PREFACE Several years ago I began to write and manifold a series of lectures for the information of about one hundred traveling and city salesmen employed by a large wholesale grocery house for this house I was then a department manager and buyer, Some copies of these lectures were sent to personal friends. Soon requests for the series began to be received from them and their friends. I then printed on a multigraph several hundred sets of the series and distributed them to those wholesale grocers who subscribed for them. Apparently this did not satisfy the demand, as, since then, I have had numerous requests for the series and suggestions that they be published in book form at a more popular price, These suggestions I concluded to adopt, hence this book. The book contains much more matter-and more valuable matter-than the series of lectures, for I have broadened my investigations and added to my experience since the lectures were first written. That in the lectures which seemed good I have revised in the light of my wider experience. I have also added to the book statistical and practical in- formation-such information as I at times have greatly needed, and which I had much difficulty in securing and keeping convenient for reference in a compact form. I have not attempted to write a scientific book, as it is not intended to teach manufacturers how to prepare canned foods. It is intended, however, to inform canners how their products are marketed and distributed and what qualities are desirable and salable. Since I wrote the series of lectures I have been in the canned food brokerage business, and was chosen by the canners, grocers and brokers of the United States to manage National Canned Foods Week 1913. By point of view is, therefore, broader. More than this, my appreciation of the great industry which puts the June garden into the January pantry, and preserves the food supply of the world, in times of abundance, to feed its people in times of scarity, is widened. I have tried to crystallize that enlarged view and that appreciation in my revision of the lectures and in the added material. I hope that my thirty-five years of experience as a merchant and as a buyer and seller of canned foods have qualsed me to impart something of benefit to my co-workers, There are many-very many-who know as much or more about the subjects treated as myself, but who have never had the time to put their knowledge into compact form for publication. To that class I present my apologies and assurances of esteem, with the hope that the volume may contain for them some reminiscences and prove convenient as a book of reference. For List of Contents See Back of Book. Volumes have been written about salesmen, and salesmanagers, and upon the subject of salesmanship. Little has, however, been written about buyers or the buying methods of a business. There is a verse in the Bible Prov. 20-141, which describes a cunning and boastful buyer, viz. It is nought, it is nought, saitli the buyer but when he is gone his way, then he boasteth. This method of depreciating an article offered for sale is still practiced, as well as the boasting of the buyer after the goods have become his. If one were to attempt to describe methods and manners used in buying, or even to classify buyers, he would have an interminable task...