FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
67 
up a reputation for honesty. They 
use the wires, which is less expensive 
than sending a man. They get a man 
to buy, and when the man sends an 
order they ship the car and send a 
sight .draft on the man’s bank, with 
the bill of lading attached. If the man 
who gave the order will honor that 
draft, the fruit is his, but if he won’t 
honor the draft, he can’t get the fruit. 
The shipper is notified by wire and he 
at once places the fruit with some 
other man. They sell it right from 
Manatee county, and they get their 
money, too. 
I have had considerable experience 
along that line. Some years I sold 
everything, some years have shipped 
to commission men, and the years I 
have sold are the years I made the 
money. I have known some men to 
get rich in a year sending to commis¬ 
sion men, but, as a rule, they have 
come out at the little end of the horn. 
In many cases, they use rented land, 
pay rent, pay for fertilizer and pay for 
labor ; then after they have a crop they 
ship it hundreds of miles away to a 
man they know nothing about and say 
to him, “Take my stuff and do just 
what you please with it. Send me 
some money if you can.” 
Last fall, one of the best tomato pro¬ 
ducing men in that part of the country, 
who had as good land as there is, de¬ 
cided to raise a little crop. The 
weather was dry, and we didn’t raise 
very much, fortunately. We got 
about 400 boxes and they were care¬ 
fully put up and carefully selected, 
and vegetables were quoted pretty 
high. We shipped to several commis¬ 
sion men and they all said, “Your fruit 
came in bad condition;” or this, that 
and the other; and after shipping 
about four hundred crates, we had to 
foot the bills, but the returns we re¬ 
ceived, were just a little more than 
enough to pay for the crate material. 
It would have been better for me to to 
have let those tomatoes rot in the 
field. 
The question with us is, whether the 
commission man is a necessity at the 
present time. I think the time has been 
when he was. One man said yester¬ 
day, “I think it is necessary to have 
the commission man to buy the fruit.” 
Now, if that is the commission busi¬ 
ness, I am in favor of it; but what I 
understand to be the commission busi¬ 
ness is for a man to sit up and ask the 
people to send him goods on the con¬ 
signment plan, and if you send them 
to him he shows them to the public, 
sells them if he can, takes his com¬ 
mission out, and sends you the rest, 
if there is any. If he does not sell it, 
he loses nothing, but you do. 
I believe the commission man hin¬ 
ders our business. For instance, you 
want to buy fruit in one of the cities 
and you invest in a car of it. You 
buy from a commission house and 
they don't know and you don't know- 
what is going to be dumped in within 
the next few hours. You pay your 
money and in a few hours perhaps a- 
dozen cars of fruit come in, and what 
are you going to do? You have spent 
your money and the fruit is on your 
hands and perhaps no market for it. 
The commission man is going to put 
you out of business if he can. 
We buy goods frequently from the 
manufacturer instead of the middle 
man, and why cannot the people buy 
direct from the grower instead of 
