PROCEEDINGS OF THE WINTER MEETING. 81 



this, the railway company will be in a position where they will have to 

 accept our terms. 



Mr. Hutchins: I wish to say that while this gentleman has, in gen- 

 eral, just about outlined my ideas, at the same time he still clings to 

 the idea of letting commission men dispose of our fruit and take off 

 at least twenty-five per cent, of the value of it. I think if you can once 

 get the fruitgrowers organized and get the thing into proper working 

 order, the various markets can be reached direct, and we can save the 

 commission and the expense to Chicago and other points. In other 

 words, make your distributing center right here. Another thing: I 

 don't doubt at all that you can find plenty of commission men in Chicago 

 or any other city who would come here if you could hold out sufficient 

 inducements. It was done at Douglas — I think I violate no confidence in 

 speaking of this. We have an organization there, and we told the com- 

 mission men we considered a cent per basket for cartage excessive, and 

 we had no difficulty in finding houses that would do our carting for half 

 a cent. That leaked out, and the result was that a large proportion of 

 the commission houses in Chicago only charge half a cent for cartage. 

 We told them we considered their solicitors a nuisance; we wanted the 

 privilege of doing our own soliciting, and we would ship them a reason- 

 able quantity of our fruit, and they might give us the three per cent, 

 they gave their solicitors, and they readily consented to that. When we 

 proposed that, in an audience like this, people said that we perhaps did 

 not know whether we had made the three per cent, saving or not. We 

 don't know what they do with the fruit, so we are not just satisfied that 

 it is the saving we think it is. Notwithstanding that, you see what the 

 organization can do; and further, I think an organization, with the proper 

 machinery, reaching out to these various markets, can induce buyers 

 to come and take our fruit direct — as at Fennville, where there were 

 men from cities all through Ohio and northern Indiana, some from as 

 far as Utica, N. Y., last season, buying fruit and disposing of it in their 

 own markets. Now, I think that is the proper course to pursue; induce 

 the buyers to come here, and then, in order to meet them on equal foot- 

 ing, let us have this line of communication, as this gentleman suggests, 

 so we will know what the markets are, and be prepared to command a 

 market price. 



Mv. Morrill : Have you made any special effort, or how did you induce 

 the buyers to go to Fennville? 



Mr. Hutchins: I think the great inducement was the low price of 

 fruit. We were shipping eight or ten carloads per day, and they found 

 they could do better with our fruit than at Grand Rapids, although 

 there was one commission house in Chicago that sent a buyer there. 



Mr. Morrill: I understand that on an average you received about 

 Chicago prices after you got the buyers to going there. You say you 

 think the low prices induced them to go there; did competition maintain 

 the prices, or did they combine? 



Mr. Hutchins: Those fellows seemed to buy the peaches as cheap 



as they could, and I don't suppose there was any real combination among 



them, although I noticed they were very friendly, and they seemed to 



agree on paying about the same price for a given quantity of fruit on 



11 



