THE FRUIT MARKET 29 



The conditions affecting the demand for any given 

 class of fruits are price, quality, acquaintance, season, 

 supply of other fruits. 



1. Price. — It has already been seen that price influ- 

 ences production, and so reacts on itself. But it influ- 

 ences demand still more, thus reacting doubly upon 

 itself. Nothing else will move a quantity of fruit so 

 quickly as an attractive reduction in price. 



2. Quality. — Good fruit sells much more rapidly 

 than poor fruit. The buyer who gets a good package 

 of fruit will likely want another. Poor fruit is apt to 

 lag in the market at any price. 



3. Acquaintance. — Buyers call for those fruits with 

 which they are acquainted. There is a steady demand 

 for Baldwin apples and practically none for Sutton, 

 though Sutton is a much fairer and better apple of the 

 same season. The reason is that Baldwin is known to 

 everybody, while Sutton is a stranger. A friend of 

 mine had to give away his De Soto plums the first year 

 because nobody knew what they were ; but the suc- 

 ceeding year his customers a,sked for them and pre- 

 ferred them to Ivombards. There is only a small mar- 

 ket for American apples in continental Kurope, for the 

 single reason that American apples are hardly known 

 there. When the excessive crop of 1896 forced Ameri- 

 can apples into German markets they found friends, 

 and in 1897 German buyers were anxiously inquiring 

 for the fruit they could not get. The Canadian gov- 

 ernment, in seeking to stimulate the demand for 

 Canadian apples in England, does so chiefly by making 

 the fruit better known to English consumers. 



