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THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



June 18, 1903. 



that way, and the stenog^rapher must pack that, and the 

 goods were all up there in a very few days. Now, that's the 

 only way I know how to do anything. Just to have some 

 fellow to go at it, and do it. 



Mr. Moore — There is a word in Mr. Abbott's remarks 

 that strikes me. It reminds me of Mrs. Moore. I said to 

 Mrs. Moore, " Dear, I know how you make up your mind. 

 You find out which side of the question I am on, and then 

 you are against me." Now, Mr. Abbott speaks of the 

 farmer bee-keeper. I think he will admit, and you all will, 

 that this is a day of specialties, and that it is the farmer 

 bee-keeper that produces the honey in this country. I have 

 sold honey about 16 years, and no matter about the produc- 

 ing of it, the selling of the honey has to be a specialty in 

 this day and age. 



In the last year I spent a great deal of time calling on 

 retail grocery stores. If the honey was distributed equally 

 according to the demand of the people, without any educa- 

 tion, there would not be half enough to go around ; but at 

 present honey has been a drug. It is two cents in Cuba, 

 and 10 to 12 cents a pound in our country. There is never 

 enough fine, white, comb honey in one-pound sectipns pro- 

 duced in this country. It always brings a larger price. Our 

 bee-keepers are producing liquid honey, and how to get that 

 into the hands of the people is the burning question to-day. 

 Mr. Abbott is speaking of the comb-honey question. There 

 will never be enough of it. The bee-keepers are producing 

 two or three pounds of liquid to one of comb, they can do it, 

 and they are going to continue to do it. You witness this 

 condition. Of course, you know where the great honey- 

 producers are, and a fancy article of white clover and bass- 

 wood honey can be bought, and the consumer is paying 20 

 to 30 cents a pound retail. There is no controversy about 

 that. We don't object to the middle man. What we do 

 object to is three middle men — the commission man, the 

 wholesale grocer, and the retail grocer — three middle men 

 coming in between the producer and the consumer. I wit- 

 nessed this myself in my travels over Indiana. Local bee- 

 keepers were getting last year's price for comb honey. They 

 were getting 12, and l2'/i, 13 and 14 cents a pound. At the 

 same time in Toledo they were selling it for 20 cents a 

 pound in one-pound sections. 



Dr. Miller — I found one grocer selling it for 23 cents by 

 the piece. 



Mr. Moore — I examined that, and half was second-grade 

 and half was under grade. I have given a great deal of 

 thought to this subject. I have thought so much about it 

 that I don't know about it at all. I don't know what is best. 

 If we could get these 700,000 people to interest themselves, 

 their minds and their money, it would be decided right. We 

 haven't, with our best efforts, been able to do so. My 

 thought is this, and I give it to you for what it is worth. 

 Those who are intensely interested — the Roots, York, Weber 

 — we will form a stock company. We will have the author- 

 ized capital $50,000. We will incorporate under the laws of 

 Illinois or New Jersey, whichever our lawyer says is best. 

 We will establish at Chicago a headquarters. We will start 

 that way and try it. We will do all the things that are 

 necessary for success. Get the honey from the producer 

 and pay him as much as you can, and make the expenses as 

 little as you can, get as much as you can for the product, 

 and make a success of it commercially. Suppose the first 

 branch is in Chicago. You would have to have a reliable 

 store. You would have to have some one competent. You 

 would have to have a telephone, and say that every one of 

 the 10,000 grocers can telephone in, " We want some honey." 

 Have to have your wagons distribute it. Have to have an 

 exhibit of live bees to show them that we weren't common, 

 every-day Chicago sharpers shipping in honey ; and you 

 would have to locate somewhat centrally from Twelfth 

 street. You would have the place jammed with peopile all 

 the time. 



This company should have a title that would stand to 

 the people for its purity. A title that occurred to me was, 

 " The Honey Company of the National Bee-Keepers' Asso- 

 ciation." Is that too long? The printer stamps it with 

 one impression. The Honey Company of the National Bee- 

 Keepers' Association, if you please, and actual bee-keepers. 

 And, as far as limiting the amount of stock, you can't do 

 that. You can limit a man only to the extent of his pocket- 

 book. 



