t-class pecans will be handled almost entirely by or
through a private trade. We know of several growers who dispose of their
crops of several thousand pounds annually to private customers who have
learned the value of good nuts. So greatly has the demand increased that
in no single instance is anyone of these men able to supply the demand
of the natural outgrowth of his own work, and orders are usually booked
a year or more in advance. This is the ideal method of handling the
crop, and the one method which enables the grower to secure the best
price for his product.

In building up such a private trade, advertising must be resorted to,
either through the newspapers, magazines and other channels, or by
distributing samples of nuts. "Once a customer, always a customer"
should be the motto for the grower to hold in mind, and every effort
should be made and every precaution taken to _see that the nuts, from
year to year, are absolutely uniform in size, shape, and quality_. Do
not send a customer one size, shape, or quality one year, at a certain
price, and the next year vary it. Such treatment will tend to make
customers dissatisfied, and the grower may lose them entirely. This
point cannot be too strongly emphasized.

Strictly first-class nuts may be disposed of to advantage to the
first-class grocery or fruit trade in the larger cities. In cities of
any considerable size, there will always be found a grocer or fruiter
who is willing to take a first-class article at a price considerably
above the usual market price of ordinary nuts. The writer once submitted
samples of nuts of medium, but uniform size and good quality, to a
grocery firm in New York. They replied that they would take nuts like
the samples at twelve and a half to fifteen cents a pound in carload
lots, when the common run of pecans could be purchased at four or five
cents per pound.

As the output of high-grade pecans is increased, they may be disposed of
through the usual nut trade channels--the commission men. The bulk of
the product in the country to-day is handled by commission men, either
being purchased direct or sold on consignment. If sold for cash in the
home market, well and good, but if sold on consignment, choose one
reliable commission house in each city in which the product is to be
marketed--never two in the same city--and ship to it right along.

_Storing._ During the cold weather following the gathering of the crop,
little or no change t