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believe there are too many middlemen. We believe that fewer middlemen 

 could handle our foodstuffs and make a good living, perhaps a better living 

 than the farmers who produce them. 



A few years ago I spent some time in the Kalamazoo celery district. 

 I found that a dozen plants of celery were delivered at the packing house in 

 Kalamazoo for ten cents. I found that these packers were shipping to 

 State College, and upon inquiry at State College I learned that the retail 

 price was five to ten cents a plant. In other words, a single plant at 

 State College was worth as much as a dozen plants at Kalamazoo. Many 

 illustrations might be given to show that products often pass through the 

 hands of three or four men before they reach the consumer. This condi- 

 tion should be corrected. 



There are transportation difficulties and many of them are hard to 

 solve. We must have better country roads everywhere in Pennsylvania 

 before the farmer can haul his produce to market or to the shipping station 

 in first-class condition. 



Thousands of bushels of apples went to waste under the trees in Center 

 County last fall. I presume one of the main reasons for this loss is the fact 

 that the farmers of Center County are not organized. The growers who had 

 a large crop were not acquainted with Philadelphia dealers. Very few of 

 the farmers had sufficient apples to make up carload lots and no one was 

 sufficiently interested to collect the apples and make shipments in carload 

 lots. In this particular instance, it is readily seen that a city organization, 

 which would have furnished the necessary information to the growers 

 relative to city buyers, and a rural co-operative association, might have 

 made it possible to ship the apples at a profit. 



The students of the Department of Horticulture of the Pennsylvania 

 State College have been making some experiments in shipping tomatoes 

 by parcel post. The best cardboard packages available were secured to 

 contain the tomatoes. They have been shipped to Philadelphia as well as 

 to other points in various parts of the country. In very few instances have 

 the tomatoes arrived in good condition. As a rule they have been more or 

 less crushed in shipment and the juice has been oozing out of them when 

 received. This single experiment proves that the present method of hand- 

 ling perishable and easily injured products by parcel post as now managed 

 is unsatisfactory. It indicates that the postal authorities will find it neces- 

 sary to provide hampers for the handling of farm produce before we can 

 expect satisfactory results. 



There is a great diversity of opinion on the various questions relating 

 to storage of farm products. All of us are ready to admit that there must 

 be facilities for storage, both in the country and in the city. Ample storage 

 facilities are essential to the equal distribution of farm products throughout 

 the year. If we do not have liberal storage facilities, farm products will 

 be dumped on the market in great quantities at certain seasons of the year, 

 causing market slumps and depreciation in prices, which are usually 



