. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. 352 AMERICAN BKF. JOURNAL September THE PACKERS' PROFITS Notes on the Cost of Packing and Selling the Honey Crop —By M. G. Dadant MORE and more, in these days of reconstruction and of revis- ion, we hear criticism of the jobber, of the wholesaler and of the retailer, and an urgent demand evei-ywhere for the elimination of the middleman. Before discussing specifically the case of the honey producer and honey seller, a frank elaboration upon the "middleman" seems advisable. In the earlier days, the middleman was a negligible quantity. Either t
. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. 352 AMERICAN BKF. JOURNAL September THE PACKERS' PROFITS Notes on the Cost of Packing and Selling the Honey Crop —By M. G. Dadant MORE and more, in these days of reconstruction and of revis- ion, we hear criticism of the jobber, of the wholesaler and of the retailer, and an urgent demand evei-ywhere for the elimination of the middleman. Before discussing specifically the case of the honey producer and honey seller, a frank elaboration upon the "middleman" seems advisable. In the earlier days, the middleman was a negligible quantity. Either the head of the family produced all the family required or else he bar- tered with his neighbors—a case of from producer to consumer. By and by, modes of travel and of inter- course were established, the bartering became more general. By gradual de- velopment we came to a period when the head of the family depended for many things upon exchange with neighbors or with distant peoples. This was true as far back as the time of the Phoenicians, a flourishing peo- ple, devoting their time to trading along the shores of the Mediterranean and even in the countries of northern Europe. Eventually was evolved the present period of specialization, where many men spend their whole lives in one single pursuit, exchanging the result of their labors for commodities pro- duced by the labor of others, in this country or in far-away foreign lands, with middlemen to execute the ex- change, trading coffee for honey, or shoes for raw hides. So specialization means middle- men, and the greater the specializa- tion, the more middlemen required, most certainly with all the oppor- tunity for incident evils, but not with- out compensating advantages. Moreover, the more middlemen, jobbers, brokers, wholesalers, packers (or whatever you are minded to call them), we can interest in the hand- ling of a given commodity, the greater the competition amopg them, the less profit they will take and the better
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, booksubjectbees, bookyear1861
