imioci<:kt)tngs of the summer meeting 19 



pai'tiouhii' skill in ilmi diicci ion. Inisiiicss ability, in llic future, as 

 yiv. Lawlon says, business is going to be done on a new scale. 1 appre- 

 hend, in niMi-keting in many of the litth* towns ou( of the large fruit 

 bell, which has acquired so much fame and does business by the carload 

 and shijdoad, the growers do not do as well as they can do. At Ionia 

 we had comjx'tition when I was tlier<\ and the dealers were working in 

 their own interests, and I went into a retail business myself. I retailed 

 by the (juart out' day tliirly-four bushels of strawberries an<l delivered 

 them mj'self. and took orders for a little over sixty bushels by the 

 crate, and got futuie orders for half as much more. The distribution 

 was i)erfect. and in that way families told me they never tliought of 

 sending to the nuuket for more than a quart or two of berries, and I 

 worked them up so they would get three or four or five quarts, and it 

 was not an uncommon thing for them to take a whole half busliel. They 

 just took them and lived on them. If you manage them right, and if 

 the growers Avill pay more attention to supplying tlie needs of their 

 customers, they will get along a good deal faster and will make more 

 money. 



Mr. Graham: A\'e liave at Grand Rapids a system of marketing our 

 fruit that has simply grown up among us; not that we started with 

 intention of building up such a system, but we gradually came to it, 

 from the fact that there were a number of the local dealers who bought 

 largely of the fruit during the season, and shipped until they came to 

 be very large buyers. I do not believe in the system advocated by this 

 paper. I do not believe that it is ])ractical. I do not believe it is a 

 possibility to get a lot of growers togetlier who will bunch their product, 

 put it into the hands of concerns and let them handle it. It may be 

 done for one year or for two, but I do not believe it will ever be an 

 established method, for the fact of the matter is it is not "business." 

 Growing fruit is one business, handling it and marketing it is another. 

 I believe entirely in the idea as expressed by Mr. Law ton, of organized 

 concerns for the purchase of this fruit as it is brought to market by 

 the grower, to be graded by the purchasers as they see fit and marketed. 

 Last year a number of us undertook at Grand Ra]iids to bunch our 

 product. While we had no special organization, there were perhaps 

 seven or eight of us who came together and agreed to ship our fruit 

 through one concern. We were shipping east, and through one concern 

 in the city, ])aying them a commission for handling. They loaded the 

 cars; received our fruit as we brought it in, but did not grade it; it 

 went to the market in the condition in which we delivered it. They 

 saw that the cars were iced. One of the firm was at the other end of 

 the road. We shipped in all seventy-five carloads of peaches and plums, 

 with fairly satisfactory results so far as i)rice was concerned. The 

 man handled it at the other end; that is. he placed the fruit, he didn't 

 sell it. Of course we had to pay a commission there, again, but he 

 placed it, looked after it, knew what it was bringing, knew all about 

 it. Xow, we were neighbors and friends in this matt(M% well known to 

 each other. We each knew what the other had, the kind of fruit he 

 had, and the manner in which he would ]»ut it u]>. Each man r(^ceived 

 the money for his own fruit; it was kept separate and distinct, but it 

 is an enormous job to do it even at that, even with a very few. It is 

 almost impossible; and. while I said it was fairly satisfactory last year, 

 the same people could not get together again this year, if we had the 



