Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 241 



Every grocery in St. Louis has its shelves well filled with jams, 

 preserves and other fruit products, yet people who know and value 

 quality (and their name is legion) go the length of the city to a 

 little shop to carry home a bottle of pickles or a glass of other home- 

 made goods. In one woman's home I saw one hundred tiny gold- 

 banded wineglasses, filled with marmalade, and wondered at the un- 

 usual receptacle. The lady explained that these were just samples, 

 and said that she had found that the sample in the gold-banded glass 

 was almost always chosen in preference to that in the plain glass. I 

 speak of this to show that one needs to be observant, and that seem- 

 ingly insignificant points may be important. The lady referred to 

 took orders before the season on established goods, but these sam- 

 ples were to introduce a new product and were carefully placed be- 

 fore an appreciative public. The woman who can go to her fruit 

 closet and choose from a plenteous store can hardly realize how diffi- 

 cult it is to find this sort of goods of superior quality on the general 

 market, if it can be found at all. Again, I would call attention to 

 the necessity of superiority in whatever product is to be placed 

 before the public if real success is desired, for there is plenty and 

 to spare of common stuff on the market. After trying one after 

 another of the fruit products to be purchased from your grocer, 

 going through the whole list of store preserves, jams and the like, 

 you will long for some real prime, old-fashioned dried apple sauce, 

 like mother used to cook on the back of the stove, letting the fruit 

 cook all day long. 



Whoever would establish a reputation, and thereby a market, 

 for any product of superior quality, should be willing to go ,slowly at 

 first, beginning as near home as possible and gradually extending 

 the circle of her activities. One of the fatal mistakes too often 

 made is to let any product go upon the market that is not fully up 

 to the high standard upon which success is to be built. 



In growing flowers for profit very much depends upon location 

 as to whether it is best to specialize in cut flowers, plants or bulbs. 

 If living on a good road that tempts the automobilist to frequent 

 trips, almost any kind of flowers that yield an abundance of bloom 

 suitable for bouquets can usually be handled with profit, providing 

 you have the best of each kind chosen, give generous measure, and 

 advertise properly. Beginning with hyacinths, tulips, jonquils 

 and the early blooming shrubs, the true flower lover may revel in 

 the growing of the best, the earliest and the most attractive baskets 

 of bouquets of marketable blooms that need but to be offered judi- 

 ciously to be sought for later. 



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