WEST MICHIGAN FRUIT GROWERS' SOCIETY. 177 



describe one of them and his methods, and no doubt you can name him, as 

 he flourishes in every neighborhood. You can not detect him by his 

 general appearance or practices, as he sometimes stands among you in the 

 disguise of a good citizen, or even as a Christian, and I have heard of him in 

 the pulpit. This man we will characterize as a fraud and a rascal, and we 

 should treat him as such, for he is slowly but surely destroying the reputa- 

 tion of one of the finest fruit regions on the face of the earth. Let us see 

 what he is doing now. He is probably planning how he can get a smaller 

 barrel or a smaller quart box, or how to get the bottom of his pint boxes 

 a little nearer the top ; or how to make his ''topper" berries go a little further, 

 or how to fill his boxes nearly full of Crescents and top out with Sharpless; 

 or he may have his eye on a fiffe patch of wild blackberries from which, in 

 the spring, he will fill numerous orders for Wilson Jr., Erie, etc. He also 

 may have on hand an old strawberry patch from which he will supply a lot 

 of new beginners with any variety they want. He has probably secured a 

 stock of the largest quart boxes in which poor women and children will pick 

 his berries, and he will put them into the smaller "snides" for his customers. 

 He has a large number of stencils, and he ships today to one house, tomorrow 

 to another, and so on, skirmishing up one side of South Water street, and 

 down the other in a vain endeavor to get away from his reputation, each day 

 adding from one to several new names to those he has swindled ; and all the 

 information the injured buyer can get is that the fruit came from across the 

 lake, and this whole fruit belt must bear his consequent bad reputation. And 

 it is no wonder, for I presume fully one-third o± the fruit shipped from our 

 lake ports has passed through his hands, and he seems to be hai^dling all 

 kinds. His peaches are always very tempting, and strangers buy them — old 

 buyers know better. The buyer opens them, expecting a feast, and gets 

 along very well on the top layer ; but somewhow the worms have got in and 

 gtung all that were large enough to sting. In his apple barrels you will find 

 some nice fruit on each end, and, probably thinking that his patrons like 

 cider, he has put in a bushel of cider apples ; or, if apples are scarce, may 

 have put in a few turnips, and I have heard of his being so geuerous as to 

 put a pumpkin in each barrel, which saves the customer from buying any pie 

 timber for some time. If he is shipping berries and has a thoughtful streak 

 on, he may turn two or three boxes upside down, so his customer shall not 

 overeat. 



Seriously, friends, these things are of frequent occurrence, and fully one- 

 third of the fruit from this region is badly "stuffed," and it is no use to dis- 

 guise the fact. The question for us is, can not we check this fraud? If not, 

 we must accept a bad reputation in a body, and a consequent loss of patron- 

 age which will go in other directions. These facts have more to do with our 

 markets than most men would believe. If our reputation was first-class, as 

 good as the Barnesville, Ohio, folk have made theirs, there would be no fur- 

 ther trouble in marketing fruit ; but until we can get rid of this rank swindling 

 class, our only hope seems to be in individual reputation, which, iu a city like 

 Chicago, can always be built up profitably. 



THE RIGHT WAT TO PACK FKUIT. 



It seems superfluous to detail to this society what I consider proper methods 

 for packing and marketing fruit, but as there are often new beginners in our 



23 



