PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING. 293 



with it; and that applies to selling peaches. Production is one thing, 

 selling what the people want and in the way they want it is another, and 

 you need to study methods. I have said (I don't know as I ever have in 

 the state of Michigan, but I told it in the state of Wisconsin a few years 

 ago — it is on the line of marketing and knowing what the people want 

 and how they want it) that I was in Chicago and in going down to South 

 Water-st. I saw the boats had come in from Michigan ports with produce. 

 It was early in the season, and asparagus was on the market at that 

 time. It was coming in those shabby boxes which you people use at 

 South Haven and Benton Harbor, in those old boxes that have been up 

 and down the line, real ''old subscribers," lain in the gutter until they 

 were covered over, and had been back here and served as chicken coops, 

 and been scraped off and new lids put in and then shipped back to the 

 market. Of course it was not any member of this society, but the other 

 fellow, your neighbor, that was sending them there. I found the price 

 was six cents that day. I pulled some out of the box, it was nice, fresh 

 green asparagus, tied with a piece of bark such as nurserymen use to tie 

 in their buds. In front of another store was a box, a little smaller, a 

 neat, new box, fresh as a daisy, three-quarter-inch stuff on the ends and 

 veneer sides and bottoms, stenciled on the end with the name of the 

 grower and the name of his farm and a little advertisement of his special- 

 ties. I pulled out the asparagus. It was just as clean and fresh as the 

 other, but it was neatly tied with little pink cotton tape that does not 

 cost five cents per mile. Somebody that appreciated doing good things 

 was back of it. It was neatly put up. I said, ''Let me take a bunch of 

 that." The dealer said, "What for?" I said, " I want to take it up next 

 to the 'old subscriber' brand and see how it looks beside that"; and 

 I took it up there and laid it on the table and pulled the two bunches 

 open; and presto! you could not tell the difference. It was grown under 

 the same sun, in the same soil, and the same rains had fallen on it; but 

 the package which was tastefully and nicely put up sold at ten cents 

 and the other sold at six — 40 per cent, advance, or more than that. Do 

 you suppose that man wants the government to take care of him? 



Now, you can say to me, "those Chicago people are not such big fools 

 as Mr. Hale thinks; they won't eat pink tape." But the grocer's jumped 

 at it. They knew that away back somewhere in the city there were 

 customers who appreciated a nice-looking package, who would stop and 

 buy at their stores more readily if it was so, if it was tastefully put up, 

 and therefore they paid forty per cent, more for it; they knew there was 

 somebody back there who would pay for it. They were studying the 

 market — cold, hard-hearted grocerymen who w^ere in the business from 

 the standpoint of making dollars and cents — and they had learned that 

 the public would pay for something tastefully put up, and they were 

 paying for it; and many of you have seen that same thing all along. Yet 

 the trouble is, we think that we have done our duty when we have stuck 

 the trees in the ground and cultivated a little and got the fruit, whatever 

 comes, and then say, "We have been unfortunate this year; the crop is 

 poor, it is a little off-color, and it is not quite what it ought to be, but it 

 is the best I could do." We do not exert ourselves enough. 



In starting a young orchard, there is a difference of opinion as to laige 

 trees or small trees, as to the condition of the roots, etc. In my opinion 



