120 



TWENTY-XINTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



In the three classes of products which we have to market I mentioned 

 the immediately perishable fruits, such as cherries, apricots, peaches, 

 plums, pears, etc. The path of progress which this branch of the industry- 

 has trod these many years is full of pathos and some glory. Out of the 

 wrecking influences of great competition has come a welding of antago- 

 nistic interests which has eliminated unnecessary losses and brought us 

 through an entire season of marketing perishable fresh fruit without 

 the evidence of the usual glut at any point. It is true that there have 

 been many contributing causes to the successful results on this year's 

 deciduous fruit crop. The main contributing cause, however, was 

 the unanimous action of over ninety per cent of the shippers in dis- 

 tributing their product properly. 



A fundamental point in the success attained in the marketing of 

 fresh deciduous fruit is the open auction-rooms of the important 

 Eastern cities. The auction houses of the East, when conducted in 

 large and important markets, are the bulwark of safety and protection 

 to the producers of our fruits. They give absolute publicity to prices, 

 with the added advantage of concentrating all competition behind the 

 price-making. 



Are auction reports reliable? is a question I often have put to me. 

 Those of you who have attended a fruit auction sale in any of the large 

 Eastern cities could not entertain any doubt. There is an open room, 

 open to all the trade from the humblest peddler to the richest wholesale 

 jobber. Is an auctioneer offering the fruit to the highest bidder ? The 

 auctioneers are licensed under State laws, and the records of the auction 

 sales are always subject to the inspection of State officials or the public 

 on demand, with enormous penalties for false reports. A printed 

 catalogue is offered before the sale, and with this in hand the buyers go 

 and inspect the separate lots and then mark down their condition upon 

 the catalogue. Every one of the several hundred buyers has one of 

 these catalogues. The sale is called to order and the fruit offered to 

 the highest bidder. Every one of these buyers keeps a memorandum of 

 the prices for the lines of fruit as sold. In the motley throng of people 

 who attend the sale are men of every nationality, from every part of 

 the globe, and of diverse social condition. A combination among such 

 buyers would be miraculous. If a combination were made, there is 

 nothing to prevent an outsider from slipping in and breaking it. The 

 auctioneer is always able to take a fictitious bid. He stands facing an 

 assemblage of four hundred buyers. When the bidding is slow, I 

 assume that he frequently raises the figures as he goes along. I assume 

 this because he frequently comes to a limit in the bidding and knocks 

 it down to a man who says he made no such bid. The auctioneer 

 scolds the man for waving his catalogue, and reoffers the line. On 

 such a happening as this, you can depend that the auctioneer has been 



