MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. 401 



years ago intended to make their market money go as far as it could. 

 They were careful, conscientious mothers of families, of limited in- 

 come. We have now a lar;L>e class of consumers in the great cities to 

 whom the price of commodities is no consideration at all. They go to 

 market with only one idea — to buy the best thing, no matter what the 

 price. In the city of New York 300 or 400 men go to market every 

 morning, representing hotels, clubs, lines of steamers, restaurants, 

 families, who are all in quest of whatever is best of its kind. They 

 must have the best, and many of them must have it in great quantities. 

 I have been in a Broadway hotel which comsumed daily 600 spring 

 chickens. 



A hotel need not be very large to order its asparagus by the hun- 

 dred bundles. It is in producing the high qualities of produce that 

 trained intelligence finds its opportunity. Common men produce com- 

 mon things. Men of force and ambition, men of forethought, patience 

 and knowledge, cannot be satisfied unless they are at the top of the 

 market. The field for such men is practically boundless. The market 

 cannot be overstocked with the best. 



The farmer of to-day has another advantage over the farmer of 

 yesterday. Products of every kind, even the most delicate and per- 

 ishable, are now preserved, condensed, transformed and in various 

 ways rendered stable and merchantable commodities. Only a few 

 years ago I met the late genial Major Ben Perley Poore, who mentioned, 

 as a great joke, that he had just sold a load of excellent Baldwin 

 apples for 85 cents a barrel. " And the barrels," said the Major, "cost 

 me 35 cents." 



Such a thing need never liapper at the present time, because at a 

 time of glut apples, like every other kind of fruit, can be subjected to 

 a change of form, or can be kept in their natural condition for six 

 month and sold for 84 a barrel. I know not who it was that invented 

 canning and its kindred devices, but whoever he was he made an in- 

 vention of immeasurable importance. He not only created new indus- 

 tries, but he gave new permanence and solidity to many others. 



Those perishable plums of Seneca lake and California would be of 

 small importance to the plum-raiser if he could do nothing with them 

 but sell them as soon as they were ripe. The canneries now absorb 

 the surplus, and by so doing impart to the business a character and a 

 dignity which may well allure into it intelligent ambition. Most of us 

 can remember the time when those mightj^ peach-growers on the Dela- 

 ware below Philadelphia were frequently defeated by their own suc- 



H. R. — 26 



