CHAPTER XII 



MARKETING FRUIT 



To produce high-grade fruit and forego half its value just for the 

 want of extra effort in the last lap can only be characterized as what 

 it really is foolishness. That is a downright good old English 

 word which we do not think too strong here. 



The strict grading and careful packing of all our best fruit has 

 become a necessary art, more and more acknowledged and acted 

 upon by up-to-date growers. It was not always so. It does not 

 seem long indeed, it is not long ago that apples, pears, and plums 

 were marketed as gathered, with no greater care than turnips and 

 potatoes, and a grower who really took pains to grade and pack 

 aright was generally derided by his fellows, because (and it is true) 

 he used to get no better prices than they. 



English growers have been slow to learn, and nothing but the 

 spur of necessity, driven in by keen foreign competition, could 

 arouse us as we have been aroused. We saw that overseas growers, 

 thousands of miles from our markets, could make our produce 

 almost a negligible quantity, not because of any super-excellence 

 in their fruit, but simply by the adoption of enlightened and 

 dependable methods of marketing. 



True there were a few voices (all honour to them) raised as far 

 back as the 'eighties, but they were as those crying in the wilderness, 

 and though they were stimulated and powerfully assisted by the 

 uncompromising advocacy of The Fruitgrower very early in the 

 'nineties and ever since, it can be said that only recently has the 

 lesson been really learnt. Truly, our insular prejudice was as 

 thick as the hide of a rhinoceros, but to-day, though we have not 

 adopted the compulsory standards of our competitors, we are 

 advancing by leaps and bounds. 



The commercial fruit exhibitions held every autumn are proving 

 a great educational force, and provide object-lessons that none but 

 the most hopelessly dense can ignore, and we are justified in looking 

 forward to the time when British-grown fruit, without a rival in 

 any other clime, will outvie all its competitors as much in its 



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