New-York tribune., 1910-03-08
POT SHOTS AT FOOD
FARM EXPERT TALKS.
Hotel Mem Hear of Romance
an Life of Vegetables.

When the hotel men read that they were
to hear lecture on the theme, Money:
How to Save Some for the Proprietor and
Coax 1t from the Patrons" there were those
who turned aside and whispered something
of Goals and Newcastle. But the man who
talked of it last night at a special educa-
tional meeting of the International Stew
ards Association in the Hotel Marlborough
knew what he was talking about, and If
he did not fulfil the dazzling promise of
the programme he showed them the ro-
nance of the lives of caulifiOwers and mel
ons and took some SLY and pertinent pot
shots at the high cost of living and those
common enemies of present day mankind
the commission merchants.
The man was H. B. Fullerton. who runs
some model farms for the Long Island Rail
road in the woods this side of MontaTk. lie
had a magic lantern and d set of pictures
that for color wonld make a Hammerstein
grand opera setting look like the drawings
the Sunday papers borrow from Punch"
about everything we eat in New York,
he said. comes anywhere from five hundred
to three thousand miles. The best experts In
vegetable growing have been devotins them
selves for twenty years to raising vegetables
and fruit that will taste good? Not at all.
They want TO raise stuff that will stand all
the banging possible and yet come TO mar
ket looking not more than half wi!tcd. The
stuff comes about as far, speaking CONNER
cially as It does in distance 1t goes
through the hands of whole army of peo-
pic, most of whom take off what they wish
for profit
Don't believe for minute that We
can't raise all the country can eat for a
nd x.I,ii in fr n hat hnr tn
learn how 10 raise vegetables here yet. The
farmer thinks carrot is a carrot; they
all look alike to him. You buy from COM
mission man. and you take what he gives
you, knowing that most of the time you
are getting half wood fibre. That is grand
feed for livestock. but not just what you
want. There are about fifty kinds of car
rots in the seed catalogues. and only two
Or three are worth anything. But the
farmer plants them ALL and the commits
sion men arc glad 20 pass them all on you.
when we started selling tomatoes We
set out to sell them right. and We found
that the right way was, not in the bushel
crates they commonly use, which bring
them in mostly tomato ketchup, but in
four-quart baskets. When we tried to buy
70 .r-quart baskets We found couldn't.
You can't buy quart basket for fruit or
d two-quart basket or Il peck You can
get fake quart, or a shy quart, or a
skinned quart, or a Kansas quart or a
Michigan quart, but not one them holds
quart of two fair pints.
.Al commission dealers aren't crooked.
but most of them get rich before their
hair gets thin. One thing about this dues-
ton of feeding New York that people don't
think of at first is the way the produce
comes in here. They land most of it here
down around Bowling Green, where il
came when there were bears in Nth street
and stray Indians in City Hall Park. You
eat it between here and Harlem, and some
body has TO pay for bringing it up i'll
wagons, which is as expensive a way OF
transporting things as there is. Who pays
those bills? 1t isn't the commission man"