Dec. 29, 1904. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



883 



tities of it for their own family use, but they did not care 

 to pay a dozen prices for ghicose and paraffin. Now, travel- 

 ing men are a class of people who go over the entire country, 

 and know pretty well what people think. It is their business 

 to feel the pulse of the public, and they know it. When 

 they say, as some of them have said, that there is not one 

 person in ten but believes that comb honey on the market is 

 manufactured, they are getting painfully near the truth ; and 

 the very people who should know this truth are the bee- 

 keepers themselves. 



But this is not all. Two or three of the prominent com- 

 mission houses in our leading cities have wrttcn us that 

 they used to sell comb honey by the carload where now they 

 sell it by the ton. This was before the days of the honey- 

 comb lies. Other commission men will tell you that there 

 is a strong distrust on the part of the buying public as to 

 the geruiineness of the ordinary comb-honey market. 



But you may woiidor, tlien, why people buy comb honey 

 at all if they believe it is manufactured. Fortunately not 

 every one believes these lies, but those who do, buy it just 

 as you and I do canned fruits and vegetables which we are 

 afraid are preserved with deleterious chemicals such as for- 

 malin and salicylic acid. 



But there is a partial foundation for these comb honey 

 lies, and it rests somewhat on the fact that there is a large 

 amount of inferior comb honey in the city markets. It is 

 dark in color; or, if not dark, it is off in flavor. People 

 buy it. It does not taste like white ciover for which it was 

 sold : then they shake their heads doubtfully, and say, "There, 

 I told you — this comb honey is manufactured. It does not 

 taste like the honey I used to get on my father's farm.'' 



It is my opinion that dark and off-flavored honey, if we 

 except buckwheat.' which has a strong and positive demand 

 in the East, should not be put in sections, but extracted, 

 and sold to the manufacturing trade — the bakers and the 

 confectioners. 



It is also my private opinion that, were it not for the 

 general belief that comb honey is manufactured, we should 

 get from a third to a hal/ more for our product. The local 

 bee-keeper who peddles his honey around home, who bears 

 an excellent reputation, as such people generally do, who has 

 taken pains to educate his trade as to the purity of his 

 product, can usually get from a half to a third more for his 

 honey, because his trade knows that his goods are directly 

 from the Iiive. In a way, then, the comb-honey lies help 

 the bee man who sells his product within a hundred miles 

 of his home. But how about the large class who c?)nnot 

 take the time to sell their honey, but must get rid of it 

 with the least expenditure of time possible by shipping 

 it to the city markets? These constitute a class who are 

 in the great majority, and should be protected. 



Having now stated the actual conditions, the question 

 naturally arises. "What are you going to do about it?" We 

 have been hammering at the newspapers, and getting refrac- 

 tions, you say, and have been partially successful, and still 

 the lies go on. The trouble is, we bee-keepers are not half 

 aroused to the danger that confronts the comb honey busi- 

 ness. We have not hammered at the newspapers half enough. 

 Every time these canards appear in public, the purveyor of 

 them should be deluged with thousands of letters. Force of 

 numbers is what counts in a campaign of this kind, as recent 

 experience has shown in the case of the Ladies' Home Jour- 

 nal, Pittsburg Gazette, and some other periodicals of that 

 kind.' If the bee-keepers of the country depend on the editors 

 of bee-papers and manufacturers of supplies to get retrac- 

 tions, they must make up their minds to keep on with these 

 low prices. All the bee-papers will do their part if the sub- 

 scribers will do theirs. You see the point is right here. 

 When one of these offending editors or pJiblishers has letters 

 coming to him at the rate of a hundred a day for the matter 

 of two or three weeks or a month, he begins to think some- 

 thing will happen, and that if he cares to hold some of his 

 clientage, he had better make a retraction. If those letters 

 are courteous, appealing to his honor as a man, they will 

 have ten times more effect than if he is abused and called a 

 fool. 



I recommend further that more bee-keepers seek to de- 

 velop their home markets. Distribute more leaflets direct to 

 their trade. The leaflets show the character of comb honey, 

 tell about the different flavors, and then go on to "show that 

 $1,000 has been offered for a single sample of manufactured 

 comb honey that is a close imitation of the genuine product 

 of the hive. Some leaflets published by Editor York, of the 

 American Bee Tournal, are excellent. Copies of them can be 

 obtained, probably, at this convention. 



