CANNING THE SURPLUS 



67 



ducts that cannot be sold at a profit in their fresh state. He 

 knows that next season when crops are ready for marketing 

 and he goes to a store and the dealer tells him that the mar- 

 ket is full, offering him only half price, he can look the dealer 

 squarely in the eye and say, "1 want you to distinctly under- 

 stand I do not have to take the prices you olTer, because I 

 have a market at home. I sell what I can and what I can't 

 I can." 



I suppose if we were to go back to the ninety-nine growers 

 and tell them that they did not know their business and had 

 not graduated from the infant class, there would be ninety- 

 nine men who would feel insulted and who would probably 

 tell us very plainly that they considered themselves amply 

 capable and competent to carry on the market gardening 

 business. But do we market gardeners ^really know our busi- 

 ness until we know actually what our lowest selling price 

 will be? Are we not weak in our selling department? We 

 are getting the producing problem almost down to an exact 

 science, but when it comes to the marketing problem, we get 

 lost. 



We form associations to hunt up outside markets and yell 

 ourselves hoarse to get the railroads to give us lower freight 

 rates on produce, so we can ship our goods farther away into 

 markets that are already oversupplied by our brother growers 

 in that section, and neglect the opportunities we have of se- 

 curing a market right at home for our surplus products 

 simply because we do not understand our business. And 

 when I say that we do not understand our business, I mean 

 it. I mean that no man knows his business who does not 

 know how at all times to dispose of his goods at a profit. No 

 manufacturer could succeed in business if he knew only how 

 to produce goods and not how to sell them, and no market 

 gardener can get the most out of his business unless he knows 

 all about selling to best advantage after they are produced. 



Some of the greatest fortunes of today have been made 

 just by utilizing and finding a market for the so-called waste 

 products. You can think of a number of great enterprises 

 so founded. Fleischmann's yeast, once a waste product of the 

 breweries; vaseline, a utilization of a Standard Oil product 



