42 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
to other members of this committee to 
present; but I wish to say this much: 
if you put your fruit in the hands of com¬ 
mission houses, look them up carefully 
before doing so, both as to reliability and 
courage in naming prices. To put hun¬ 
dreds, or thousands, of dollars’ worth of 
your products into the hands of strangers 
at a distance, with no security or guaran¬ 
tee of a square deal, is one of the stran¬ 
gest customs of our business system. You 
would not loan money to them without 
careful consideration and ample security. 
Why should we throw such fearful 
temptation in the way of our fellow, man 
and give him so many chances for fraud¬ 
ulent gain with little chance of punish¬ 
ment until, whether honest or not, he gets 
blamed when results fall short of our ex¬ 
pectations? If we must do this, let us at 
least take every means possible of elim¬ 
inating temptation and assure ourselves of 
the integrity of those who sell our pro¬ 
ducts. Some salesmen have little trouble 
in asking 25 cents above the market for 
something extra nice; but for the shipper 
of the choicest oranges there must be 
salesmen who know a good thing when 
they see it and who can ask fifty cents, 
a dollar or two dollars above the market 
with absolute assurance that it is not an 
over-charge. 
Much condemnation has been heaped 
on the heads of those who make early 
shipments of green fruit. It is often 
claimed that such shippers get meagre re¬ 
turns and ruin the orange market for 
others for the season; that it should be 
frowned upon by every citrus grower or 
handler and stopped by law, if possible. 
The first claim is seldom true, for the 
worst of these sinners. It is those who 
compromise with their conscience and fol¬ 
low the bolder ones, who take the low 
prices. For instance, a neighbor with 
groves alongside of mine shipped his tan¬ 
gerines in early November and got, gross, 
$6.00 and $7.00 for them. I commenced 
November 20th, and they sold for $5.00 
and even lower later in the season. I am 
no lawyer, but I don’t believe that the 
law can touch the matter, except it be 
through Boards of Health at the north¬ 
ern end; nor would I advocate it if I 
could, for I believe there is and always 
will be legitimate demand for a small 
quantity of early green fruit at good 
prices, and just so long as this is the case, 
just so long as growers are hungry for 
money in the fall, just so long as the fear 
of loss through drought, cold or other 
disaster is upon him who has a crop for 
sale—just so long will there be a rush 
of green oranges to market early in the 
season, a few condemned by health au¬ 
thority, a few high prices realized and 
then a slump and disappointment for the 
laggards. As these things will continue, 
why rant over them? Let the early ship¬ 
pers have their experiences. They cannot 
all be happy ones, and the more there are 
the sooner will every consumer get to 
know the true conditions, and the lover 
of sweet oranges will be taught to wait 
for them until Nature has had time to 
ripen their sugars and temper their raw 
acids. 
Though oranges grow in size through¬ 
out the shipping season and very high 
prices are often realized in March and 
early April, the danger from cold to 
the fruit of unprotected groves, the great 
dropping that commences when growth 
starts in the tree, the tendency to crease, 
to get puffy, to dry out and lose flavor 
late in the season, make it questionable 
whether it is best to hold even a part of 
the mid-season varieties later than the 
