130 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



pool and so do Mr. Princes'. Apples are sold in a good square 

 legitimate way there ; a poor lot put on the market is sold at a low- 

 price. Thej' are able to see them. There is no sales-room that I 

 ever saw in this country that is better fitted up to show goods than 

 they have in Liverpool to show their apples. Their sales come on 

 Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The sales-room will probably 

 hold three or four hundred people and is so constructed that one 

 person can see the apples as well as another. The seats rise towards 

 the rear like those in an opera house, only more rapidly. Suppose 

 a man has a thousand barrels of apples on the dock, of ten different 

 brands. If he chooses to sell them at ten different sales he will bring 

 up two barrels of each brand to this building and they are set in an 

 elevator and the^' are drawn up through the floor. One barrel is 

 dumped out into a large basket where every one is able to see about 

 every apple, and the other barrel sits on the elevator as it is headed 

 up, to show the appearance of it on the market. There are five 

 brokers in Liverpool and only five who do this business. There is no 

 competition there ; those five brokers are together ; they stand up on 

 a stage about ten feet above the floor, and each one has a clerk, one 

 on the right and one on the left ; and when the sale commences in 

 the morning at 8 o'clock (which is 3 o'clock with us) each auctioneer 

 is entitled to forty minutes ; he commences his sale, and when the 

 forty minutes are up he sits down and the next man takes the stand ; 

 and so they go through with the five, and then commence with number 

 one again. Sometimes the sale continues all day. What are unsold 

 are left until the next sale day, two days following. With the expe- 

 rience I have had in shipping apples, my opinion is that the man 

 that packs his apples best gets the best prices. 



The discussion closed the exercises of the joint winter meeting, 

 which proved to be one of the most profitable meetings ever held 

 under the auspices of the society. 



