Chairman, F. C. Egert, of D. Martin & Co., and A. J. Steffens, of A. C. Blair & Co., promise an All Star Performance from beginning to end. We can vouch for their promise and assure you that no exaggerated statements have been made. The Banquet will be one of the big social events of the Convention. Secure your tickets well in advance. Mr. Wise will have a special desk in the registration office to handle this business.

Advertising The Apple
Appointment of Advisory Committee

By U. Grant Border, Chairman

Every mail brings letters commending the plans of the Advertising Committee. These letters are from every section. Maine, New Mexico, North Carolina, Michigan and Utah are represented, while all other apple producing states have earnest advocates in great numbers.

If each member of the International Apple Shippers' Association will get back of our Committee and use his influence with growers and shippers, at the same time setting the good example by stamping his own fruit, there is nothing but success in sight. Let no member imagine that this advertising propaganda will work out while he sits passively watching a few straining at the unequal task. The work requires the loyal, patriotic and active support of many hands. The committee is willing to do its share—yea, more than its share-but not if the support of other members is lukewarm. It is not enough that you say "good," "keep it up," etc.,—but each should take advantage of every opportunity to impress on the grower or shipper he meets from day to day the great importance of advertising apples, that the general apple business be improved; and particularly impress on him the fact that every stamped package will receive the preference in all markets, thus repaying the shipper immediately and handsomely for his outlay.

It is hoped there will be many growers in attendance at the Convention in Cleveland. A number have already signified their intention of being there. Why not endeavor to have representative growers from all sections? The mutual benefits would be great indeed.

The Advertising Committee is now engaged in the task of appointing an Advisory Board of one hundred influential growers, representing all sections, to act with us in carrying out the plans of the committee. This board will embrace some of the most prominent and up-to-date apple growers in America. We have not yet completed the list and will thank any of our members to suggest such names as he thinks would strengthen the committee. Address us at 218 Light St., Baltimore, Md.

Apple history will be written at Cleveland, August 6th to 8th. Every man who is not present at the making, will ever after feel the rebuke of glorious opportunity lost.

Apples Exclusively

We can furnish SUMMER varieties in car lots We can furnish WINTER varieties packed for storage

Our JONATHAN and BEN DAVIS pack are known throughout the South.

Let us figure with you on a few a few cars of STORAGE PACKED stock.

F. H. Simpson Fruit Co.

FLORA, ILLINOIS

Slick Time at the Cleveland Convention

Hon. Walter Malone, Memphis, Tenn. Judge of the Circuit Court of Shelby County Reminiscences and Observations

By Louis Erb, Cedar Gap, Mo.

I have always contended that the men who grow or deal in apples are above the common herd of humanity and am more convinced of it than ever since I read in the June issue of the Spy of the interest my old friend Walter Malone's poem "Opportunity" has awakened among apple men. It goes to show that apple men are not mere materialists chasing after dollars, but find time to enjoy and appreciate practical sentiments when beautifully expressed in poetry.

As perhaps only few of your readers are personally acquainted with Walter Malone it may not be out of place to state that he is a resident of Memphis, where he is one of the presiding judges of the Circuit Court of Shelby County, Tennessee. I have known him for more than a quarter of a century, and it is with pleasure I recall the many evenings he spent at my house in social and literary intercourse with my family.

Walter Malone is one of the most genial, kind hearted and agreeable men I have ever met. As a poet he ranks among the best in this country, and all his poems are admired where they are known. On my occasional visits to Memphis I always meet him at The Business Men's Club, of which we are both still members. His time in recent years being taken up at the courthouse, writing poetry is entirely a side issue with him now, but occasionally the old spirit of tackling the muses still moves him. Not so very long ago he sent me a copy of his poem entitled “To An Enemy," which, as far as its practical side is concerned, is almost equal to "Opportunity," and as your readers may find it of interest I send it to you for publication.

It is likely that he will pay me a visit at Cedar Gap during the summer and when I get him here under the influence of our inspiring Ozark Mountain air and home-made buttermilk, to say nothing about Ben Davis apple pie, I will try to induce him to write a poem on "The Apple," which I feel, will be duly appreciated by all apple men who may happen to read it.

The apple business whether viewed from the growers' or dealers' standpoint has its ups and downs, its bright and dark sides, like most other callings, but in some respects it is different from all other callings. The men engaged in it as a rule are ever hopeful, and optimistic in a vast degree; whether they lose or make money you can't down them as long as their capital or credit holds out. They may be humble and subdued one season but they come up cheerful and smiling the next and like Micawber are always waiting for something to turn up. And then they are not working for themselves alone but for humanity at large. They are philanthropists par excellence by growing and selling the most wholesome fruit our American soil and climate produce; and last but not least by advocating through a systematic campaign of advertising a large and more general consumption of apples.

