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woiild have to pay for peaches in a local market, and it 

 worked out to the advantage of both myself and my custo- 

 mers and I expect a good trade next year. 



A MEiMBER: It seems to me that one of the worst 

 features of the consumer and producer question is this, that 

 in times of glut, when the price is down, the consumer does 

 not get the benefit, the retailer does not not reduce his profit, 

 in fact he is going to take more and keep the retail price up 

 Avhich does not help to move that fruit. I saw an instance 

 a year ago this fall, when good apples were selling at thirty- 

 tive cents a bushel, and I took occasion to visit a few of the 

 stores aroimd some of the smaller towns and the average 

 price at that time was about 10 cents for three pounds or 

 {'bout $1.60 a bushel; that was what the consumer had to 

 }>ay for those 35 cent apples, 



A MEMBER: It seems to me that the fruit grow.ers are 

 laboring under a rather difficult situation by trymg to serve 

 two masters at once, the middle man and the consumer. 

 They cannot seem to make things work well. I know of a 

 gentleman who sold his apples last year direct to the con- 

 >sumer, and through the kindness of some friend tnat wrote 

 a little piece in the paper about it, he got orders for 1500 

 i)arrels of apples; that was a great deal more than he had; 

 ne supplied what he could himself and turned the rest over 

 to his neighbor. I suppose that he advertised that he was 

 willing to send them anywhere. I think, in New York ; I 

 don't know whether the price was given or not, but the 

 man that had the apple, told me himself, that he had orders 

 from every New England state, for 1500 barrels. That':4 

 Dr. Pritchard. a man well known to many of you here. 



THE CHAIRMAN: If I may take just a moment, I 

 YN'ould like to give you one experience. I think we helped 

 both parties. Of course if you are going to throw the mid- 

 dleman out altogether, that's all right, but usually you can- 

 not do that. We were marketing peaches there at the farm 

 and put a certain price on them, then we sold at wholesale 

 to our retailer up in town enough cheaper so that he could 



