222 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Mar. 24, 1904. 



Dr. Miller— Would you rather drink Mocha and Java? 



Mr. Muth— They sell the kind they make the most on. 

 We all like the best, but whether we will pay the price or 

 not is another matter. The retail grocer is in business for 

 profit, and we have to give him just exactly what he wants 

 or he doesn't want it at all. 



Dr. Miller — If the woman knows the truth about it? 

 Mr. Muth— She doesn't know it. They generally fool 

 them. 



Dr. Miller — The customers have to be fooled? 

 Mr. Muth — They get fooled quite often. 

 Mr. Wheeler— I think there is more to that than that 

 alone. Leave the comb honey out of the question ; take ex- 

 tracted honey. Pres. York and I have had a good deal to do 

 with that. We find that a jar holding ^ of a pound sells ten 

 to one where the one-pound jars sells. The grocery man will 

 make his profit out of one just as well as the other. People 

 are looking for a cheaper package. They like to have some- 

 thing around 15 cents. As soon as it is 18 or 20, then they 

 stop buying. The i/4 jar sells just as the 15-cent cake of 

 honey does. It ranges between 15 and 18 cents a package. I 

 have found that to be the fact ever since I commenced to sell 

 honey. They want honey around 15 cents — the people that 

 are consuming honey. There is a pound of honey, but the 

 grocery man may stay there all day and they will buy the 

 iS-cent jar of honey. 



Mr. Niver — I have been a grocery man nine years of my 

 life, I have sympathy for the grocer, I know why all these 

 things are, and we don't get at the point. The grocery man 

 hates to figure. He can convince his customer that he is 

 honest. It isn't practical in a grocery store to weigh a sec- 

 tion and get the different fractions and figure it up, so he 

 guesses at it. 



Dr. Miller — Anybody been asking about fractions? 



Mr. Niver — Follow my argument. The honey-producers, 

 in order to work off No. 2's and 3's will take a few very 

 heavy sections and mix them with quite a number of light 

 ones, and it all comes to 22 pounds, and it is a light-weight 

 case, but they are not all alike. The customer comes in and 

 the grocer says, "Take your choice at 15 cents," for instance, 

 and the lady will pick out the best section, as you or I would, 

 and as anybody else would, and the last six to eight are culls. 

 He can't sell them at hardly any price. He doesn't want to 

 handle honey after that. You give him 24 sections of honey 

 that weigh exactly a pound apiece, every one, and he puts it 

 there at 15 cents, the last will sell as well as the first one; 

 but put another case right opposite which weighs J4 of a 

 pound each, and sell them at 12 cents, and the other at 15, 

 the i2-cent will go first. That is human nature. We cater 

 to that idea, and had all our sections to hold M of a pound 

 each, and they would retail at 15 cents in those days. The 

 pound sections had to retail at 20, which was the same price 

 per pound, yet it was almost impossible to sell the pound sec- 

 tions while it was easy to sell the others. Another class of 

 trade, we sold No. 2's, 10 ounces each, and they sold two for 

 a quarter, and they went more rapidly than fancy honey be- 

 cause the lady will buy two for a quarter rather than pay 15 

 cents each. It would go faster than the other for that reason,. 

 It is the culls on the last end that is the reason he wants 

 honey all alike, and while he doesn't want a large, heavy 

 case — . 



Dr. Miller — How much would those culls weigh? 



Mr. Niver — About lo ounces. We sold by count always, 

 and not figures. It is the most practical way, and it gets rid 

 of this talk. Grade your honey correctly. Sell by count, -and 

 the grocery man is better satisfied, and it is easier work to 

 sell it. 



Dr. Miller — Suppose a section weighs 10 or 12 ounces? 



Mr. Niver — I say that is No, 2 



Dr. Miller— How would that sell? 



Mr. Niver— Per pound the same as the other. 



Dr, Miller— How to the customer? 



Mr. Niver — Same price for it. 

 • Dr. Miller— No trouble to sell it? 



Mr. Niver — No, reasonably more popular honey. 



Dr. Miller — How wouldn't it be profitable at the tail end? 



Mr. Niver— Because he has to sell it for the same price 

 as the good. Has to pack it good, and put it in the same 

 case. They want to work off their No. steens ; they will try 

 to work them off with the good honey, and make the good 

 honey sell the other, and then the grocery man "gets it where 

 the baby wore the beads," when they sell it that way. 



