FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
51 
stores. There have been more changes 
and failures in the New York stores this 
winter on account of the poor business 
than were ever known before. We have a 
list of over one thousand stores, and every 
time we sent out a price list, many of the 
cards came back because the stores have 
gone out of business. 
The profits are not large; they are very 
small, and the present method of distri¬ 
bution is, I think, as nearly correct as we 
can have it where the big markets are 
near enough to the consuming public. 
If you have a wholesale market ten or 
fifteen miles away, it takes but little ex¬ 
pense to get the fruit that distance. But 
if you have too many smaller wholesale 
markets and carload lots of fruit shipped 
there, the markets are liable to be over 
filled. It is just as bad to get too much 
fruit on a small market as it is to have 
your big markets too far away. The 
fancy store wants just what it needs. 
Some stores will use only 126’s of the best 
oranges. You cannot sell them anything 
else, because they cannot use it. The 
smaller stores want only the small or¬ 
anges, 200’s and 250’s, because that is 
what their demand is for, an orange that 
sells at a fair, average price. The ped¬ 
dlers use anything under the sun, so long 
as they can get it cheap. 
The peddlers are the most valuable part 
of the trade you have, because they can 
change so quickly to satisfy the needs of 
the market. If you get over-stocked in 
one line, they will clean that line right up, 
if you sell it cheap. If you ship a lot of 
sour, unpalatable oranges in the fall, the 
better grades of stores may handle the 
first shipments, because some of their cus¬ 
tomers are convinced that they must have 
oranges; but they do not buy more than 
once. Then the fruit settles in the mar¬ 
kets all over the city, and they are finally 
sold cheap to the peddlers. Their cus¬ 
tomers taste them, and they are not good; 
so they don’t buy any more. Finally the 
peddlers clean up that poor, cheap fruit 
at low prices, but it takes quite a good 
while. Then the peddlers begin to sell 
the good fruit, and an enormous amount 
is consumed, because we have to depend 
always on the masses of the people who 
are supplied to a large extent by peddlers 
to consume the bulk of the fruit. 
This talk about raising hundreds of 
thousands of boxes that will bring the 
top price is out of the question. You have 
to raise all grades of fruit. You have to 
get fruit that all the people will buy and 
can afford to buy. The whole problem 
for the orange people and the apple peo¬ 
ple is to raise the standard of the quality 
of the fruit, and its eating quality, so that 
even the peddlers can get plenty of it, 
and they will be willing to pay satisfact¬ 
ory prices for it. If the peddlers cannot 
get cheap fruit, they will buy the better 
fruit; if they cannot get oranges for $1.00 
a box, they must pay the market price, 
even as high as $3.00 per box. 
This year apples and oranges were ex¬ 
ceedingly cheap and we sold a great quan¬ 
tity of apples, but the retailers made no 
money on them, and they are all hoping 
that next year there will be a little less, 
so that prices will be a little higher and 
they can make more money. 
