24 BULLETIN 1416, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
wide price range often prevails. The loose interpretation sometimes 
given to State grading laws makes the marketing uncertain as a de- 
scription of the product; that is, the term A—2)% does not have the 
same definite significance that Extra Fancy 125 has on boxed apples. 
As an extreme case of wide price range, a market reporter noted on a 
certain date that Northern Spys were jobbing at $4 to $10 per barrel 
for stock that was all marked “standard A grade 24% inches.” 
The practice commonly known as “plugging” should be discour- 
aged in packing barreled apples. This consists of facing both ends of 
the barrel with fruit of good quality and size and placing inferior 
fruit in the center. Buyers are wary of goods packed in this manner 
and discount them heavily. 
Neglect in thinning the crop on the trees is considered responsible 
for much small, irregular fruit. 
Some packers show a disposition to crowd “tolerance” to the 
limit, putting in as many undersized defective specimens as can be 
passed under inspection rules. The reputation of a brand is weakened 
by such a practice. 
The fancy barrel packs put up by some dealers and by a few large 
shippers and shipping associations approach the northwestern boxed 
stock in uniformity of size, and they tend to move uniformly through- 
out the season and to sell at steady prices. The irregularly packed 
stock tends to rise and fall in price more rapidly and it is hardest to 
move during a period of slow trading. There is, in other words, an 
uncertainty in demand which is in part the result of the uncertainty 
in pack. 
Many shippers are apparently heedless of the fact that buyers 
prefer straight cars of one, or at most two or three, desirable varieties 
all of the same grade and size. Some are careless in the selection of 
varieties placed in a car. For example, cars from the southeastern 
apple region might contain Jonathan, Grimes Golden, and North- 
western Greening, which combination of red, yellow, and green 
dessert and cooking varieties can scarcely be sold to the advantage 
of the shipper. Sometimes cars contain from 15 to 20 or more 
varieties, probably two-thirds of which are not well known or are 
undesirable from a commercial standpoint. It seems to be the 
occasional practice of some shippers to place just enough desirable 
varieties in 4 car to enable them to send it with the feeling that the 
buyer will take the undesirable fruit in order to get the better apples. 
It is the opinion of persons well acquainted with the apple situation 
that whenever this custom is followed the grower or shipper is the 
loser, inasmuch as the price for the more desirable varieties is lowered 
invariably, the extent of the reduction depending on the quantity of 
less desirable stock in the car. 
EASTERN APPLES IN BOXES 
Apples are put up in western-box style in some of the eastern 
apple sections, notably Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, western New 
York, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Massachusetts; but the total quantit 
of eastern boxed fruit marketed, although tending to increase, is sti 
comparatively small. Car lots are received occasionally in the large 
city markets. * 
Prices quoted are mostly below those of corresponding western 
grades owing to poorer grading and packing and the general lack of 
| 
| 
