No. 4.] FRUIT GROWING. G5 



apples of my own packing (they were men I never saw 

 before, I did not know one of them), and 50 cents less for 

 "farmers' packings." What did they mean by that? I do 

 not know, but I guess at it. They wanted to pay 50 cents 

 less per barrel for formers' packings. The apples were 

 grown by farmers, for I had got them from farmers, but 

 somehow or other they had got the idea that my brother and 

 myself had been trying to handle fruit and trying to make 

 money out of it from a business stand-point, and would try 

 to make the apples look well, and yet honestly packed all 

 the way through each barrel, and in such shape that they 

 could make from 75 cents to $1.00 or perhaps $1.50 a barrel, 

 because they could guarantee every barrel. 



As some of you know, we have been trying to grow 

 peaches on our farm in Connecticut. We have been fooling 

 a little with peach orchards for twenty years. In 1887, I 

 think it was, we had a large crop, and we made up our 

 ndnds that we had grown good fruit ; at least, it cost us 

 enough in hard work, fertilizers and labor, and many other 

 things. We thought it was extra good, and worth some- 

 thing, and we ought to have the profit if there was any in it, 

 rather than the terrible middlemen. So we decided to sell 

 our fruit directly to the dealers, rather than to ship it to 

 commission merchants and let them get a portion of the 

 profit on it. We made up our minds that we would have a 

 store of our own in Hartford, eight miles from the farm, and 

 sell that crop of peaches directly to the retail dealers ; that 

 we would pack them on a certain plan ; grade to three uni- 

 form sizes, pack each grade by itself, and have the fruit in 

 the middle and bottom of each basket just as good as that 

 on top, and every basket labelled and guaranteed. After 

 making up our plan of packing and handling, I went out to 

 see the retail dealers in different cities. I found out the 

 men who were handling the finest goods in the fruit line in 

 any j)articular town, who had what is called " the gilt-edge 

 trade," the nice families, who would be likely to buy the 

 choicest fruit. I interviewed a number of such men in the 

 large cities and towns, and told them what sort of fruit we 

 believed we had ; that we proposed to handle it in a certain 

 way, pack it, and sell it directly to them by grade and 



