ILLIXOIS STATE BEE-KEEPEES ASSOCIATION. 



107 



many people, whether it is the honey line 

 or anything else, he gets up and swings 

 both arms using all his lung power shouting 

 against the middleman telling people he is 

 an evil and that he is making all the profits 

 and getting all there is in the business. 

 We will have to admit that our present 

 system of distribution is expensive, but if 

 anyone can come forward to-daj"^ and give 

 us a plan that is better than the one that 

 exists, that can show us how we can get 

 along without the middleman, he is a very 

 wise business man because the distribution 

 to-day is a very wide problem. 



To make conditions stable, there must 

 be a continuous and steady demand. The 

 law of supply and demand still regulates 

 the price to a great extent and in that con- 

 nection we have one cause to-day that we 

 have never had before, and this is, that 

 honey has been going into markets that 

 we have never been able to reach before. 

 There is a demand for honey that never 

 before existed, and probably will not exist 

 again. I think that is something that we 

 need to take into consideration, not to 

 believe that these conditions are bound to 

 last. We are all glad that conditions are 

 as favorable as they are to-day. 



There is also the tendency on the part 

 of many bee-keepers, and not only bee- 

 keepers, but men along all agricultural 

 lines who have any commodity to sell, to 

 feel that he man who bought their com- 

 modity when the market was lower knew 

 what the market would do, and did it to 

 make an abnormal profit on his goods. In 

 very few instances do I think such would 

 be the case and I believe perhaps you 

 gentlemen will all agree with me, but that 

 doesn't change the situation. 



Now, if we look at the situation as it 

 was just about five years ago; go into the 

 cities and you would not find honey being 

 distributed very generally, you found an 

 indiscriminate lot of various brands of 

 honey all over the country, and my first 

 experience in selling honey was an effort 

 to handle honey from the localities where 

 there was a surplus and that we might 

 sell in the markets where there were con- 

 cerns bottling and distributing among the 

 local trade. We found the concerns who 

 were engaged in that business most ex- 

 tensively were _ the wholesale grocers. 

 When jams and jellies first began to be 

 manufactured the wholesale grocers grad- 

 ually added a food or manufacturing 

 department to their business. The fac- 

 tories would manufacture these jams and 

 jellies and ship in barrels because of the 

 trouble with glass containers and the 

 difl&culty in shipping small packages which 



was much greater, years ago, than it is 

 now. The risk was greater. The factorj'^ 

 would ship their barrel lots to the wholesale 

 grocer and the grocer would have a little 

 back room where a few girls were working, 

 packing jams and jellies in the various 

 sized jars that he wanted distributed under 

 his own brand. Gradually from this 

 sprung up the wholesale grocer's private 

 label goods. You may differ with me on 

 this, but I believe very little in a private 

 label brand of goods for the wholesale 

 grocer. Some of them are so large that 

 they would really be classed as manu- 

 facturers, as Sprague- Warner, Liggett, and 

 R. C. WilUams, who are very large packers, 

 but the original plan was that they might 

 buy a line of goods that they could pack 

 themselves and consequently show them a 

 larger profit, and every package bearing 

 their name on the retail grocers' shelves 

 was so much more advertising for them. 

 Even the retail grocer got into the habit, 

 having certain lines of goods bearing his 

 own label, among them honey. 



My experience was this, and if you have 

 been interested along the same line, per- 

 haps you have had a similar experience; 

 in going to some of those men, even some 

 of your largest men in Chicago, it was 

 impossible to sell those men a high grade 

 of honey. Before transportation facilities 

 and other conditions were such that honey 

 was shipped from all parts of our country 

 to all the big markets, they only bought 

 the honey which was local and suited the 

 people in that locality, but when the 

 southern and western honeys came in, that 

 is, the amber grades, they bought those 

 goods with practically no knowledge of 

 quality. Perhaps they had a less know- 

 ledge of those goods than of any line they 

 handled, consequently, they bought the 

 cheapest. In going to those men, the 

 first question they would ask was "Is it 

 pure?" The next question would be in 

 regard to the price. Perhaps you have 

 had this experience yourself. The result 

 was they bought the cheaper goods which 

 you know were absolutely pure but prob- 

 ably inferior in flavor. These goods would 

 go out, and a housewife buying honey of 

 a certain brand, then later buying another 

 package bearing the same label but con- 

 taining honey of an entirely different flavor, 

 was very apt to decide that the honey in 

 one of the packages must be adulterated, 

 not understanding why pure honeys might 

 be so different in both color and flavor. 

 It was hard for the wholesale grocer buyer 

 to understand that purity of honey means 

 absolutely nothing in regard to quality of 

 flavor. Such were the conditions. It was 



