SPECIAL FRUIT ORGANIZATIONS 233 
buying and distributing of fruit is only a part of their 
work, but a part that is so important that it ought to be 
included in any discussion on the marketing of fruit. 
The great function of the jobbing houses is to supply 
food products to the retail grocery stores throughout the 
country. They are the food bankers of the country. 
The fruit jobbers collect foods from the four corners 
of the world and pass them along to the retail stores 
and through the retail stores to the consumer. The 
average grocery store could no more buy each of its 
many hundred brands of food products direct from the 
makers or growers than each producer could sell direct 
to the consumer, hence the jobbers storehouses serve as 
intermediaries between the producer and consumer. 
The jobbing houses have represented for years an 
organized industry that the average layman knows little 
or nothing about. They have their central organization, 
their branch houses, their buying field agents; and have 
fitted into the needs of the country so closely that we are 
hardly aware of their existence. Their business repre- 
sents a sum of money equalling, if not exceeding, the 
fruit crop of the United States. 
Their methods of operating are not much different 
from those of any other business concern. Their agents 
are sent out into the field to contract supplies, sometimes 
two or three years ahead of time. They visit the various 
canning factories and arrange for so many thousand 
cases of canned goods. Sometimes they even furnish 
the seed to grow the vegetables, and occasionally have had 
to buy the canning factory to get the goods put up the 
way they are wanted. They visit the fruit-producing 
sections and contract for the fruit they want. They 
