56 Commercial Gardening 



domestic fire, and he is saved the locking up of his capital in the shillings 

 deposited on. Most of the packages bear a name or mark indicating the 

 grower from which they come, so that if one should be foolish enough or 

 rogue enough to use the nail-down package to cover careless or dishonest 

 packing, the buyer can guard against being twice bitten, while if one mark 

 suits him better than another he can arrange with the packer to send 

 him that one in preference to another. 



No one can say that the advantages claimed above for the non-return- 

 able are either imaginary or inconsequential, yet it will hardly be believed 

 that during the autumn of 1910 packers were paying 5s. 6d. and 6s. per 

 bushel for Hessle pears in baskets, and were refusing to give more than 5s. 

 for pears of an equally good sample in bushel boxes, each of which held 

 more than a basket, and notwithstanding the expense and labour of packing 

 and staking entailed by the baskets. One large packer showed a grower 

 letters and telegrams from Yorkshire and Lancashire asking for Monarch 

 plums in baskets not in boxes. There was no question of preferring a 

 certain mark in baskets to another in boxes; the preference was for the 

 plums in baskets. 



It is a commonplace of literature and conversation to gird at the farmer 

 for his preference for the continuance of things as they were, and some 

 of the shots, ricochetting, hit the market gardener; but the tendency thrives 

 luxuriantly behind the counter of the retailer as well. No one who has 

 not tried it, knows the difficulty and loss entailed to the man who en- 

 deavours to get some improvement in package, packing, or dealing accepted 

 by the retail trade. When first the non-returnable plum box appeared on 

 a grower's stand, one of the largest and most experienced of the Covent 

 Garden fruit merchants said to him: "Yes, they are bound to come in time; 

 but take my advice, don't be a pioneer, it doesn't pay. Let somebody else 

 do that, and you follow!" [w. G. L.] 



