218 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Barnett tells us that a second middle-man steps in and does all the out- 

 side distribution, there is something wrong with the commission man. 

 His business is not so systematized that he can handle your fruit or 

 mine and do some business outside of Chicago. There ought to be some 

 one in his own office who could work up this outside trade. I am sur- 

 prised that Mr. Barnett frankly confesses to this, that he turns this busi- 

 ness over to another man and takes fifty per cent, out of you. There is 

 something wrong in this line, but I am glad he is frank enough to con- 

 fess it. He is an honest man, but he is not up to the measure of your 

 business or his business. There is another line of thought which came 

 to me, and I like it. Your Michigan friends, in touching upon the dis- 

 tribution of Michigan fruit outside the line of distribution heretofore, 

 spoke so lustily for the Michigan fruit as being better than anything that 

 was grown anywhere else, and one of them got it into twenty-one states; 

 they were proud of it. I was brought up on the Connecticut river and 

 was led to believe that the Connecticut shad was the best thing of the 

 kind that ever grew. I heard it from people who lived along the river, 

 and I believed it until I got out into the world a little and got down 

 to the Potomac and heard those old people in Maryland and Virginia 

 brag about the Potomac river shad — nothing like it in the world I — and 

 the same with the Savannah, and you go up to Maine and it is the 

 same thing with the Penobscot — and they believe it, too — that it was 

 all the very best shad that swam anywhere. I like that thing — loyalty 

 to your own fish which swims in your own river; loyalty to fruit, loyalty 

 to your own; that is right, I believe in that; I like the idea, even if it is 

 a little mistaken, and we are all mistaken a little. It is just that belief 

 — belief in Michigan soil, belief in 3Iichigan men and women, belief in 

 Michigan fruit, all the way through. But put that belief into words, 

 and put it into packages, and put it into the middle of the packages as 

 well as on the top. Kow, these men are dealers, and they are talking 

 because there is commission in it, and I want to talk to the growers. 

 Let them simply believe in the fruit and then get it into the package, 

 right plumb through from top to bottom, and then do as our friend 

 Thayer says — get a label on it, stencil it that it is there all right from 

 top to bottom, and then make the Wisconsin fellow pay for it — make him 

 pay like thunder for it, too! And the only way that the fruitgrower 

 can be successful is just by such cheeky chaps as this one coming over 

 here from Wisconsin and telling you how poorly 30U do business. The 

 man who says he handles 20,000 baskets and does not make a dollar does 

 not deserve to. Learn from these object lessons, and then follow the 

 man that is making some money and find why he is making it. He 

 is making it because he is going into the market either personally or 

 by proxy or both, and studying that line of it, and finding out what 

 people are doing. Now, the first thing to do in order to make any 

 money out of the fruit business is to find where the market is, find what 

 the consumers want, and adopt a scheme that will open their ])ocket- 

 books and keep them open, but with honesty and good quality. That is 

 what you want. You once get them open and you will keep them open. 

 They like good fruit, they like it well j);icked, they like it nicely packed, 

 and there is a great deal to tell about marketing fruit. Let us not blame 

 the commission men; let us not blame the railroad man, nor blame the re- 



