CONFERENCE ON FRUIT-GROWING. 



61 



deploys on two lines, viz. that the fruit must be put upon the 

 consumer's table with the smallest loss possible of freshness and natural 

 bloom ; and that those who perform any service in the chain of 

 transportation between grower and consumer must have what is fair, 

 and only what is fair, for the service each renders, while the route 

 must be protected from every highwayman-like claim without 

 necessary service rendered ; so that the step up between the cost as 

 the fruit leaves the grower and that at which it touches the palate of 

 the eater shall be natural and reasonable because composed of only 

 necessary accretions. 



Thus to state the problem is simple enough. To state also, that, 

 except in some special cases, neither of the desiderata of efficient 

 distribution is in fact accomplished, is to run little risk of having to 

 meet serious opposition. To indicate the manner in which efficient 

 distribution can be achieved — or at least how the existing standard 

 can be improved — is neither simple nor free from controversial risks. 

 Yet this, without doubt, is the object of the discussion upon which 

 we are now embarked. 



There are four lines of contact between the fruit-grower and the 

 fruit-eater at the present moment in operation. Beginning with 

 the longest and least direct and finishing with the shortest and direct, 

 they are : (i) The grower — the local railway station — the railway 

 terminus — the market salesman — the retailer — the eater. (2) The 

 grower — the market — the retailer — the eater. (3) The grower — the 

 retailer — the eater. (4) The grower — the eater. 



The amount of fruit passing along these lines is greatest in the 

 case of the first, and decreases with each line to the fourth. Between 

 the first and second links in the first line, and the second and third 

 links in the second, there are sometimes inserted links — of the " stand 

 and deliver " type — in the shape of speculators, who perform no 

 necessary service — and the result of whose operations is frequently 

 to increase the cost on the table. In the first it is by buying up large 

 quantities from the grower in situ — and so creating some measure of 

 a corner — an operation possible only in years of short supply ; in 

 the second by buying up upon the market a large enough proportion 

 of any morning's supply to create a corner for that morning — an 

 operation that, under certain conditions, may be effected even in a 

 year of bountiful supply. The first class of speculation would become 

 more frequently possible with a tariff or restriction of imports, but 

 might result in what would have gone wholly to the grower being 

 shared by the grower and the speculative spider into whose web the 

 grower had walked, and therefore in little if any increase of price 

 to the eater. The second is seldom practised upon salesmen who 

 are always upon the market and who are, or ought to be, "up to " 

 the latest price fluctuations, but is frequently successful in the case 

 of growers who sell their own produce, who come straight from then- 

 plantations to the market, and who do not " tumble to what is wanted " 

 until too late. Here the effect may sometimes be that the speculator 



