MARKET PROBLEMS 



197 



many discussions and avoiding many arrests for short mea- 

 sure. By so doing, a retailer would get just what he paid for. I 

 believe it would be better for the consumer and the producer, 

 especially in regard to lettuce. It would induce the producer 

 to grow better and heavier lettuce, and the consumer would 

 be more willing to buy and pay the price. 



Honest Packing. 



I believe we would be better gardeners, sell more goods at 

 better prices, knowing that they would please the buyer, if 

 we were compelled to grade our goods and pack them in uni- 

 form size and quality from bottom to top. A bushel of veget- 

 ables or a barrel of fruit faced is deceitful, and yet if you buy 

 a barrel of apples or pears today it is faced. If you deceive 

 the other fellow once, he is twice shy, and has a right to be. 

 This problem, if solved, would better market conditions. I lost 

 the sale of fifteen hundred bushels of pears last fall because 

 I would not face the baskets. 



We hear a great deal about the producer selling direct to 

 the consumer, thereby eliminating the middleman. I do not 

 believe this will ever be done. The farmer does not have the 

 time to peddle his goods from house to house, and is usually 

 glad to unload at a fair figure. Although it is a fact and 

 generally accepted that the middleman gets the largest share 

 of the producer's dollar, the time is not yet When we feel 

 that we can get along without him entirely. 



I believe that small growers who cannot ship in car lots 

 could better themselves sometimes by combining and ship- 

 ping to some outside point, rather than offering their goods 

 for sale on an already over-stocked market, thereby keeping 

 the price so low that the goods are not worth hauling. 



I think that the express rates are excessive and unjust. 

 Since the first of February the rates have been changed. 

 For instance, a Syracuse man who has been in the habit of 

 buying vegetables from Rochester and paying sixty cents per 

 hundred pounds expressage has had to charge exorbitant 

 prices in order to make a profit. Under the revised rates he 

 would have to pay seventy-fi.ve cents per one hundred pounds 

 and cannot afford to buy. I believe if there was a law com- 



