I06 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN MARKETING. 

 By Phineas Whittier, Farmington Falls. 



In times of peril and great disaster it requires a cool head and 

 a stead}' hand to do what is best to be done, and if this ever 

 applied to the apple business it does at the present time. It is 

 no use to get discouraged. All products we raise have their ups 

 and downs, times of profit and times when no profit comes, and 

 if we can manage in seasons like the present to make no loss 

 we are doing well. I have repeatedly said that it requires greater 

 skill and ability to care for and dispose of a crop of apples at a 

 profit than it does to grow them and the longer I live I am more 

 and more convinced of its truth. In times of scarcity and buy- 

 ers plenty any orchardist can make a good profit on his fruit 

 with hardly an}- trouble, but in seasons like the present this 

 cannot be done. Any orchardist should be fitted up so as to 

 put his fruit in the best possible shape for the market and know 

 just what to do in case of a glut or high winds or any other dis- 

 aster to his fruit. My motto is to put no part of the apple crop 

 on the market only as a strictly fancy No. i article. You will 

 all agree with me, that fruit should be put up in an attractive 

 form to sell, but some good honest men think that means to put 

 up the whole crop, good, bad and indifferent so as to be attrac- 

 tive by putting the good at the ends of a barrel and the poor in 

 the middle, but then the attraction does not last long enough 

 when it is opened. What I mean by putting all on the market 

 as fancy is to can or evaporate all the bruised or wormy and 

 smaller ones and take such pains with them as will make a fancy 

 article and this can be done and with proper storage can be held 

 for a year or two in good shape for use. In this way we can 

 prolong the period of consumption and rid the market of poor 

 fruit which serves to injure the sale of good fruit. When apples 

 are as cheap as they have been this year, if any one is going to 

 buy for that purpose he had better buy No. I's than to take the 

 gift of No. 2's, it is so much less work to fit them in good shape 

 and they will make more to the bushel. 



In preparing apples for market the first thing to be attended 

 to is the proper care of harvesting. If they are roughly handled 



