THE FRUIT MARKET 21 



of dollars' worth of business. The position is such as, 

 in ordinary business life, would often command a sal- 

 ary of five thousand dollars a year or more. 



2. Irregularity in grading . — Unless all the fruit can 

 pass practically under the eye and through the hands 

 of one man, it is impossible to preserve a uniform 

 grade. If, as often happens, the sorting is done by a 

 committee, selected more with a view to mollifying the 

 feelings of sundry subscribers than to the expertness 

 of the packers, then all sorts of grading result. Then 

 the association sends out one grade of fruit to-day 

 as XXX and another grade to-morrow under the 

 same mark. This kind of business immediately de- 

 stroys the confidence of the purchaser, while demand 

 and price decrease. This difficulty of maintaining a 

 uniform grade for a fruit association has proven, in 

 practice, to be one of the most serious. 



3. hiversion of competition. — In the ordinary course 

 of trade, including the sale of fruit, the best fruit 

 brings the most money and pays the largest profit. 

 A man has every incentive, therefore, to grow the best 

 fruit he can and to pack it as well as he knows how. 

 When interests are pooled in a selling association, the 

 poor fruit brings just as much as the good. The man 

 who can squeeze in the poorest fruit, grown and 

 handled at the least cost, thus makes the largest profit. 

 The competition is thus turned from the production of 

 the best fruit to the production of the worst. Every- 

 man tries to .see how poorly he can do. The eternal 

 law of progress, that law which provides for the sur- 

 vival of the fittest, is abrogated, and, temporarily, the 



