THE STRAWBERRY 



A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE INTERESTS 

 OF STRAWBERRY PRODUCTION IN ALL ITS BRANCHES 



Volume I No. 3 



Three Rivers, Mich., March, 1906 



$L00 a Year 



WITH the opening of the Southern shipping sea- 

 son but a few weeks away, the strawberry grow- 

 ers who have thus far neglected to arrange for 

 the marketing of their crops or to provide some 

 plan for their economical and profitable handling should be up 

 and doing. Whether you are engaged in growing the fruit on 

 an extensive commercial scale, or simply grow a limited quan- 

 tity for market, th s applies with equal force, for all, both great 

 and small, desire to make a success of any enterprise in which 

 they are engaged. 



Success in the strawberry business lies not alone in good soil, 

 good plants, good 

 cultivation, clean 

 picking, honest 

 packing. All these 

 are elements of in- 

 estimable import- 

 ance. But if you 

 have had or done 

 all these, yet fail to 

 market your prod- 

 uct wisely and 

 well, the business; 

 as a business, is a 

 a failure. Success 

 at this point pre- 

 supposes a know- 

 ledgeof markets and 

 market conditions. 

 Of course, if your 

 product is limited 

 and you have a lo- 

 cal market amply 

 large to consume it, 

 the problem is a very twin double-hedge row on m. n 



simple one. But 

 in the nature of the case, these instances, considering the great 

 number of persons interested and the vastness of the total out- 

 put, must be rare. The man with a small output and a local 

 market, with good .berries, attractively packed on the lines of a 

 "square deal," has sold his crop when he has accomplished 

 these points. But to the great commercial growers, who carry 

 on extensive enterprises, every year becoming larger and more 

 complex in their relations to the world of commerce, problems 

 of an entirely different order call for solution, and to these are 

 the suggestions that follow more particularly addressed. 



California orange growers, driven, some years ago, to organ- 

 ize for mutual defense against extortionate freight rates on the 

 one hand and dishonest practices on the part of commission men 

 on the other, found that in organization alone could they defy 

 and ultimately defeat these powerful combinations which were 



driving them on to the rocks of ruin. From their experiences 

 we may learn some valuable lessons. The first work of the 

 new organization was to study the situation, discover the weak 

 spots in its own armor and prepare to meet conditions as they 

 were. One of the first discoveries was this — and let us ever 

 have it before us: The thing that had made many of the prac- 

 tices of the dishonest commission men possible was the indiffer- 

 ent quality of much of the fruit that was sent East from Cali- 

 fornia. Smith and Jones and Brown might pick the best of 

 oranges only, and pack them to the queen's taste, but if some of 

 Bunker's weazened or rotting oranges went into the same car, 



the entire consign- 

 ment suffered a loss. 

 Therefore, said the 

 leaders of the or- 

 ganization, the first 

 thing for us to do is 

 to standardize our 

 products, grade 

 them rigidly and 

 put each grade by 

 itself and make it 

 light its own battles 

 and command its 

 own price. This 

 was done and in 

 such a way that 

 every box shipped 

 out under the seal 

 of that organization 

 was accepted with- 

 out question and 

 received the mar- 

 ket price. Of 

 course, such an or- 

 ganization as this 

 carried weight in dealing with transportation companies, and al- 

 though we cannot say that perfection even has been approxi- 

 mated in this direction, and probably never shall be, so long as 

 unrestrained monopoly and unjust discriminations are permitted 

 in transportation, the improvement even here was considerable 

 under the operation of this organization. 



The necessity of such an organization is even more pro- 

 nounced in the case of strawberry growers, for they must ship their 

 product on the instant, and it is all important that it be shipped 

 to a waiting and hungry market rather than a glutted one. 

 Last season there were whole train loads of berries dumped out 

 upon the ground at Wilmington, N. C, because of the failure 

 of the iced-car lines to furnish cars in sufficient number to han- 

 dle the crop. Fortunately, in this instance, there was an or- 

 ganization, and the car company was under a contract of such a 



EDGERTON'S FARM, PETOSKEY, MICH. 



(See Mr. Edgenon's Article on Next Page) 



OOPVRiaHT. loos. BY '^Hl KKLLOOa ruaLiaHIN4 oo. 



