PROCEEDINGS OP THE SUMMKll MIOETING 43 



berries. I tell yoii, much the gre.nter part of the fruit ])lace(l on the 

 market is poor in quality, is put up in poor shape, and it is put ou the 

 market in the worst of condition. There is no doubt about this. Here is a 

 little matter about commission men. We say they are stealing us blind 

 - — some of us do. I used to think so, sometimes, but lately I am a friend 

 of the commission man, and I will tell you how I changed my mind. 

 We shipped berries to Minneapolis. At first we got large prices; in a few 

 days the market w^ould be clear down and we would get nothing, then a 

 day or two it would get better. A great many men would say, ''The com- 

 mission men are getting the money and putting it into their pockets." 

 I took the trouble to follow a shipment to Minneapolis, and stayed on 

 the market without my own commission man knowing who I was or 

 where I was from, and I found out this: that when berries arrived in 

 good condition, good berries in clean packages, they brought a good 

 price, and good returns were made to the growers. This was told by the 

 shippers among their neighbors. Prices were so and so — they were 

 clear up, in Minneapolis, and the grow'ers went to work and shipped 

 all the poor fruit they had with the good; if they had anything w^hat- 

 ever they would say "That will bring a good price at Minneapolis, 

 anyway". About the second or third day after that good report the com- 

 mission men would be overloaded with all sorts of fruit in all sorts of 

 packages and all sorts of conditions. The commission men would sell 

 it for what they could get, perhaps not one half of w^hat the reports 

 showed before. They would make reports; instead of |1.60, they w^ould 

 make them 75 of SO cents, just half the price. The returns would go 

 back and the growers would say, "The commission man has taken fifty 

 or sixty cents out of me some way; I won't ship there any more", and 

 he would try perhaps Chicago or Milwaukee or some other point, and 

 they all perhaps would do the same thing. In the meantime, berries 

 became scarce again at Minneaj)olis and in the course of a week nice 

 berries come in. The prices are up, good prices are returned, so they try 

 Minneapolis, but try some other commission man, and the result is just 

 the same. This repeats itself over and over. I have seen berries as 

 fine as you ever saw go in there; they were packed nicely, but on 

 account of the weather or something of that kind, or getting in there 

 late they sold low. Now here is a point. The berries that reach these 

 points at six o'clock in the morning, or before seven, are worth from 

 25 to 40 cents per case more than the berries that reach there at eight 

 or nine o'clock. I have seen that time and time again. I tell you, you 

 must have good fruit, you must have it in good packages, you must have 

 it on the market promptly on time, and then you are all right — you 

 will get something for it, I believe. 



A Member: And send it to an honest commission man. 



Mr. Thayer: Of course, that is essential. 



Mr. Rork: How do you prepare your ground for planting? 



Mr. Thayer: Well, I prepare it by putting on all the fertilizer I can 

 afford to, all I can gather in there. I use nothing but barnyard manure 

 and ashes. I use that very freely; and if I can, I precede the crop 

 with potatoes or some such crop. 



Mr. Kellogg: Do you put ashes on after you set the plants, or 

 before? 



Mr. Thayer: I put it on afterw^ard, generally. In our town we have 

 no large manufactories from which 1 can get ashes, so I made a lot of 



