In the meantime Manager Peet and the inspector had worked out a code system for spraying instructions and put this into the hands of the growers in the six zones.  When it came time to spray, the telephones from headquarters in Lockport were put to work and the code message sent to certain orchardists; these in turn repeated the instructions to a number of other orchardists agreed upon, until every member had received the message.

The scheme has worked.  The first year there were 800 members who took this service; the second year—­1918—­there were 900; this year there are 1500.  It is paying for itself many times over.  One central packing house with nine grower members reports that eight of the members used the spraying service and that none of these had more than five per cent of their fruit to cull out.  The ninth member sprayed, but not through the service.  He culled forty-five per cent of his crop.  There are scores of similar instances.

Seeing how quickly he could get the support of the Niagara farmers for any move which had practice and not theory to recommend it, Manager Peet next began to agitate for an improvement in city-marketing conditions in Lockport.  Up to August, 1915, the system—­if system it might be called—­of distributing farm produce for Lockport’s consumption consisted of sporadic visits by producers to the city with produce to be sold at prices largely controlled by the local grocerymen.  Likewise retail prices to consumers were chiefly regulated by the same standard.

A grower might drive into Lockport with 100 quarts of strawberries.  He would stop at a grocery and offer them.

“No,” the grocer would say, “I don’t want any.  Say, how much do you want for them anyhow?”

“Ten cents a quart.”

“Too high; I’ll give you six.”

Whereupon the man would drive on to see the next grocer.  But the man who offered six cents might go straight to his phone, call up the rest of the trade and inform it that there were 100 quarts of strawberries on the streets for which he had offered six cents against ten asked.  The result would be that the farmer would get no better offer than six cents.

So Manager Peet joined hands with the Lockport Board of Commerce and went at the job of righting this condition.  He proposed a city market for farmers.  The nearest approach to a market was a shelter for teams which the local food dealers had rented.

To 700 farmers in the vicinity of Lockport Manager Peet wrote letters, calling their attention to these conditions and offering the city-market idea as a remedy.  And he used publicity among Lockport’s population of consumers, showing them the economy of such a move.  The farmers held a get-together meeting, decided on a location for a market in Lockport, decided on market days and market hours.  After this the farm bureau got the city’s common council to pass an ordinance prohibiting the huckstering of farm produce on the streets during market hours; also an ordinance setting the market hours, marking off a street section which should be used as a market stand, and putting the superintendent of streets in charge.