1920 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



119 



A Remarkable Selling Campaign 



How a New York Newspaper Has 

 Sold 79 Tons of Honey in Sixty- 

 Pound Cans Direct from the 

 Car to the Consumer. 



ONE of the most remarkable cam- 

 paigns for selling honey direct 

 to the consumer has recently 

 been carried on by the New York 

 Globe. Since the memorable ship- 

 ment of ten cars of honey by the late 

 J. S. Harbison from his apiaries in 

 California to the New York market 

 in 1876, there has been nothing to 

 equal it in calling the attention of the 

 public to the value of honey as food 

 and to disabuse the public of the 

 prejudice against honey in the can- 

 died state. A few such campaigns 

 would create a market for honey in 

 sixty-pound cans that would take the 

 present supply direct to the con- 

 sumer in the most economical way 

 possible. This campaign has resulted 

 in hundreds of families getting a lib- 

 eral supply of honey at practically 

 the wholesale price, while the pro- 

 ducers have been able to sell direct at 

 a saving. Of course no account has 

 been made of the cost to the news- 

 paper conducting the campaign. The 

 good will of the readers of the pub- 

 lication will probably be considered 

 a sufficient compensation. 



Alfred W. McCann, a member of 

 the stafif of the New York Globe, met 

 a beekeeper, Joseph J. Anderson, of 

 Idaho, once upon a time. Just how 

 this chance meeting led to the distri- 

 bution of honey by the carload, to the 

 readers of the paper to which Mc- 

 Cann is attached, is a mere matter of 

 detail. It is sufficient to state that 

 McCann is a newspaper man with a 

 vision. When the recent scarcity of 

 sugar, or manipulation of the market, 

 or whatever cause raised the price to 

 unheard-of levels, the New York 

 newspaper man remembered his 

 honey-producing friend in the far 

 west. Two and two sometimes make 

 more than four. In this case a news- 

 paper with a vision and a beekeeper 

 who was alive to a real opportunity 

 saved the consumers of New York 

 City several thousand dollars on the 

 price of several cars of the finest 

 white honey, and incidentally demon- 

 strated the weakness of our present 

 system of distribution. 



On the front page of the Globe, on 

 January S, appeared an announce- 

 ment that candied honey from Idaho, 

 in sixty-pound cans, would be deliv- 

 ered to consumers within fifteen 

 miles of the city hall in New York 

 City, at 23 cents per pound, the price 

 at which sugar was then retailing. 

 Within five days orders were received 

 for more than forty tons of honey 

 The man who says that the consumer 

 will not buy, except in the small con- 

 tainer, has another guess coming. The 

 New York Globe has demonstrated 

 that the consumer will buy in larger 

 quantity if we make it to his inter- 

 est to do so. We quote the follow- 

 ing from that publication under date 

 of January 10: 



"It is time the honey industry ap- 

 preciated the fact that, as now con- 

 ducted, the honey business itself is 

 the greatest enemy of the bees and 

 beekeeper. 



"Nothing so discourages honey con- 

 sumption as the profiteering prices at 

 which, in silly little glass packages, 

 this most delectable of all sweets is 

 peddled out to the consumer. Noth- 

 ing so encourages the manufacturer 

 of substitutes. 



"What a lesson to the honey trade! 

 If people will buy 84,240 pounds of 

 honey in sixty-pound tins in three 

 days , how much honey do you think 

 (would be bought if it could be ob- 

 tained in ten, or even twenty-pound 

 tins? 



"Everybody cannot buy sixty 

 pounds of honey, and I am thinking 

 of the millions of buyers who are de- 

 prived of a share in this orgy of in- 

 nocent delight for no other reason 

 than their inability to afford such 

 luxury in wholesale lots. It is a 

 crime to keep them from generous 

 quantities of pure candied honey at a 

 decent price solely because the 

 honey packers make their 300 per 

 cent profit by converting the solid 

 honesty of the comb into a fluid, arti- 

 ficially achieved, that can be sold at 

 absurd prices in petty little dribs 

 through the instrumentality of glass- 

 ware that subsequently finds its way 

 to the dump. 



