216 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



cally guaranteeing of safe delivery, chances of failure of his far-off 

 customer — and collecting his bill at the end of two weeks to three 

 months. Applying the test to the fruit broker or shipper, but few 

 get much more than a living out of the business. The express 

 and freight companies charge only a fair compensation for the serv'ce 

 performed. Although fruit may come high in central Minnesota or 

 northern Wisconsin, the dwellers in those far-away regions can not rea- 

 sonably expect to have fruit brought to them without labor and exp^^use, 

 although, judging from some correspondence published at times, one 

 would think so. ^ 



From the above, in which I have touched but briefly the course of 

 distribution, I give the agencies used in placing the fruit in position, 

 so that I can easily answer the question, ''What becomes of the fruit?" 

 It is eaten. 



DISCUSSION. 



Mr. M. A. Tha^^er of Sparta, Wis.: I am interested in the distribution 

 of fruit. I thought when I saw the subject, "What becomes of it," 1 

 could tell you something about it; and had I undertaken to have told 

 you I would have taken only one particular kind of fruit, and that is- 

 your second and third grades. Now, we in Wisconsin think we know 

 what becomes of your third-grade fruit, because most of the apples that 

 we get are nice on the top, they are nice on the bottom but they are 

 very "un-nice" in the center. We find, when we buy a barrel of apples, 

 we have those nice little barrels, so handy to ship up into Wisconsin; we 

 find when we buy grapes and peaches we get those little baskets for 

 a quarter of a bushel, we get five or six in a bushel. It is very generous 

 in any community to give us so many baskets in a bushel. I am not 

 speaking for the interests of the Michigan fruitgrowers. I am here in 

 the interests of Wisconsin consumers. We want good fruit. We would 

 rather pay you a dollar, we would rather pay you three dollars, for one 

 bushel of good peaches than to get three bushels of poor peaches for 

 one dollar. I speak of this because I wish to emphasize the necessity 

 of fruitgrowers, not only in Michigan but in every state in the Union, 

 giving us a uniform package, giving us a uniform quality throughout 

 the package. I wish there could be a law passed by which every package 

 of fruit that is offered on the market should have placed on that package 

 the name of the grower (applause). Fruitgrowers must learn that the 

 time for putting poor fruit into packages without the name stenciled 

 thereon has gone by. There are some things you must do: you must 

 give better cultivation, you must give better packing, you must give 

 better distribution, or go out of the business. It is out of place to speak 

 of it now, perhaps, but in the growing of fruit you are practically solving 

 the question of distribution. Good fruit will sell itself. Well-grown 

 fruit is half sold before you put it on the market, and I wish we could 

 arrive at some method by which we could grow better fruit and dis- 

 tribute it better. We of Sparta, where we grow small fruit exclusively, 

 have been deeply interested in the question of distribution. We have 

 formed an association and it has worked very nicely. I think there is 

 no .other way for a community to manage to their own best interests 



