AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



415 



to protect against adulteration. Comb- 

 honey is not adulterated, so the matter 

 of a trade-mark does not directly con- 

 cern myself, or other comb-honey raisers. 

 Lei us see how it will affect extracted- 

 honey. 



John Smith produces a> good article of 

 extracted-honey, but he finds that where- 

 ever he puts his honey on the market, 

 there is more or less a fear of adultera- 

 tion in the minds of those who should be 

 the consumers of his product. The peo- 

 ple know (and bee-keepers do not deny 

 it), that honey is adulterated. They 

 would buy if they were sure of its purity, 

 but they are afraid John's honey is some 

 of the adulterated stuff. 



To be sure, to a limited extent, John 

 has built up a reputation at home, where 

 people will buy his honey in preference 

 to any other, having learned that it is 

 always good, and that reputation is slowly 

 growing in adjacent neighborhoods ; but 

 what John wants, is some way whereby, 

 no matter how large a crop he has, he 

 can put it upon any market in the land, 

 feeling sure that the public will have the 

 same confidence in it that his immediate 

 acquaintances have. 



Now, this trade-mark is intended to 

 cover this very ground. It is simply a 

 mark that the public will soon recognize 

 as being evidence that any honey on 

 which it is found, is the Simon-pure arti- 

 cle, that has come from the hands of a 

 bee-keeper, for the use of the trade-mark 

 will not be given to any others. Only 

 •members of the Union will be allowed to 

 use the trade-mark, and this will imme- 

 diately swell the ranks, for it will espe- 

 cially meet the wants of that large class 

 who have not a wide enough market, and 

 who can thus depend on a ready-made 

 reputation, that is current anywhere. 

 As the public becomes educated with re- 

 gard to the trade-mark, it will, in a little 

 while, refuse to buy any honey not prop- 

 erly marked, and thus adulterators will 

 give up the business in disgust, simply 

 for lack of a market. 



Thus, I have given, as fairly as I un- 

 derstand it, the gist of the argument in 

 favor of a trade-mark. It is to protect 

 against adulteration. And it may be well, 

 in this connection, to inquire whether 

 there is any better way to fight adulter- 

 ation. There are State laws against it, 

 but, on page 319, friend Heddon takes 

 the ground that if we do not secure the 

 trade-mark, that we would better not 

 make any attempt to enforce those laws. 

 Indeed, he thinks that if we have no 

 trade-mark, there is nothing left for us 

 to do but to keep still and let adultera- 

 tors entirely alone. This, presumably. 



on the ground that adulteration is ex- 

 ceedingly hard to detect, and still harder 

 to prove, and that a prosecution would 

 only educate the people as to the exist- 

 ence of adulteration. 



Let us look at the objections. Return 

 to the case of John Smith : He has taken 

 great pains to produce a superior article! 

 His reputation is to that effect, just so 

 far as that reputation reaches, and when 

 he adopts the trade-mark, if it makes 

 any difference, it will be to substitute for 

 John Smith's reputation, the reputation 

 of that trade-mark. In other words, the 

 average reputation of all the honey cov- 

 ered by that trade-mark. For it must 

 be remembered that a great deal of 

 honey — genuine honey — is of very poor 

 quality, and John pools his chances in 

 the average lot. 



So it seems to me that the private 

 trade-mark of John Smith is worth more 

 to him than one which covers a poorer 

 class of honey, and those who, like John, 

 have taken pains to build up a good rep- 

 utation as to quality, will hardly want to 

 divide up that reputation with those who 

 put upon the market a poor, half-ripened 

 product. Still, for the sake of the gen- 

 eral good, John might be willing to leave 

 out of consideration his personal profit, 

 only so that adulteration might be 

 stopped. But let us see how it would 

 work, supposing all bee-keepers went 

 into it, heartily resolved to stand by each 

 other. The number would very soon run 

 up into the thousands, and, of course, 

 there would be no restriction as to who 

 should join, only so the required amount 

 should be paid. 



Among others, Richard Roe & Co., of 

 Pekachunk, join the ranks, and it turns 

 out that the "Co." is none other than 

 the notorious adulterator, John Doe, of 

 Chicago. What can you do about it ? 

 Even supposing you can stop his using 

 the trade-mark under that name, there 

 are a thousand other names under which 

 he can get it. 



As the papers have been relied on to 

 spread the knowledge of the trade-mark, 

 you may rely upon them, with still more 

 implicit confidence, to spread the news 

 that spurious honey is sold under that 

 same trade-mark. If it be true that, 

 in the event of failure to establish a 

 trade-mark, the only thing left is to keep 

 still, for fear of raising a smudge that 

 will do us harm, then the same reason 

 would hold good, and make it necessary 

 to keep still, no matter how many adul- 

 terators were using the trade-mark. 



I have tried to give a summary of all 

 the arguments that have been advanced 

 in favor of the use of a general trade- 



