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cannot keep house in that sort of way without the dealer to 

 do it for us and they are mighty obliging people and while 

 they will always be with us, it seems as if there should be 

 more points of contact between the grower and the consum- 

 er; some system must be worked out by which the perishable 

 fruits and vegetables can go by the shortest routes so that 

 Me won't get our berries, cherries and fresh vegetables 

 either stale or spoiled. 



The parcel post provides a possible transportation, and 

 perhaps the telephone or perhaps this Association could be 

 the middle-man between them, and perhaps in time we will 

 send out an S. 0. S. call for some strawberries for dinner 

 Vs'hich will be picked up by the grower and rushed to the 

 nearest aero station, but at the present time we have got to 

 depend on land transportation. As long as fruit must 

 travel, the packing of it is of the utmost importance, but 

 we wonder why the local growers have been so slow, so 

 much behind, in letting the Western men get ahead of them 

 as they have to a certain extent. It seems to me, now, from 

 Mr. Smith's talk, as if they were catching up rapidly. 



Take the cherries — why do California cherries come so 

 beautifully packed, that although we know they are stale 

 irnd tasteless compared with those of our next door neighbor 

 which are tumbled helter skelter with the stems all sticking 

 up, yet we can hardly resist buying the California fruit. 

 The Western apples have been for years arranged so that 

 you knew exactly how many would be in each box you 

 bought, and it seems as if it was a little careless, as if the 

 local growers had to wait for a law before they graded the 

 size of their apples. Now it seems to me that any grower 

 who markets his fruit according to size and quality, marking 

 it A, B, and C, or one, two, and three, so that we could de- 

 pend absolutely upon his mark, would make a hit with the 

 etmsumer. Not only is the local grown fruit less well 

 packed, but it is frequently' more expensive. I heard of 

 peaches which came from the best Connecticut orchards 

 sent by express to New Hampshire and costing less than 



