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102 THIRD ANNUAL REPORT 



Mr. Niver — One of the commission men told me he had 

 very great difficulty in selling very fine honey. It weighed 

 over a pound apiece, and the merchants did not want to sell 

 any such honey. They were obliged to sell by the piece, as 

 the competitor did who had lighter-weight honey. The finer 

 honey remained there, while the poorer honey went off rap- 

 idly. 



Mr. Kannenberg — I think Mr. Niver is in a different light 

 than I am. I would rather sell my honey by the pound, and 

 I know the merchants to whom I sell it would rather buy it 

 by the pound, because they sell it by the piece, and they do 

 not have to figure if the box weighs an ounce or a quarter of 

 an ounce less. They sell it by the section for so much, and 

 don't have to weigh it at all. 



Mr. Wilcox — I have had some experience. I wanted some 

 honey very- badly this fall. A friend of mine lo miles away 

 had some to sell. He was one_of those men that was just as 

 positive as I was. He would '^ell by the piece and would not 

 weigh. I would buy by weight, and would not buy unless I 

 could see the pieces, and I could not buy it. They were 

 24-pound cases. We could agree on the price of the cases if 

 we could know how heavy they were. Could not do that. 

 Now these cases might have weighed i.i; pounds, 24 sections. 

 They might have weighed 25 pounds ; they might have weighed 

 20 pounds. I know from years of experience that ordinarily 

 they weigh not less than 22 or more than 23, but some weigh 

 as low as 15 or 16, and some as hieh as 25, and I could not 

 afford to buy. I don't want to buy honey by the piece unless 

 I can see the pieces. Now if you guarantee them to weigh 

 or to average any certain weight, it is equivalent to weighing 

 them. That is the very point — if you guarantee these cases to 

 go about 22 pounds, and they do not go over 18, it is no sale. 

 If they go 26 pounds you have given them honey for nothing, 



Mr. wver — You have struck a point right there. I sold 

 by sampte, and my sample was guaranteed to be the poorest 

 sample that could be picked out of any case that I sold. A 

 No. I would be guaranteed nothing poorer than that, and 

 that everything would be as good as that or better. I did it 

 that way. Why did the merchant prefer that? When you 

 sell by the pound the bee-keeper would put his fancy, his No. 

 I, No. 2, all in one case to make it average a certain amount ; 

 but when the merchant tries to sell by the piece how is he 

 going to grade it? He cannot say, "Take your choice," 

 when one is worth double what another is; one weighs 10 

 ounces and another 16. You are obliged to grade correctly 

 when you sell by the piece, and you are obliged to pack 

 your honey so that there will be practically no choice — 

 the last section in the case you sell as quickly as the first; 

 and that grading I advocated in New York City, and it went 

 into use so that it was quoted in the papers by the case in 

 New York a good many times. A good many dealers quoted 

 it by the case instead of by the pound, and I believe that that 

 suited the merchants much better, because if they had only 

 No. 2 honey they wanted to pay No. 2 prices, and if they 

 wanted fancy honey they paid for that. 



