“The second half of the proposition was not so easily solved. When we shipped out produce to the New York commission merchants, we soon found that the returns were less than the cost of the boxes in which it was shipped.
“As an example, we received six or eight cents a bushel for tomatoes, the very best ripe tomatoes. The box in which we shipped them cost us fourteen cents; then came express and freight. Of course, the Long Island Railroad, which was employing us, would have franked all our produce, but that was not what Mr. Peters wanted. He wanted us to find out exactly how a farmer would handle his produce, so we paid the charges and had a record of what everything cost.
“We faced this situation: With the best of tomatoes to sell, we could show no profit on them; instead, our books would show a loss. What were we to do? We did the natural thing, we went to New York to see why. At the end of three days we knew the truth.
“That three-day investigation proved to us that the commission men of New York had the Standard Oil Company and the Meat Trust beaten a thousand miles. We were all paying tribute to them, big farmers and little, grocers and housewives—for you housekeepers ought to know that your greengrocer makes but a small profit on what you buy.
“Among those to whom we shipped, we found seven speculators, men who never handled or saw the goods. One man sold immediately to another firm, which proved to be his wife; another man secured three commissions by selling produce to the greengrocers through two other ‘firms’—one was his wife, the other his nine-year-old son. You see, in case of any trouble he could actually show two sales.
“We found men who had no offices, who had no bank account for their business, who had no clerks, who had absolutely no expenses, but who were making big money off the producer and the consumer. One man had an elegant home in Brooklyn and a beautiful summer place in Maine. He owned a steam yacht and three automobiles, but he did not contribute one single cent to the upkeep of New York City, in which he did his business, nor to New York State. He was not even paying a license as an ordinary peddler would have to do. He did not have to file any statement of his financial returns with the state treasurer, as other business concerns do—yet he was getting enormously rich on his commissions. He was one of the men who had promised us to sell at the best prices which grocers were paying, minus the commission. And our returns were six or eight cents a bushel for tomatoes!
“To see produce come in from various outlying states and to watch it handled on the docks, we had to stay up nights, but we got what we wanted—reliable figures and data. We knew then that there was no money for the Long Island farmer whose produce was handled by the New York commission merchant. He could sell it better in any other city.
“The next proposition was to do away with the commission man and reach the consumer direct. Mrs. Fullerton and I happened to run across a package or carrier which held six four-quart boxes. We decided that we would fill one box with potatoes, one with tomatoes, one with sweet corn, one with lima beans, one with beets. The remaining box should hold a combination—parsley, radishes, asparagus, and later in the season, cantaloupe, raspberries, strawberries or other fruits. Then we christened the ‘Home Hamper.’
“We picked out seven New York men, each of whom we knew to have families. To each of these went a hamper, with a letter something like this: