378 State Horticultural Society. 



SUGGESTS FIGHTING SHORT PACKAGES. 



Chicago, 111., October 25. 



In view of the trouble the city is making for Chicago commis- 

 sion merchants who, by reason of long practice, are compelled to 

 sell short weight and short measure packages because fruit shipped 

 to this market by growers comes in no other sized packages, should 

 not the commission merchants organize to protect themselves by 

 striking at the root of the evil ? Every commission merchant ad- 

 mits that it is wrong in principle to sell short-measure packages. 

 If they were getting anything out of it, it is possible that now and 

 then some commission merchants might wink at the practice on that 

 account. But the short-weight package is not one of the "tricks 

 of the trade." Neither the commission merchants nor the grocery 

 trade get anything out of it. They are both merely a catspaw for 

 the growers. The growers get it all. Why should the receiving 

 trade, then, submit to such practice which is so detrimental to every 

 one concerned except the grower and the manufacturer of pack- 

 ages? 



Said a member of one of the prominent houses who is a victim 

 to the city's raid, "What right have the shippers -to send in the kind 

 of packages they do, and why should we, as sensible business men, 

 submit to the imposition it puts upon us ? Even if we do not sell 

 them technically for half bushels, or other particular measurement, 

 on the face of them they purport to be such packages. Their outside 

 appearance indicates it, and they are put up expressly to deceive. 

 In the majority of cases the house-wife goes to the grocery store 

 and buys a so-called half -bushel basket of peaches for a half bushel. 

 She has a right to complain when she gets it home and finds she has 

 not got much more than a peck of peaches. 



"We also ought to be ashamed of our standing as business men 

 that we allow the kind of fruit in quality to come to the market that 

 we do. By far the largest share of peaches that come to market 

 are utterly unfit for food as nature intended. It is all nonsense 

 to say that we cannot help it. We are the very ones who have the 

 power to say what shall come to the market and what shall not, if 

 we only had sense enough to work together to protect our own in- 

 terest and give us the power that lies in our own hands. When I 

 think what a foolish lot we are, I often recall the old story of the 

 dying man who called his seven sons around his bed and promised 