Mr. Abbott — I knew I could make Mr. Moore make a 

 speech. There was something I wanted to say, and it is 

 this : The question of the sale of honey all hinges around 

 the infernal adulteration that's going on in this land 

 openly. That's the greatest monster that the bee-keeper 

 has to tackle. If we can only wipe out the monster of glu- 



cose honey. I believe in that advertising scheme. Now, 

 you have struck my idea. One such store would do much 

 more to advertise and sell honey than anything I have ever 

 heard mentioned. That is a splendid scheme, and splendid 

 idea. That has been my idea all the time, and with the 

 National Bee-Keepers' Association, that it has not made 

 itself known. Mr. Moore suggests advertising, and it takes 

 brass bands to run political machinery, and hurrah. The 

 trouble with bee-keepers is, they haven't advertised. They 

 haven't let the country know that they were in the world. 



A party on the train said to me, " Where are you going?" 

 '• Up to Chicago to attend a bee-keepers' meeting." "Do 

 /Aey hold meetings ?" "What do they do when they have 

 meetings ? Can a fellow afford to ride on the cars 400 

 miles to attend that meeting?" He didn't seem to know 

 about the bee-keepers. But everybody knows about the 

 Live Stock Show, and that the people from everywhere are 

 coming to attend it. They have advertised — made them- 

 selves known. And now, then, I like that idea, but then I 

 go back to my original proposition, the way to do that is 

 for somebody to go ahead and do it, and Mr. Moore seems 

 to know how it ought to be done, and if that is what we 

 .need why can't something of the sort be started, and see if 

 we have bee-keepers enough to take stock in it. A stock 

 company to do a thing like that — it will take a lot of hard 

 cash to do it. How much stock do you think would be sub- 

 scribed ? Suppose a proposition of that kind should be put. 

 My father kept a hotel, and some people came through the 

 town, and their horse died right in front of our hotel. An 

 old fellow who used to be a show clown, a kind of hard fel- 

 low, the people thought, and we kept a hotel and it wasn't 

 our business to ask what kind of a fellow he was. He stood 

 around there, and they kept a saying how sorry they were. 

 Then the old fellow said, " Jimminy, craminy, how much 

 are you sorry?" He put S5.00 on the horse, and said, " I 

 am sorry that much." It wasn't two minutes, that was the 

 end of it. He solved it with pretty rough language, but his 

 $5.00 backed it up. 



The question of the adulteration of extracted honey 

 will largely solve the problem of the sale of extracted 

 honey. I went to the National Manufacturing Company, of 

 St. Joseph, and saw the genleman who ought to be a good 

 man, and he took me down and says, "Come down, I want 

 to show you." He took me down where he had a car-load 

 of extracted honey, and over in another part he had a great 

 pile of comb honey. He had gotten some extra-fine honey 

 for his work. It has a good flavor to it. He said he would 

 get rid of this in a little while. He puts three parts of glu- 

 cose and one part of that honey, and sends it into Oklahoma 

 and sells it for pure honey ! 



Mr. Moore — Medina, Ohio ? 



Mr. Abbott — That's the Glycerine Refining Company, 

 and when you write to them about it they tell you to go to a 

 place that's hotter than Ohio ! Wipe out a few of those 

 fellows ; but that's the way they talk to us down in Mis- 

 souri. The whole market is full of it. I stepped into a 

 leading grocery — all friends of mine — but I told them the 

 plain truth. " Do you know what that is there ?" " Yes, 

 I know what it is." " Do you understand the nature of 

 that ?" " Yes, we know all about it." " I know what that 

 is exactly, it is adulterated honey." " But I thought you 

 said you wouldn't handle any more of that, and now you 

 stick that up by the side of my honey, and you hand it out 

 to them and they think it is Abbott's." "We never do 

 that. We tell them this is Abbott's honey." " But," I 

 said, "you are injuring the market." "We bought this 

 very cheap, and there are some people who want the cheap." 

 When I inquired the price I found there was only a slight 

 difference. The whole secret is, they buy the pure goods 

 for 20 cents and sell for 25, and the other they buy for half, 

 and they make more on that than they do on the better 

 goods. The man who runs the grocery professes to be a 

 good man, still he hasn't come to realize that setting up 

 that goods which is manufactured and selling it to the peo- 

 ple, not guaranteeing its purity, but implying it is pure, 

 that that is a crime against society, and a crime against 

 the interests of his own soul, and something ought to be 

 done to make the country feel that. 



Mr. Moore — I am sorry I have to disagree with Mr. 

 Abbott about a law matter. These glucose people — we 

 must respect their glucose. They have trained these grocers 

 up for ten years. They don't want honey with the pro- 

 ducer's name on it. They don't know us. I went into a 

 grocery store, made it a specialty, and told them that I had 

 300 colonies of bees. The grocer didn't care to go any 

 further. " What is the price?" The trade we care for is 

 all that way, and the grocer prefers to sell a cheap article 



