WEST MICHIGAN FRUIT GROWERS' SOCIETY. 185 



legged hog, as well as the two-legged one, is becoming altogether too ambitious. 

 The time was when the former was content to supply us with good clean lard. 

 Now he must put his nose iuto nearly every man's butter dish. 



The fruit growers of Michigan, as well as elsewhere, are always anxious for 

 full crops and good fruit. Not only are the growers thus anxious, but every 

 one also who is dependent upon them for supply. They all want good fruit, 

 and plenty of it, for then the market will be full and the price low. It is 

 said there can be no surplus of good fruit. There may be none left when 

 every one is supplied on his own terms, but whether this would recompense 

 the grower for his labor or not may be a question. 



This year I shipped grapes, in stands got up in good style. The package 

 was worth more than the fruit, yet the fruit was sold for less than the pack- 

 age cost and the latter thrown in. Fruit growing is becoming a fine art. 

 The bugs and other insects are after everything that is worth growing. To 

 be successful one must put on the armor of insect warfare and do battle con- 

 tinuously. If we could form a trust with these little marauders, and have 

 them in full years take, say, one-half, and leave us the remainder uninjured, 

 thus reducing the supply one-half, we might advance the price and make it 

 pay. But give them a moiety and they'll take the whole. Commercial fruit 

 growing is mainly in the hands of persons of small means, and is likely to 

 remain there. 



Not only is the groiuing of good fruit becoming a fine art, but the looking 

 after faying markets is a finer one. On the lake shore we ship our perish- 

 able fruits mainly to Chicago, consigned to commission houses, and trust to 

 luck; and luck is often against us. When the fruit crop of the country, in 

 a general way, is full, the supply is larger than the demand. It is only when 

 nature forms a partial trust with the more favored localities, and by frosts or 

 drouths or floods cuts off, so as to reduce the general supply, that the busi- 

 ness assumes a healthy financial condition. 



Transportation, where competition exists, is becoming lower year by year, 

 and the service more rapid and systematic. Hence, all the principal outlying 

 markets can be reached from almost any fruit growing center in the country. 

 Many of these outlying markets, however, are being rapidly supplied by 

 home-grown products, as it is about as easy to grow them at one point as 

 another, and thus save the transportation and package, and in many cases 

 the commission; all of which added together will in many cases amount to 

 more than one-half. 



So rapid and cheap is transportation, that except for the more perishable 

 products it makes but little difference whether a good market is near at hand 

 or far off. Last year we shipped fruits by car lots to St. Paul and Minne- 

 apolis, a distance of about 500 miles, as cheap as our rates across the lake by 

 boat, about fifty miles. As fruit growers we can never combine to limit the 

 production of fruit, neither can we organize to establish a uniform price for 

 any of our perishable products. The goods when upon the market must be 

 disposed of without delay. The demand for good fruit is generally equal to 

 the supply, at some price. Inferior goods must often be sold at an actual 

 loss to the shipper. Where a business runs in so many channels, and is 

 divided up among so many growers, it is a difficult matter to control it in 

 any way. If every fruit center could make arrangements with evaporating 

 and canning houses to consume a certain part of the crop, when the supply is 

 large, it would relieve the market from glut and thus save loss to the shipper. 



