The Auckland Fruit Market.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 445, 12 February 1890, Page 3

The Auckland Fruit Market.

It seemß extraordinary and vexatious that fruit, a production which is in favour with everyone, and which everyone is willing to purchase at a reasonable price, should be so difficult to dispose of to any advantage to the grower, and very little to either the retailer or the consumer. It would be well to inquire into the cause of this, and if anyone will take the trouble to do so I think he will find that the whole three of the parties are very much to blame for the present state of affairs. In the first place, the growers do not pay sufficient attention •to looking after the sale of their fruit, and ■.they pack up, with the good samples, bad or inferior ones, that render people shy of purchasing cases of fruit at auction sales. The retailers, on their part, are to blame in not trying to deal direct with the growers instead of through the medium of an irresponsible auctioneer and insisting upon consignments being up to samples, at the same time giving commensurate prices. They are apt also to demand prices from tfche public which the public are nou willing to give to make up for their neglect in purchasing, and the consequence is that a. large proportion of their* fruit remains unsold till it is partly rotten. Then to make matters still worse, instead of getting rid of the damaged fruit separately, at low prices, they mix it in quietly with the better, and their customers are dissatisfied and not apt to go largely into such purchases. The public, too, are to blame, because they will insist upon purchasing fruit from high rented shops in "Queen-street in preference, to a public market. The profits upon fruit are not large enough, nor is the quantity sold great enough, to admit of its being disposed of at reasonable prices in places where the rent is very high ; and it is to be regretted that the market is not moie generally resorted to for a purpose of this (kind*as it is in all the towns of the European Continent, where fruit is sold fresh from the

garden direct from the grower to the consumer, and where there, is always a choice of all the best fruits in season at a price within the reach of every person. In some places, too, when a certain hour arrives on Saturday night, the residue of the fruit market is put up to auction and cleared off, generally for a price equal to its worth. It is a question whether even an extensive fruit grower would mend matters by retailing his own fruit. Ever so small a shop in a street like Queen-street costs an unreasonable rent for that class of .goods, and the salary of a manager and assistants is high. I have heard of £2 a week for the smallest possible premises, £2 a week for a salesman, 15s a week for a girl to assist, besides taxes and other expenses. Why, by the way, the poor girl should have so disproportionate a remuneration is a mystery only solved by the knowledge of the universal way in which the very sex we ought all to protect and cherish is imposed upon, and that, too, when everybody knows a good-looking girl will sell ever so much more fruit than a man ! Probably the only good plan for fruitgrowers to adopt would be to sell under the guidance of an Association. I do not see how tbev can do so in one shop or in a place like Queen-street, but if a powerful Association were to agree to engage stalls in themarket or to make a combined regulation of some kind to have their fruit sold in stalls, it might have the effect of freeing the trade from the enormous drawbacks of the hundred-and-one charges of the auctioneer and the burthen of high rent. We hear rumours of agents selling fruit to a fictitious buyer at nominal prices and shipping it to a partnerdown South, whereit realized good prices, and we all know hundreds of instances of accounts with Dr. balances sent in for fruit consigned to the care of auctioneers and agents. We also know of as many cases of retail dealers.even, where the rents are not high, purchasing at Id or 2d per pound what they demand 4d or 6d for and will sooner injure their own trade than be contented with less profit. I can see no better remedy at present than for Associations to take possession of the public market places, on some terms and under some regulations, and then perhaps buving fruit there might become the fashion and we might get rid of the incubus of the auction and partly of the monopoly of the retail dealer. It would nob be difficult for Associations under these circumstances, either to arrange for clearing the market by auction, or what would be much better, running a jam factory bo use up the unsold fruit. What fruit-growers want more than anything else at present is direct sale to consumers, or as nearly so as possible. Fruit is not an article of sufficient value to support so many profits to middlemen. No one who visits the Auckland marketplace with its numbers of empty stalls and others filled with old books, second-hand tools, and rubbish, can wonder at its not being generally resorted to, but if a good Fruitgrowers’ Association or two were to get hold of it and furnish its stalls with beautiful tempting fruit, and appropriate floral and arboreal decorations, to say nothing of good-looking smiling young lady assistants at proper salaries, the place would soon become an attraction and a fashionable resort, and a fresh impetus would be given to the fruit trade. The experiment would nob be a very dangerous one. Let each member of an Association arrange a stall and let them engage the services of a manager amongst them and form a jam factory company, or for a begining, arrange with an existing factory to take the surplus fruit off their hands. Komata. ;