159 



operation in Utah supported 58 wives and 257 children, 

 (Laughter). 



]MR WEEKS : I want to ask what class of people buy 

 your goods through the auction? 



:\rR. E:\IERS0N: We have first the large distributors 

 who are known as shippers, who supply a multitude of lit- 

 tle towns outside of New York City. They are large buyers. 

 Then we have 80 brokers who buy for outside concerns on 

 orders, small concerns or large ones, as the case may be. 

 Then we have padrones who handle the push-cart trade and 

 the corner-stand trade. Then we have representatives of 

 such high-class stores as Hicks and Charles, the fanciest fruit 

 stores in the city, and then we have the big concerns who 

 l)uy for speculative purposes at times, the goods which 

 ^^tand speculative purchase. By that I mean apples may be 

 bought and placed in cold storage. It is very seldom that 

 those large buyers, however, buy any great quantity of 

 stuff for immediate use. The small buyers in New York 

 City are supplied at the auction ; as a rule the jobber is as 

 Kinall a man as we reach. There is not an opportunity for a 

 wholesaler to buy there and sell to a jobber, because the job- 

 ber can obtain credit just as well, practically, at the auction 

 as he could from the wholesaler, and the margin is close, 

 t^je competition is strong. New" York is a big city and it is 

 a natural auction city; I say a natural auction city, because 

 abroad, as you know, all the apples are sold at auction. We 

 t];ink we have a better system than they do; we have a 

 ]iublie auction, they have a restricted auction for members 

 cnly. In our auctions anybody can buy. 



]\IR. AVEEKS : At your auction sales, how small a quan- 

 tity is sold as a rule. 



MR. EMERSON: If it were a straight car of Baldwin 

 apples, five barrels would be as small an amount as we 

 would sell, but if there were one barrel of Northern Spy and 

 two of Greening, that one barrel of Northern Spy and the 

 two barrels of Greening would be sold as separate and dis- 

 tinct lots. But as a practice, five barrels is our minimum. 



