IS^'l 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



b25 





Report of the North American ConveMtiou Held 

 at St. Joseph, Mo., Oct. 10-12, 1894. 



REPORTED BY LOUIS R. LIGHTOS. 



THIRD DAY— Morning Session. 

 IContlnued from page 310.] 



The next on the program was the annual address by the 

 President, which was delivered as follows, by Rev. E. T. 

 Abbott : 



THE president's ANNUAL ADDRESS. 



Ladles and Oentlcmen, and Fellow Bce-Keepers : 



I had hoped that I would get 15 or 20 minutes to myself 

 that I might jot down a few things which have past through 

 my mind during the last five or six weeks, and some things 

 which have past through it since you came here. You who 

 have been here and seen what I have had on my shoulders 

 know that I have not had much time for anything of the kind, 

 as I have felt it my duty to give myself up to your comfort, 

 and to aid you iu every way I possibly could. I have just 

 taken time to go to my office and see what was there, but 

 have let my business alone, and given myself entirely to the 

 meeting. I have been absent from the city for a few weeks, 

 and work has so accumulated that it was impossible for me to 

 give any time to a formal address. 



I hardly ever make an apology, as I generally tell what I 

 know ; and, when I run out of things I know, I tell what I do 

 not know. 



My experience among bee-keepers, and, in fact, among 

 people engaged in every kind of industry, has thoroughly 

 demonstrated to me the fact that business in this country in 

 the future must be done on closer lines and a more economical 

 basis ; there can be no question about that. We have enjoyed 

 the benefit of this great and wonderful country of ours with- 

 out thinking of the possibility of there boing any change, or of 

 adverse times coming upon us : and noA' that they have come 

 on us, we find ourselves unprepared for them, or at least many 

 of us are. and the result is that all such have been made to 

 suffer. I KuOAf how it has been in other cities when there was 

 a few final. cial failures, and some of the banks had to close, 

 but we have had nothing of the kind here. We had a run on 

 one of our banks, but it did not affect it, as it was prepared 

 for such an emergency, and then some of us interested our- 

 selves in the bank's welfare, appealed to the men and women 

 to go home and use good judgment, and we succeeded in get- 

 ting them to do so, and the scare past off, and we got rid of a 

 serious financial embarrassment; but, notwithstanding this, 

 the people who are in debt, and who have not learned to do 

 business on a cash basis, have suffered here as well as in other 

 places. 



Here is a lesson to the beekeepers — not only the idea of 

 paying cash for a thing when they get it, but the idea of doing 

 all business on a cash basis — the idea of working just as if 

 they expected something of the kind to come every year. I 

 know what would be my condition, financially, if I had not 

 done business along these lines for the last ten years. The 

 reason I make these remarks is, the subject of commission- 

 men has been prest on my mind by two or three letters which 

 I have received lately from bee-keepers who wanted this sub- 

 ject brought up at this convention. I was led to make a re- 

 mark yesterday that I thought needed some explanation, and 

 I think this a good time to do it. 



You will remember that I said that the commission busi- 

 ness was a " humbug." Now, I did not mean to say by that 

 that our commission-men were " humbugs," or that those of 

 any other city were humbugs. I do not think there is a sin- 

 gle man in this business in our city who could not be depended 

 upon to do just what he agreed to do, but at the same time if 

 I had 5,000 pounds of honey to sell, and lived 40 miles from 

 here, I would not ship that honey to any commission-man, un- 

 less he bought it before I shipt it, because I do not think that 

 the proper way to do business. If a man is not able, by vir- 

 tue of some disability, to transact his own business. It may 



then be well enough for him to employ a man to sell his goods 

 on commission, but if he feels that he has ordinary push and 

 ordinary business capacity, he would better take his own busi- 

 ness In his own hands. For, when he commits his business to 

 others, he is nearly always dissatisfied with the way that the 

 business is conducted. In many cases there Is, or may be, no 

 ground for his dissatisfaction, but he will think there is, all 

 the same, and the result is hard feelings. 