The Middleman

By J. R. Koontz, General Freight Agent

Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Rauroad Co., Topeka, Kansas

As an ultimate consumer with a peach preserves taste and a dried prunes pocketbook I am deeply interested in the talk about eliminating the middleman as a means of reducing the cost of living. The middleman is defined as anybody between the producer and the consumer who handles merchandise, meaning foodstuffs, generally. If the means will justify the end I am in favor of the program.

I have given the subject considerable thought, and find from experience and investigation that the city man can eliminate the middleman by going into the country and purchasig fruit, vegetables, eggs, butter, milk, etc., direct from the farmer. The farmer can eliminate him by hauling his stuff to town and selling it from house to house. However, I find that the number of city men and farmers, who thus eliminate the middleman is very small, when compared with the number who do not so eliminate him.

The reason the number is small is that the average city man has not the time, nor the necessary vehicles for transporting the "raw material," nor the inclination to buy direct; nor has the average farmer the inclination to dispose of his products in dribs, preferring to sell in bulk at a lower price. The city man and the farmer may be lacking in business Judgment, but the facts are as stated. I have interviewed a good many of each class.

The middleman has made a great success because his wares appeal to the consumer. The best salesman is the one who advertises and displays his goods in a manner that makes folks want them. Here is where the middleman shines. He buys foodstuffs all over the country, puts it in cold storage and keeps it till there is a demand for it. When the winter blasts blow and the snow comes, the middleman puts tropical fruit and green garden truck in the show window, and the public stands in line to give orders. The public doesn't have to buy, but the public wants to buy. The question that disturbs me is this: How could the producer in Central America or Southern California sell these things direct to the Topeka consumer if a middleman of some sort did not collect the products for distribution, and wouldn't they rot on the ground for want of a market, if the public decided to have nothing to do with the middleman?

There seems to be no doubt that the middleman owes his existence and his success to the public, which encourages his system of business. Were the public to reform, and do without a lot of things it likes, and withdraw its patronage from the middleman there is no doubt that he would be eliminated in short order. Evidently the public does not care to do that.

The new standards of living adopted by the public have made the middleman possible. The market basket of our grandmother's time now. adorns the relic room, along with the spinning wheel. Ordering is done largely by telephone, the housewife trusting to the judgment of the middleman, who, if he is wise, sees to it that his customer gets the best of everything, thereby keeping her taste in a proper state of cultivation. The city man would rather pay $2.00 a bushel for apples in January than to get the

bushel free for the picking in the orchard in October. It seems to be our way of living.

The railroads have made it possible for the products of one section of the country to be collected and marketed in another section promptly, and in first-class condition, thus giving the public the service it demands. The citizen who wants a crate of Rocky Ford melons, or a box of California oranges, does not depend upon the producer, but on his dealer, the middleman, who makes the purchase, transports the shipment in a refrigerator car on a fast freight train, and deposits it on the customer's back porch as fresh as it was when picked.

Just how town folks could get along without the middleman is not plain, nor is it plain just how the best marketing facilities could be had without the operation of some kind of a collecting and distributing agency, call it what you will.

The Exoneration of the Middleman

Elsewhere we publish a common-sense article by J. R. Koontz, of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, which is indeed most refreshing after the tirades of abuse and misrepresentation which have. been leveled at the middleman. Very nearly one hundred per cent. of the outpourings against him have originated in the springs of ignorance and wilful deception. They have betrayed an absence of thought and reason that are both amusing and pitful.

When the middleman is obliterated, just let us know. It will not be in the day of any man now living, or yet to be born. And why? Because he is an essential part of commercial exchange, and without him all business would stop. Could you do away with grocery and dry goods stores, meat markets, hardwares, doctors, lawyers, newspapers, banks, railroads, commission merchants, apple dealers and a thousand other lines of activity? They are all middlemen, every last man of them. The day has gone by when the individual man can contain within himself a mastery of all trades. We can't doctor ourselves, try our own law suits, haul our own goods to distant markets, make our own clothing, collect our food from the four quarters of the earth and distribute it, or do a thousand and one things essential to present day needs and commercial life.

Some of these "would-be" reformers had better think it over. They are behind the times. They belong to a past generation. They hark back to the time when a man raised the sheep, sheared them himself and had his wife spin the yarn, weave the cloth and make him his clothes. There was no middleman mixed in here. But we fail to see how that period enjoyed any greater prosperity or comfort than the modern day of specialization.

The middleman is a specialist. He has done more to stimulate trade, increase production, find a market for everything and reduce the problem of living to simple terms than any other force of which we know. If every middleman in the United States closed his doors for one week, stagnation, privation, starvation, waste and want would prevail.

And furthermore, that he is not a robber has been conclusively proven times without number. Every commission that has been appointed has so found. Very recently the Government Reports again exonerated him.