"The whole system is wrong and 

 the Globe's extraordinary experience 

 in connection with the enthusiastic 

 response of honey lovers to the op- 

 portunity now presented demon- 

 strates the incalculable benefits to be 

 derived by the public through the 

 agency of common sense merchandis- 

 ing. 



"Hundreds of millions of dollars 

 could be saved annually by the gen- 

 eral adoption of this method of dis- 

 tribution in the sale of food necessi- 

 ties. The saving in money would be 

 insignificant in importance compared 

 with the general improvement in 

 public health that would inevitably 

 follow. 



"Millions of children today con- 

 sume the craziest kind of table syr- 

 ups in enormous quantities simply be- 

 cause they are supposed to be cheap 

 as compared with the price of honey. 

 Yet honey, if honestly sold to the 

 plain people, rwould be even cheaper, 

 despite its infinite superiority, than 

 any chemical contraption ever com- 

 pounded. 



"Every now and then, as things 

 now go, the average child participates 

 in a few teaspoonfuls of the contents 

 of a little five-ounce tumbler of honey 

 costing all the way up to $1.50 a 

 pound. If the price were what it 

 should be, instead of a few teaspoon- 

 fuls once in a while, the growing 

 child would eat regularly big, white, 

 sticky chunks of pure candied honey, 

 obtaining at least three times as 

 much as can now be purchased in 

 fancy, inedible glass containers, at 

 the same price — three times as much 

 and twice as good." 



There seems to be no limit to the 

 amount of honey the public will buy 

 if it is offered in convenient form at 



an attractive price. Through the 

 kindness of readers of this Journal 

 we received several copies of the 

 New York paper and were thus kept 

 informed as to the progress of the 

 campaign. The issue of the Globe 

 dated February 5, just a month later 

 than the first received, stated that 

 158,000 pounds, or 79 tons of honey 

 had been sold direct to consumers in 

 sixty-pound cans. If it had been 

 available in ten-pound cans the quan- 

 tity would have been greatly in- 

 creased, but 60 pounds was the small- 

 est quantity offered to any pur- 

 chaser. Since the delays in delivery 

 through storms and c.ther contingen- 

 cies made it impossible to secure de- 

 livery of the cars as expected, hun- 

 dreds of consumers were unable to 

 get their orders filled. Some orders 

 had been received together with cash 

 in payment more than a month be- 

 fore the honey arrived from Idaho. 



A final feature of special interest 

 was the distribution of 16,000 pounds 

 of honey by the Globe to 26,668 or- 

 phans, waifs and other poor children, 

 many of them blind and crippled. 

 This latter amount represented the 

 profits of the newspaper on the 

 transaction, and hundreds of little 

 children who had never before 

 tasted honey had the treat of their 

 lives. 



The beekeeping industry owes a 

 vote of thanks to the New York 

 Globe and to Alfred W. McCann for 

 demonstrating that the public is 

 ready to buy honey in quantity and 

 that people are not afraid of candied 

 honey when its real nature is ex- 

 plained to them. Joseph J. Anderson 

 is to be congratulated upon his 

 prompt co-operation with the news- 

 paper which has resulted in a demon- 

 stration of a practical way to sell 

 honey in quantity, direct to the con- 

 sumers. If co-operative organiza- 

 tions of large producers will act upon 

 this suggestion there will be no trou- 

 ble in disposing of next year's crop 

 at a profit to the producer and a big 

 saving to the customer. F. C. P. 



An Interesting Distinction 



Mr. Ernest E. Kirkham, of North 

 Carolina sends us an interesting cir- 

 cular describing a remedy which he 

 recently found on sale at a village 

 store. The "Hayes Healing Honey 

 Compound" is said to contain a num- 

 ber of valuable ingredients, including 

 "Wild Bee Honey." The circular 

 states as follows regarding this 

 honey: 



"The honey made by the wild bee 

 is very dark in color and is gathered 

 from wild flowers, while the domestic 

 or home bee gets its honey from gar- 

 den flowers. Physicians have discov- 

 ered that the wild bee honey can be 

 eaten by a diabetic patient when or- 

 dinary domestic honey or sweets must 

 be avoided." 



Although we have heard many 

 ridiculous statements regarding bees 

 and honey, this is certainly a new 

 one. 



