The Great Asparagus Betrayal: Why Kennewick Farmers Are Shipping to Seattle

In your last issue you had an editorial about the bull-dog tenacity of some farmers of this valley, who appear to you willing to lose good money on their produce for the privilege of using the rubber stamps of the commission houses of Seattle or Spokane. You instanced the case of one grower who, on one occasion, received 93¢ for his asparagus at Seattle when he might have received $1.15 in Kennewick for the same stuff.

Taking the correctness of these figures for granted, may I remind you, Mr. Editor, that one swallow does not make a summer. In token of which, permit me to give you part of a letter received on April 22 from the house to which I send my grass in Seattle:

"April 21st 1914. Dear Sir: Received today 24 high boxes asparagus selling $1.25 a box, 3 flat boxes asparagus sold $1.25. We are still holding at $1.25 per box, but we are reliably informed that Kennewick asparagus is being quoted along the street by a brokerage firm at 75¢, f.o.b. Kennewick, for tomorrow delivery, which will lay it in here at 90¢ per box, and is liable to break the market to around $1.00."

That this information was reliable, I know of my own knowledge, as on that day I was offered 70¢ on the street, which naturally, I promptly declined.

This is the obverse of the medal, and it is not bullheadedness, or even boneheadedness which makes some of us pass the Kennewick man; it is plain, common, business horse sense, driven into our heads by such facts as one just mentioned and the one immediately to follow:

Last year I fell under the blandishments of one of our local men: to hear him, he had worked special wholesale markets and was also in a position to dispose of much of our stuff to retail merchants, and I was glad, as I fondly believed, to let him reap the benefit of his forethought by shipping most of my asparagus through him. But when I happened, on one occasion, to see him coolly take part of the asparagus I had just sold him and consign it to the very house in Seattle to which I was shipping myself, it occurred to me I was paying rather heavily for the privilege of having his handwriting upon my crates instead of mine.

Now, Mr. Editor, I could add other curious facts on the same subject; the above, however, are sufficient to show the inadequacy of your information, and to prevent you, possibly, from breaking out into such misleading editorials.