TWENTY-SIXTH SESSION. 
69 
general is ridiculously absurd, manage to stem or stifle these evils to an 
extent that grudgingly yields to such superior effort, a respectable share 
of honestly merited reward. Such instances, though, are nearly as rare as 
truthful politicians. The great army of industrious toilers, to whom fortune 
and Nature have been less kind, are all paying oppressive tribute annually 
for the maintenance and fostering of a commercial leprosy, that consumes 
with withering and unrelenting certainty more than its share of their sub- 
stance. That the generally prevailing methods of marketing constitute a 
mere makeshift; that they are largely primitive in principle and years in the 
rear of the growth and development of supply and demand; that they are a 
gross libel upon the intelligence and innate originality of all interested 
parties, would be very hazardous for any sane man to dispute. Keenly 
conscious that criticism frequently bears no relation to argument— that 
grumbling is not always associated with justice— and that there is a wide 
gulf between fault-finding and fact — it needs only to have prevailing methods 
of marketing brought into focus by the unerring camera of Truth, to dis- 
close conditions or practices, fostered and fattening on its various ramifica- 
tions, that would, if applied, yield a startling increase to the percentage of 
potash in the ashes of Ananias, and intensify the sombre drapery of decep- 
tion that clings to the memory of Judas. In earlier days, when the volume 
of our marketing business was insignificant as compared with the present— 
those unpretentious times when we all felt and acted differently as to our 
responsibility to God and our fellow man — when intelligence and moral char- 
acter predominated over and held in ironclad abeyance — avarice and illgotten 
gain in public esteem and preference— then the parties to these methods were 
less inclined to mock and revolt at the eighth and ninth commandments; but 
during the last quarter of the century, human cunning and trade craft have 
reveled in riotous intoxication, afforded by broadened and fascinating oppor- 
tunity, and hold a vantage ground by which one hundred per cent of us are 
branded as unconstrained prevaricators and deliberate cheats, and have im- 
planted in the hearts of the multitude a revision of the prayer of the Pharisee, 
something like this in effect: “Give unto me of cunningly devised wisdom, 
that will enable me to skin the other fellow in every deal.” For practical 
proof of this, nearly every barrel of apples that is packed now-a-days, as 
well as the return of sales made thereof, bears copper-bound testimony. It is 
painfully true that in order to reach the consumers, the middle-men are 
indispensable; but the middle-men of the present have progressed far more 
rapidly than shippers in originating and promoting methods, whereby the 
barnacles of responsibility are avoided. While the shippers wrestled with 
the flimsy hope of increased reward in “snide” packages and dishonest 
packing, the middle-men have adroitly shifted all responsibility to the 
shoulders of the other fellows, and though they are staggering and perspir- 
ing under the galling burden, the unloading thereof is a consummation of 
which faint glimpses only are caught, as it electrically flits along the 
obscure shadows of the distant future. Apple growers in some localities have 
enlisted in their interest the great searchlight of true progress, and by it are 
'being safely led out of the boggy wilderness of error, by selling direct to the 
middle-men, and safeguarding their consciences by having the latter supply 
the packages and do the packing. This is the only rational and common- 
sense plan of marketing where direct sale to consumers is impractical. 
There is really no good reason why this plan can not be made generally 
operative and applicable to all horticultural products. The competition 
