PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING. 217- 



except by tliorougb organization. It is difficult for vou perhaps, to 

 organize so thoroughly, because the smaller growers are suspicious of 

 the larger, but it must be done," in my own judgment, through an asso- 

 ciation. (Applause.) 



Mr. J. X. Stearns of Kalamazoo: I would like to hear just such 

 talk as that from every state outside of Michigan. I think if there is 

 anything we need to learn in this state it is to put our fruit upon 

 the market in just the way of which this gentleman speaks. -Now, I 

 will give you just a little bit of my experience. I have had men tell me, 

 who had 20,000 baskets of peaches this year at South Haven, that when 

 they had paid for their help and packages they hadn't a dollar left. 

 Such growers ought not to have a dollar left. (Applause.) Now, I have 

 had experience in shipping to the_ state of Wisconsin, to several dealers, 

 also to several dealers of Iowa and northern Illinois, this year, and 

 the point of which I wish to speak particularly is that one of those 

 dealers would write me: "Your fruit is nice, but we can't compete with 

 our neighbors who are getting their fruit from South Water-st., so 

 vou will have to discontinue." Now, we had three or four such letters 

 as that this season, and I want to sa.j to you that invariablj' those men 

 came back inside of three days and said, "continue our shipments." 

 Why? They got their supply from South Water-st., where we sold our 

 culls — I will not say culls, but our seconds. We have not sent a bushel 

 of first-class peaches to Chicago this 3"ear. Our refuse goes to South 

 Water-st.; all our first-class fruit goes to these dealers. Now, their 

 customers undoubtedly went to them, after discontinuance of our ship- 

 ments, and having bought this South Water-st. stuff, and they said to 

 them: ''I can not furnish you such fruit as I have been furnishing jou, 

 without a higher price; that fruit costs me a little more in South Haven 

 than this other does in Chicago, without the transportation across the 

 lake." The answer probably was, "Well, we are ready to pay it, only 

 give us that kind of fruit." 



Mr. J. H. Hale of Connecticut: This subject of fruit markets, which 

 has been spoken of by these gentlemen at that end of the line, has 

 always seemed to me an important matter. We have been talking in our 

 horticultural societies, and in the agricultural and horticultural press for 

 years, about the production of fine fruit, and there are a good many men 

 in America today who are experts in the production of fine fruit; but they 

 fall far short of getting the full measure of profit out of their labor be- 

 cause they have not studied the market end of the situation. Now, Mr, 

 Barnett's paper went into the details of fruit handling in Chicago. He 

 tells us that but five per cent, of the total consumers there would take fine, 

 ■fancy fruit. There is something wrong in Chicago. The fruitgrowers 

 who distribute the fruit in Chicago have not been educating the people 

 in Chicago along the right line, if there are but five per cent, of the 

 people in Chicago who are toned up to buying thoroughly fine fruit. 

 There is something wrong somewhere, and the grower is to blame. You 

 ought to go to Chicago, you who are farmers, and hunt it up, and find 

 why only five per cent, of the people of Chicago buy fivst-class fruit. 

 Another thing, we complain of the commission man taking too much 

 in commission charges. All right — if they do the work; but when Friend 

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