FOURTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART IX. 623 



buy them is another problem, especially so when you have to go to a dis- 

 tance to find customers. This solicitation and transportation of your 

 article cost, and then you are confronted with the problem of keeping 

 the price of your article within the purchasing power of the consumer, 

 or within the limits of competition. 



Honey is no exception to this rule. The world is really hungry for 

 honey and millions of people would enjoy better health if they used 

 honey instead of the cheap injurious substitutes for Nature's best sweet. 

 And yet if I was asked to name one of the hardest lines of merchandis- 

 ing today I would say "honey" because people are being weaned away 

 from honey by the constant presentation of other substitutes which are 

 sold at a uniform price. There is a feeling of suspicion in the minds of 

 a great many people that the article offered is not really honey and that 

 they are being deceived and paying someone a large profit for doing it. 

 This condition will continue to increase as disease among bees puts the 

 production of honey into the hands of the specialist, a condition that is 

 coming rapidly. 



If all honey tasted alike it would be much easier to convince the people 

 that they were buying honey, but the great variety of taste is one of the 

 hindrances to the more extensive use of honey, but when honey producers 

 come to understand the necessity of building up a market for their prod- 

 uct they will unite and blend their honey (in this I refer to extracted 

 honey and it constitutes the largest part of the commercial honey) so 

 that people will get a uniform article. 



Under our present system of marketing it is the producer of a small 

 amount of honey that is establishing the retail price of honey and com- 

 pelling the extensive producer to sell his honey for less than it is 

 really worth. 



If a man is willing to sell his honey to a consumer for a price no 

 higher than he would get for it at wholesale he is establishing a retail 

 price because the honey merchant must buy honey so as to compete with 

 his surrounding market conditions. 



It is natural at first thought for the honey producer to think that there 

 is an enormous profit for someone in handling his honey when he sees 

 his choice honey for which he has received 6 cents sold to the consumer 

 for 18 cents, but he does not stop to consider the first cost of a sack of 

 corn meal or a package of breakfast food, or a bottle of olives. 



The farmer receives about 10 cents for the corn that is required to 

 make a sack of corn meal that is selling for 35 cents, and 3 cents for 

 the wheat that goes into a 25 cent package of breakfast food, and the 

 process of making meal or breakfast food is but little more expensive 

 than bottling honey and everyone uses the former and is demanding it 

 while the demand for honey must be created and a large part of the 

 people never eat it. 



It costs to handle any commodity, and every .time a quantity of honey 

 is shipped, stored, and interest and taxes paid upon it, it must increase 

 in value until the consumer purchases it, and naturally the producer 

 reasons that he will market his product direct to the consumer and cut 