Dr. Miller— I notice by the report in the American Bee 

 Journal that the heavy-weights bring about 2 to 3 cents a 



pound less than the others, and some people have hinted to 

 me sometimes that that was because the grocers want to buy 

 by weight and sell by the piece, with the inference to the 

 customer that each one weighs about a pound, and I couldn't 

 make myself believe that that was entirely honest. They 

 were deceived about it, and they thought they were getting a 

 pound in each section. 



Mr, Wheeler— I have sold considerable honey in Chicago 

 this year. They would ask, "How much do your sections 

 weigh ?" And I would tell them, 12 to 14 ounces. After that 

 my end of the story is done. Whatever the grocer tells is 

 nothing to me, I told him the truth, and I have no trouble 

 in selling them. 



Pres. York — I don't think the customers know very much 

 about the pound section. They but it as a package. 



Mr. Clarke — As to the public buying a box of honey — 

 the general public at the stores where they dOn't believe and 

 know — they suppose that they get a pound of honey. 



Mr. Niver — A man's belief is of no consequence to any- 

 body but himself, and what they believe is none of my busi- 

 ness. If I say that piece of honey is worth IS cents — I didn't 

 tell him it was a pound, or two pounds. Why should he not 

 believe it weighs two pounds? and the same argument was 

 used when we came to one-pound sections. It is not a ques- 

 tion of weight. This piece of honey is 15 cents, 18 cents, or 

 20 cents, as the case may be. Say 20 cents that section is 

 worth. Well, if you want to for an experiment they will 

 weigh it for you, but no grocer can afford to take the time 

 to weigh it all. If you buy an orange, they say the orange 

 is worth so much. Take it or leave it. There is no dis- 

 honesty, because there is no claim setting forth that they 

 weigh a pound, or two pounds. 



Mr. Clarke — Some of the strongest laws in existence are 

 unwritten laws, I have had lots of experience. A lady sent 

 to two different stores for a bushel of potatoes, 60 pounds. 

 A section-box is supposed to weigh a pound, generally speak- 

 ing. This lady got 13 pounds short-weight on the one bushel 

 from the grocer who sold by measure, and the other grocer 

 sent her 60 pounds for a bushel. What is the fact? Every- 

 body says now, "B. will swindle you, and the other is honest 

 and will give you what is perfectly right," and I think it 

 holds good in honey as in any other goods. I never have a 

 month go by but what I have somebody come in to buy honey, 

 and I will say, "Well, that section won't average more than 

 14 or IS ounces," and the customer says, "Why, I always 

 supposed that was a pound." They are misjudging it because 

 they are no judge. ■ 



Mr. Moore — I hate to add anything to this discussion. In 

 my mind it runs back at least 10 years. Dr. Miller has written 

 numerous articles in the bee-papers right along this direct 

 question as to whether it was moral and right to sell pound 

 sections in the way that they are sold in the trade. There is 

 no use in our deceiving ourselves. Fight the devil with fire 

 and tell the truth. There are no morals in business. Very 

 little of it in Chicago business. I hate to say it, but the 

 percentage of the people, take the retail grocery business, who 

 allow their morals to interfere with their business over the 

 counter, is very small in Chicago. 



Dr. Miller — Go to Cincinnati for that I 

 Mr. Moore — It is my conviction, after 17 years of selling 

 honey, and calling on hundreds of grocery stores, there is a 

 dishonest motive back of buying honey by the pound and sell- 

 ing it by the piece. That's what Dr. Miller has always 

 claimed. I don't claim so because he says so. I would rather 

 be against him if my reason was so, for the sake of my own 

 individuality. Let us not deceive ourselves. People don't 

 know what these sections are called. Everybody, everywhere, 

 knows that they are called a pound section. That is a pound 

 section without any honey in it. You may put in one ounce, 

 or 16 ounces, or 20 ounces, but the lady thinks of a pound 

 when she asks for that. It is a pound section. The grocer 

 has bought 12-ounce sections by the pound, and he sells them 

 by the piece, with the implication that they are a pound, and 

 he gets the pound price for it. Some of the grocers are a 

 little "green," and they buy heavy-weights and sell them for 

 20 cents a pound. This man is a little bit smoother, and he 

 buys the light-weight and he sells a section for 18 cents, and 

 he makes more than the fellow does who sells them for 20 

 cents, and the thought came to me whether if we as bee- 

 keepers had a duty in regard to selling light-weight sections 

 to the grocers and giving them a chance to make a dishonest 

 profit. Occasionally some of the grocers arc ignorant. I went 

 into a grocery store and I saw some 12-ounce sections. I 

 said, "What did you pay for those?" "Why," he says, "I 



