FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
91 
ban and other foreign Avocados, which 
are dumped on our markets. Cuba makes 
no attempt to grade or cull her fruit, nor 
do we get much protection against the 
poor quality of fruit which is shipped into 
our large consuming markets from that 
country. I know it to be a fact that 
many of the Avocados that are shipped in 
here from Cuba are carried in bags, 
thrown over a horse’s back, for a distance 
of many miles before the already bruised 
fruit is crated for shipment into the 
States. When we get protective tariff 
against this foreign fruit our markets will 
handle all the fruit that is now being 
grown, if properly distributed. 
In addition to the foreign shipments 
that flood our leading markets, some of 
our good growers make bad conditions 
worse by shipping indiscriminately on 
consignment. To my mind the consign¬ 
ment of perishables is not the proper 
method of marketing them. Would a 
shoe merchant consign his products to 
some distant points to be sold for his ac¬ 
count? Do the California raisin growers 
ship their products to be sold for what¬ 
ever the market will bring? Or do the 
nut growers of California ship in this 
manner? No. Are the tomato growers 
of Dade county shipping on consignment 
today? Very few. Why? Because they 
are being properly distributed and with 
such equal distribution that the demand 
holds up. 
Just so is our method of marketing the 
Avocados. We buy and sell upon a 
plain business basis and never in our ten 
years of Avocado business have we con¬ 
signed a crate of Avocados, except culls, 
that we would not put into our printed 
wrappers, or an occasional extra crate 
when the pickers misjudged the amount 
required for the day’s orders and over¬ 
picked. We always try to pick the exact 
amount of fruit each day needed for 
shipment that day, whether it be fifty 
crates or five hundred crates. When 
markets are flooded with consigned fruit 
the tendency always is to bring the gen¬ 
eral price down to the level of the price 
brought by the surplus. Our motto is, 
“Create your market or sell to one who 
has created one. Never consign!” 