Kor can we stwp right here. This convention should 

 take hold of this matter, should pass suitable resolutions 

 urging the Board of Directors of this grand Association, of 

 which we are so proud, take hold of the matter in a way 

 that will mean something. The time of talking and crying 

 about the matter is past. What we need now is action. I 

 would suggest that the Board of Directors be urged to set 

 aside a certain fund, which can be used to pay some compe- 

 tent person not only to get retractions, but to write in- 

 teresting and original articles for magazines which directly 

 and indirectly tell how comb honey is produced, . and which 

 will show conclusively that there is no such thing as the 

 manufactured article so much hawked about in the papers. 



In this Association we have a number of men who are 

 perfectly competent to do this work under the direction of 

 the Board of Directors. It is not enough that the articles 

 be written, but fliat a representative from the .Association it- 

 self be sent direct to the offending publisher or editor, and 

 explain to him the facts, taking along some samples of comb 

 foundation. In the case of the Ladies' Home Journal, Mr. 

 W. A. Selser, a member of the Board of Directors of this 

 Association, was authorized to go and see the publisher, 

 and explain tlie facts. He was nearly discouraged, but he 

 persisted until he got something that was a good deal better 

 than nothing. The officers of this Association are now scat- 

 tered all over the United States ; and the Board of Directors 

 could, at a very small expense, send one such officer to the 

 paper publishing such lie, and, if possible, secure a retraction 

 and correction. In tlie meantime, the bee-keepers should 

 act in concert, getting their subscribers to deluge the pub- 

 lisher in question with letters of protest. 



I suggest, further, that the Board of Directors appomt 

 some one to visit the people who make "boiler-plate" mat- 

 ter for the press. Bv this I mean cast stereotyped matter 

 which is sold to the small publishers at so much a column. 

 An interesting story or sketch could be written up; and it 

 the boiler plate people will accept it, the facts about comb 

 honey could be circulated over the entire country. 



I should like to suggest further that every member of 

 this Association, as occasion may present itself, invite his 

 local editor down to see him. . Show him an extractor and 

 the comb-honey supers; let him examine pieces of founda- 

 tion show him how it is used, open up the hive, then get 

 him to make a little write-up if he will; but be very sure that 

 he sees the proof before it goes to press. With the best of 

 intentions he mav make a bad matter worse. For instance, 

 he mav talk about comb foundation as artificial honey comb, 

 how it saves the work of the bees, etc. His idea is correct 

 enough, but his use of terms is unfortunate. Within a year 

 a reporter of one of the large metropolitan dailies called at 

 the home of the honey bees. We took occasion to tell him 

 all about comb honey, but particularly requested that an ad- 

 vance proof or type written copy be submitted to "s before 

 it was published. This the reporter agreed to. do. but he 

 must have forgotten it. But imagine our surprise ^vhen. in 

 the Sunday edition of his paper comb foundation was con- 

 fused with artificial honey comb; and this was m xed up 

 with another statement that there was no such thing as 

 manufactured comb honey. A slight change '"the warding 

 here and there would have made an accurate statement, ac- 

 ceptable to bee-keepers and creditable to the reporter and 



■'^'"rwLh'io'suggest further that the President of this As- 

 sociation appoint a press committee whose busmess it shall 

 be o wait on any rep'orter who may come into these meetings 

 and furnish such reporter with these ^f '^'S' ^"^^ J ^' '' ,^^ 

 set if possible, a proof before the matter goes before the 

 Public The reporters are bound to come here ; and ,f they 

 are not intelligently and carefully waited on they will get 

 a mess ofrdfed-up stuff that will do us more harm than 



^°° There is just one more expedient that can be employed to 

 brin- these publishers to time who will not retract, and that 

 is a" suit for damages. The A. I. Root Co. was about to 

 be-^fn an acio against a daily during the past sunimer. 

 We had gone so far as to instruct our attorney to begui 

 nroceedin-s We wrote the publisher just once more, ask- 

 fnTtlem what they were going to do, if ^"ythmg; that our 

 bifsiness had been damaged, and that we P^^P^^^f to take 

 the proper means to protect ourselves if we could not get re- 

 dress in anv other way. In about a week we secured a 

 veyCdsome retraction, and then the publishers wrote in 

 a very humble way. asking if that was satisfactory. 



Our attorney tells me he believes the bee-keepers of the 

 country could successfully bring suit, in some cases at lersf 



