1920.] 



The Nation's Fruit and Vec.ktaiu.ks. 



555 



that took no note of anything beyond the require incuts of the 

 day and the convenience of the middleman. 



There are two very definite results of this condition. In the 

 first place, the grower is at the mercy of the market; in the 

 second place, the urban consumer seldom or never obtains any 

 advantage from Nature's bounty. If there be a shortage, he pavs 

 because things are scarce ; if there be a very plentiful supply, he 

 pays because there is no proper machinery to regulate market 

 movements and no effective transport to take perishable goods 

 quickly and cheaply to parts where they are required. The 

 Astor Commission on investigating the conditions of our milk 

 supply discovered that the average daily consumption per head 

 in this country is under a quarter of a pint, and that there are 

 whole districts in manufacturing centres where the milkman is 

 almost unseen if not unknown. In like fashion there is no doubt 

 but that a Commission on the distribution of fruit and vegetables 

 would be able to show that while the consumption of fresh 

 produce is limited to certain classes of the population, there are 

 thousands of men, women and children who never obtain the 

 really fresh supplies that are so important a factor in building 

 up and maintaining health and strength. It is possible, round 

 great urban markets, to see wagon loads of good food being taken 

 to the destructor ; it is possible in rural areas to see fields of 

 cabbages and other vegetables being ploughed in for lack of a 

 market. Pigs may be watched eating their fill on the floor of many 

 an orchard, while the housewife whose purse is slender may be 

 compelled to deprive her family of both vegetables and fruit or 

 to purchase them in the smallest quantities at a high price. 



This condition of things is, of course, due in the first instance 

 to faulty organisation of markets, and perhaps in part to the 

 greed of those who dominate them ; but over and above this cause 

 of trouble we have the national ignorance of the methods of 

 home preservation. The Californian farmer who was asked what 

 he did with his peaches said " We eat what we can, and we can 

 what we can't," and we see the result of this method in the 

 countless tins of fruit that reach our shores vear by year. We 

 see, too, the dried vegetables and the bottled vegetables, the 

 crystallised fruits, the sauces, essences, pickles and the rest 

 that are made in countries no more productive than our own. 

 and are sent thousands of miles to pay a profit t° the producer, 

 the many intermediaries, the wholesaler and the retailer. This 

 condition has obtained for many years, and it needed the great 

 awakening of a world-war to establish a state 1 of mind in which 



