SPECIAL FRUIT ORGANIZATIONS 233 



buying and distributing of fruit is only a part of their 

 work, but a part that is so important that it ought to be 

 included in any discussion on the marketing of fruit. 

 The great function of the jobbing houses is to supply 

 food products to the retail grocery stores throughout the 

 country. They are the food bankers of the country. 



The fruit jobbers collect foods from the four corners 

 of the world and pass them along to the retail stores 

 and through the retail stores to the consumer. The 

 average grocery store could no more buy each of its 

 many hundred brands of food products direct from the 

 makers or growers than each producer could sell direct 

 to the consumer, hence the jobbers storehouses serve as 

 intermediaries between the producer and consumer. 



The jobbing houses have represented for years an 

 organized industry that the average layman knows little 

 or nothing about. They have their central organization, 

 their branch houses, their buying field agents ; and have 

 fitted into the needs of the country so closely that we are 

 hardly aware of their existence. Their business repre- 

 sents a sum of money equalling, if not exceeding, the 

 fruit crop of the United States. 



Their methods of operating are not much different 

 from those of any other business concern. Their agents 

 are sent out into the field to contract supplies, sometimes 

 two or three years ahead of time. They visit the various 

 canning factories and arrange for so many thousand 

 cases of canned goods. Sometimes they even furnish 

 the seed to grow the vegetables, and occasionally have had 

 to buy the canning factory to get the goods put up the 

 way they are wanted. They visit the fruit-producing 

 sections and contract for the fruit they want. They 



