50 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
ing to find a better way of selling fruit. 
We have found that the fruit is bought 
by the consumer in three different ways: 
first, the best stores, grocery stores or 
fruit stores, handle only the best trade, 
and they deal almost entirely in small lots 
delivered to the houses or apartments of 
consumers on telephone or personal order, 
and sell on credit to a large extent. This 
is a small part of the great bulk of the 
fruit that is sold in the big cities, and it 
is the best fruit. It is true, these stores 
pay a premium for it in the market. This 
class of buyers will come to you usually, 
and say, “I don’t care what you charge 
for the goods, so long as they are right.” 
They want flavor, and if it is an orange, 
they want it of uniform size all through 
the box. They want the best that can be 
had, so that they can sell it at a higher 
price than the average; they have to have 
a big profit, because they have heavy over¬ 
head charges. 
This is the class of stores most of these 
investigators go to, and they get the prices 
there and base their sensational articles 
on them. 
Second, there is the smaller store which 
sells to the middle classes and which, in a 
great many cases, sells for cash. They 
handle a grade of fruit which is good av¬ 
erage fruit; fruit that will bring average 
prices. They sell at a closer margin and 
they pay less rent than the stores first 
mentioned; their expenses are less and 
they can sell cheaper. They sell at rea¬ 
sonable prices. They expect to make, say, 
75 cents or $1.00 a box on oranges. 
The third class is the peddler. The 
peddler is becoming more and more im¬ 
portant. In New York City, they are 
mainly Russian Jews and Polish Jew^s, 
and they will take a wagon and a helper, 
buy a bag or two of potatoes, a box of 
oranges, a box of grapefruit, some onions 
and cabbage and be set up in business. 
Each peddler usually has his own district, 
so that he is fairly well known and has to 
give pretty good satisfaction or else, of 
course, his patrons will not buy from him 
again. They sell at very close margin. 
Now, we have a good grade of apples; 
we raise good apples and buy a good 
many. These peddlers use nearly 75 per 
cent of our fruit. Our fruit is well up 
to the average of the fruit in the market. 
We have peddlers who will buy fifty bar¬ 
rels of apples and one hundred boxes of 
. oranges at a time. They go right down 
to the auction, and if they do not buy for 
themselves, they have a good, bright man 
buy for them, and it takes a good, bright 
man to buy fruit at the auction. Then 
they sell that fruit at a cent a piece; that 
has been the price all through the winter 
for 250-size oranges. So long as they 
can make 25 cents a box, they are satis¬ 
fied. They will sell two or three boxes 
in a day, and a barrel of apples, and if 
they can make a profit of $2.00 or $3.00 
a day, they are satisfied. 
One of these peddlers, a Russian de¬ 
serter, said to me this winter, “Business 
is bad ; too much competition. All a man 
has to do is to take $10.00, rent a wagon 
and horse for $2.00, buy a bag of pota¬ 
toes, a box of oranges and a barrel of ap¬ 
ples; that is all it takes to make him a 
business man.” There is so much com¬ 
petition that it is almost impossible to 
make a profit. 
That, too, is the way with the small 
