 who want straight goods are able and willing to pay a higher price 

 per barrel or bushel. They have a trade to satisfy because they expect 

 to come back to the same trade next year with goods that they can 

 stand back of. Only the growers who have earned good reputations and 

 deal squarely are the ones who get through profitably. 



Now, to give you some idea of what can be done, I will mention a 

 little organization that was formed in Texas. A few of us organized 

 a five thousand acre peach orchard into what we called a Guarantee 

 Packing Association. It was the most successful thing I ever saw put 

 through and it did not have a thing to do with the market. It had 

 nothing to do beyond the packing. Each man that went into it put 

 up $1.00 per acre with the treasurer in the form of a demand note. 



