THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



267 



tion of it, paying- the producers some I 6 

 cents for it. In order to make a fair 

 profit he must sell at 18 cents, whole- 

 sale, as freight, cartage and insurance 

 would take one cent. What was the 

 result? An immense quantity was 

 carried over till the next year, to the 

 loss of the wholesale dealers. A large 

 amount of honey, much of it granulated, 

 or "weeping," was to be sold the follow- 

 ing year, to the disgust of those who 

 bought it and used it; besides it w uld 

 compete with the new crop and tend to 

 lower the price for that crop also. 



TOO HIGH A PRICE A GREATER EVIL THAN 

 TOO LOW A PRICE. 



Of two evils, I believe too high a price 

 is a greater evil than too low prices. If 

 honey sells too low, the producer, for the 

 time being, gets a little less money out of 

 it, but it has the advantage that many 

 use honey who would not otherwise do 

 so; and, doubtless, many who have never 

 tasted it do so and become consumers. 

 The markets are cleaned up, and when 

 the new crop arrives, it sells promptly at 

 good prices. 



But if the price is too high, a train of 

 evils follow, as I have already stated; 

 loss of profit to both commission men 

 and producer, as well as slow trade to 

 the retailer, and, worse than all _else, the 

 holding of honey till it deteriorates and 

 injures the reputation of our product, 

 more than most of us imagine. When 

 the consumer actually finds grains of 

 sugar in his honey, it is of little use to 

 tell him or her that it is not adulterated. 

 Don't they know? The average person 

 knows nothing of the difference between 

 cane sugar and that found in honey. 



SOME REASONS WHY THE CONSUMER PAYS A 

 HIGH PRICE. 



Take the best grades of extracted 

 honey. These have been sold the past 

 year for seven and eight cents. Does 

 any producer stop to think what such 

 honey costs the consumer? Suppose we 

 pay eight cents for choice extracted honey 

 for bottling. It figures out about as 

 follows: 



Total - - - 22c 

 1 have said nothing of broken glass or 

 defective bottles, of which there are al- 

 ways some, and sometimes many in 

 each gross. One lot or No. 25 bottles we 

 bought had, I think, from V to^ of each 

 case broken. Of course, if we buy our 

 glass in carload lots it will be somewhat 

 less, but it takes lots of money to buy a 

 half dozen kinds of glass in car lots. 



In the above estimate I have said 

 nothing of the loss from leakage, and 

 waste from leaky barrels, or tin cans 

 with nail holes in them, as we found one 

 today witn a loss of many pounds of honey. 

 Nor have 1 counted anything for the one 

 who puts up the honey, which should be 

 not less than that of the jobber, who 

 simply turns it over to his customers. 

 This would make the actual cost to the 

 consumer of 24 cents per pound. It 

 seems as though it ought not to be so 

 much, but how can the bottler do it for 

 less, unless he uses a poor grade of 

 honey? Besides this, the price of con- 

 tainers has gone up. Some of the glass 

 we bought last year has advanced over 

 55 per cent. On a lot of a thousand 

 tin, quart cans ordered recently we find 

 an advance of nearly 25 per cent. Now, 

 if the price of honey goes up, where can 

 we sell our honey? Who will want to 

 retail it if it goes higher? 



THE PURE FOOD LEGISLATION MAY HELP 

 TO RAISE PRICES. 



Some one says that the ne^v pure food 

 law is going to increase the demand. 

 Now, I really don't know much about 

 the prices which this so-called adulter- 

 ated honey has sold for, but I think it 

 safe to say the price has been low, as is 

 the case with the corn syrup, falsely 



