, _ --afB.- 1» ,-i ■.:^ J- _■ ,^ - , .- .Ti .-^ . ■■TS--7rtr---' .'!^-->;i';-^^:^-Ti 





174 



SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



the number of inquiries that I have 

 had in 7 years, but I think it is over 

 7000 in regard to bees and honey. 



Mr. France — I would Hke to get the 

 expression of the honey-producers on 

 this subject. They are interested in the 

 disposition of their product. Various 

 ways have ben suggested, and this means 

 of advertising is a good one. There 

 was a fund transferred over to the Na- 

 tional Association, and it has been wait- 

 ing for efifective work until we could 

 get a system and something that would 

 give satisfaction. To get a committee 

 that would be satisfactory to the pro- 

 ducers and to those who had transfered 

 this fund to the National has been a 

 difficult matter. That, I think, is aDout 

 through with, and the next question 

 came up wherein or how we shall be- 

 gin the use of that fund to advertise 

 and create a demand for more honey. 

 This proposition that has just now been 

 discussed will be one of the first that 

 that committee will consider. Two at 

 least of the three I know are favorable 

 to starting such a move in the near 

 future. Other ways have been suggest- 

 ed, and the more that you can suggest 

 to this committee the better, and save 

 your time for the convention. I be- 

 lieve one of the things we have got to 

 employ, as has been done in other lines, 

 is telling the usefulness of honey to 

 the public. When they realize the value 

 of it as a food, then enlighten, in some 

 way, the public, that when they are buy- 

 ing honey they are getting Nature's pur- 

 est wholesome sweet for their stomachs, 

 and you have established a demand for 

 hone}-. 



Dr. Bohrer — And that what they will 

 buy will be honey. 



Mr. France — Yes, sir. 



Mr. Burdette — I want to say I do 

 not know anything about honey. I 

 would not attempt to write these articles 

 myself. The horticultural articles were 

 all of them prepared under the direc- 

 tion of experts. Most of them were 

 prepared by Professor Irish, who is in 

 charge of Shaw's Gardens at St. Louis, 

 one of the largest botanical gardens in 

 the country, and they were sent to me. 

 I simply took them — most of them were 

 too long — I made it a rule not to send 

 out any article of over 300 words — di- 

 vided them into appropriate lengths, 

 and re-wrote them so as to get the "fea- 

 ture." as we call it in the newspaper 

 business, at the top ; simply put them in- 



to shape so that the newspaper editors 

 would not have to revise them; and 

 that is all I did, simply to distribute 

 these things to the newspapers in the 

 proper form. As has been stated here, 

 they should be written first by men 

 who know honey; that is, the material 

 should be supplied by those men, and 

 all I could attempt to do would be to 

 put that material into the form for 

 the newspapers. There are a good 

 many things to consider when you do 

 that. I am a newspaper man. I think 

 I know the way to do that, although I 

 don't know anything about honey. That 

 is all that I would do, and the estimate 

 I made for this experimental work was 

 simply putting it into shape and send- 

 ing to the newspapers. For preparing 

 material it would be different. 



Mr. Hutchinson — Speaking of writing 

 some articles to do some good to sell 

 honey, I have some honey of my own 

 this year and I wrote an advertisement 

 advertising that honey. I tried to write 

 it in such a way that a man reading that 

 advertisement would want some of that 

 honey. A man wrote me, "I have been 

 tasting that honey ever since I read that 

 advertisement." That is the kind of 

 an article we want to write for the 

 papers; when a man reads the article 

 he wants to go right out and get some 

 honey and try it. 



Mr. Taylor — There is a distinction 

 I think we ought to make in this mat- 

 ter of advertising. That i.s, the differ- 

 ence between advertising a person and 

 advertising a product. Now Mr. 

 Hutchinson sold his honey because he 

 advertised himself; he advertised the 

 fact that he had honey to sell. It was 

 not because he gave any new informa- 

 tion about honey that enabled him to 

 sell. It was because he advertised' him- 

 self. 



Pres. York — Mr. Hutchinson said the 

 man was tasting the honey all the time, 

 and not tasting Mr. Hutchinson! 



Mr. Taylor — Because he had a good 

 deal of faith in Mr. Hutchinson, and 

 knew any honey he extracted of course 

 would be extra-good. 



Mr. Chapman — I would like to call 

 attention to a fact that is really before 

 the meeting here. I see by the news- 

 papers that one of the women's clubs 

 here is discussing the reading of Dick- 

 ens' works because he always refers to 

 eating and drinking, claiming that the 

 references to eating and drinking cause 



