8o 



time to time, even under the best conditions 

 of marketing. Vegetables are perishable, and 

 heavy and sudden gluts of the markets are of com- 

 mon occurrence. Fluctuations often occur over- 

 night, impossible of belief by the shipper a long 

 distance away. During the present season in the 

 Columbus market good string beans were selling 

 one day at from $1.25 to $1.75 per hamper. The 



a. Six-basket carrier, b. Hamper. 



following morning beans of similar quality could 

 scarcely be moved at all at 25 and 50 cents per 

 hamper, and many hundred hampers were dumped 

 at a total loss to the grower. It would be almost 

 impossible for a commission man to explain this 

 situation satisfactorily to any shipper not close 

 enough to get this information at first hand. So much 

 has been said and written about the methods em- 

 ployed by the commission men to rob the producer 

 of his rightful returns that the side of the honest 

 commission merchant has been almost entirely over- 

 looked, very much to the ultimate detriment of the 

 producer as well as to the wholesale business itself. 



