STANDARDIZATION AND INSPECTION FRESH FRUITS AND VEGETABLES 5 
The rapid shift in producing areas and increased production also brought 
about a great change in American dietary habits. Many adults can remember 
when fresh fruits and vegetables out of season were a rarity. This was when 
everyone looked forward to the time when melons, tomatoes, and other such 
products would be ripe. Such delicacies were enjoyed only during the season 
that each reached maturity in its own particular locality, and tin cans from the 
grocers’ shelves or jars from the home cellar furnished the chief supply of fruits 
and vegetables in winter. It is true that some fresh fruits and vegetables are still 
available only in season; but thanks to modern transportation systems and 
artificial ice, the seasons for the most perishable products have been extended. 
Such fresh vegetables as head lettuce, celery, snap beans, cauliflower, broccoli, 
carrots, and peppers, are obtainable in the markets of the larger cities almost 
the year-round. In winter the fresh fruit and vegetable department of any 
grocery store has probably become just as important as any of its nonperishable 
departments. 
ABUSES BROUGHT ABOUT BY LONG-DISTANCE DEALING 
As was to be expected, the changes brought about by the rapid shift from 
more or less local dealing to long-distance dealing in fruits and vegetables created 
many new problems. The late Wells A. Sherman,' who for many years admin- 
istered the fruit and vegetable standardization and inspection work of the United 
States Department of Agriculture, describes the situation around the turn of the 
century as follows in his book Merchandising Fresh Fruits and Vegetables: 
The worst abuses which the produce business has ever known grew rapidly and naturally 
out of the conditions brought about by the universal ice supply and the refrigerator car. 
The wholesale handler of perishables in the city, whether he was a commission man or buyer, 
was no longer in personal touch with the grower. The distant grower seldom if ever visited 
the market and usually knew nothing of market prices or of the condition of his goods on 
arrival except what the receiver chose to tell him. 
The inevitable happened. There was “easy money” for the unscrupulous man who could 
get goods sent to him on commission from afar. The industry became infested with a class 
of parasites who preyed upon the shipper and interfered with the business of the legitimate 
trader. . . . The abuses were not all on the city end. The distant shipper was often a 
plunger. He, too, was after “easy money.” He had no reputation to maintain in the far- 
away market. He was often guilty of false packing. He frequently made little effort to 
exclude the stuff which should not have been shipped. If he had an opportunity to sell 
outright, his products were always represented as of the best. The city merchant who was 
unwilling to share the opprobrium which attached so generally to the commission business 
and who was willing to buy f. o. b. shipping point, found that he must reserve the privilege 
of rejection on arrival if the goods did not prove upon inspection to be of the kind and quality 
specified. 
Thus, “f. o. b., usual terms’ came to mean that the buyer took the goods after loading 
on cars at shipping point at an agreed price, but payment was deferred until the goods reached 
destination and had been inspected by the buyer. Around this method of sale other abuses 
have developed which are now in process of abatement. 
Such a state of affairs as Mr. Sherman describes could not be prevented 
during the early part of the present century when there were no standards by 
which the value of produce could be measured. Abuses by tradesmen, how- 
ever, were not all the handicaps that had to be endured because of this lack of 
common language. Without standards to measure gradations of quality, an 
equitable basis was lacking upon which to make future contracts. Descrip- 
tions could be made, but they were a poor substitute for definite standards. If 
* SHERMAN, W. A. MERCHANDISING FRESH FRUITS AND VEGETABLES; A NEW BILLION DOLLAR 
INDUSTRY. 499 pp. 1928. (See pp. 37-38, 39.) 