I know a man who sent a lot of honey to a commission- 

 man iu Kansas City, and the merchant held the honey for a 

 long time, and did the best he could with it, as he claimed to 

 me, and finally made a report; and that honey netted the 

 producer two cents per pound — for comb honey ! I wrote a 

 letter about it to the commission-man and askt for an expla- 

 nation, and received what seemed to me a satisfactory one, 

 and I think probably the man did the best he could under the 

 circumstances. 



The trouble seemed to be with the man at the other end. 

 He lived a long way from Kansas City, and he did not think 

 of the amount of freight it would cost to get this honey to 

 market; he did not inquire what it would cost to lay that 

 honey down in Kansas City. He did not seem to think of the 

 fact that he was located on a railroad which charged high 

 freight rates, neither did he think of the possibility of that 

 honey arriving in bad condition, as I was told that it did. 

 Now all of these things, of course, affected the net price of 

 the honey. It arrived in bad condition, and the freight was 

 very high, and when this and the commission were taken out 

 there was not much left for the shipper, but the commission 

 merchant was not to blame for this, if he got all he could for 

 the goods. 



1 shipt a hive once myself, to a man In Tacoma, Wash., 

 and I sent it by the cheapest way I could, but when it got 

 there the freight was .S3. 00, and the hive cost only .SL.25. I 

 supposed that the man wanted it, as he sent the money for it 

 when he ordered it, and I supposed also that he had made 

 inquiry what it would cost him to get it, but it turned out in 

 the end that he lost the hive rather than pay the freight. 

 Now this was a mistake on the part of the man who ordered 

 the hive ; he was foolish to order a hive so far away without 

 making any inquiry what it would cost him by freight or ex- 

 press to get it, unless he wanted it so badly that he could 

 afford to pay whatever it might cost. But, as to honey, I 

 know in many cases the trouble is with the shipper. 



You will infer from what I have said that I do not think 

 the commission-men are bad men, but I do think we make a 

 mistake when we depend on them to sell our goods. I do not 

 think any bee-keeper should permit his honey to leave his own 

 hands until he knows the exact amount of money he is to re- 

 ceive for it. I do not think it requires any extra skill to sell 

 honey; it simply requires that you go about it and do it, and 

 begin at home- 

 There is another thing I want to speak of, which was 

 suggested to my mind by the Farmers' Institutes, which I 

 think might be a good thing for this Association. I discovered 

 when I attended the first institute this fall, that the Board, 

 through the Secretary, had made arrangements to offer pre- 

 miums for the best display of nine different articles, such as 

 butter, wheat, corn, etc. The premium was the choice of any 

 agricultural, bee, poultry or general farm paper publlsht in 

 the State. Now, would it not be a wise thing for this Associa- 

 tion to take up something of this kind in the shape of pre- 

 miums? It would increase the circulation of the bee-papers, 

 and be a benefit in many ways, I think. Let the person who 

 gets the premium select the paper he or she wants, and then 

 there can be no trouble about favoring one paper more than 

 another. Of course, the publishers of the papers should put 

 them in to the Association at a low rate. 



That is the way the agricultural papers of this State do. 

 It will cost the State of Missouri SI50 or $200 this year, but 

 this means something. It means the education of the people, 

 it means lifting men to a higher level. So it would be by the 

 distribution of bee-papers; their circulation means the eleva- 

 tion ef the bee-keeping fraternity. There is not a bee-paper 

 publlsht in North America but what the reading of it would 

 be helpful. Whatever bee-paper a man reads will lift him up 

 a little. The beekeeper who fails to read, or does not take 

 any papers, will never succeed. Well, he may succeed after a 

 fashion, but he will never get very much enjoyment out of 

 life. It seems to me that this Association could not do a bet- 

 ter thing tnan to place in the hands of some of these people 

 one of the bee-papers. It would not cost much, and in my 

 opinion the money would be well spent. 



I have been thinking of the general public and their rela- 

 tion to this meeting. I do not like to complain of any of my 

 fellow citizens, but I will say I am sorry more of them have 

 not found time to look in upon us, especially the evening of 



