308 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



while I was standing there, and an Englewood grocer was just taking: 

 a dozen of those crates. Now, recollect there were thirty pounds of 

 peaches in each crate. This Englewood grocer took 15 crates, I believe, 

 at 11.75 for thirty pounds of peaches. He wanted a lot of other stock. 

 This load had 700 baskets on, which were backed up to the curb, and he 

 looked it over and bought it for 7| cents per basket. Those peaches out 

 on the curb had all probably been through the grader. Tbey looked as 

 though they would stand it. This other lot was picked and handled just 

 exactly as Mr. Hale says, but there were ten pounds of peaches for 7f 

 cents, of a grade that a good many men grow. Another man, with a 

 better head, was getting |1.75 for thirty pounds; and you can find just 

 such examples on South Water street any morning if you see fit. 



Mr. Hale: I might say in connection with this, that fruit came from 

 Michigan to Hartford, Connecticut, this year in these same abominable 

 bushel baskets, and the dealer could not sell them by the bushel for 

 11.25, on account of the four or five grades or sizes that were in the 

 baskets, and on account of the basket. Some man here had the " gall " 

 to say that it was a nice thing in which to ship, for people bought them 

 because they wanted the baskets. If people want baskets they will go 

 to a basket-factory and buy them, and not beat around that way in our 

 orchard. This fruit would not sell at that, and was turned out and sorted 

 and the best of it put in half -bushel Jersey baskets, neat new ones, and a 

 half bushel of the best fruit sold for |1.50 while the whole of it together 

 would not bring |1.25. Now, then, the man in Michigan who paid the 

 freight on the bushel — well, he was not a fool, perhaps, because it might 

 have been the president of this society, for all I know. (Laughter.) 

 The President: Well, it was not. 



Mr. Hale: But he didn't know his business as well as he should. He 

 could have saved half on his freight, he could have saved on his baskets, 

 and what he saved on his freight and what he would have saved on his 

 baskets would probably have been eight or ten per cent, profit 

 on the capital he had invested in his peach business. That thing 

 is going on the world over. It is not Michigan alone, it is Georgia, Con-- 

 necticut, and everywhere else. But let us get over that and above it. 



Mr. Tracy: I live in Detroit and I am not very well impressed with 

 some of the facts that I see there. I want to ask Mr. Hale what he would 

 do for that great class of people who live in Detroit and other cities, 

 whose daily wages does not amount to a dollar per day, who have to 

 pay half of that for their rent, and then live in the city? What are we to 

 do with that great mass of clerks who come from the farm, who are work- 

 ing in our si ores at Detroit for five or six or seven dollars per week, who 

 must board somewhere'' Are we going to shut them out entirely from 

 any fruit? They can not possibly buy fruit of that quality for which 

 we can get $1.75 per bushel. How are we to supply the great class of 

 the " unwashed," the great class of peojde in our cities who are not able 

 to buy this first-class Ji-tiit? 



Mr. Hale: You certainly are not ever going to supply them by sending 

 inferior fruit to th(} market (green fruit, big fruit, little fruit, and all 

 kinds of fruit together) and letting the better class of people or the 

 moneyed class pick out the little fine fruit there is and pay a big price for 

 it and then turn the other over to these people and make them pay freight 



