Space Invaders - Banana Cultures - page 51

eights and nines with thin fruit to Atlanta. Thus, although nine-handed
fruitbuncheswith''fat''fingerssetthestandardforqualityinU.S.markets,
demand varied across lines of class and region. 122
The marketing survey revealed that jobbers perceived themselves to
be in a highly competitive business. Virtually all of the jobbers inter-
viewed in 1929 complained about being undersold by small-time and/or
seasonal dealers who purchased ''decks'' (i.e., overripe fruit) and other
low-grade fruit for quick sales to retailers during periods of high demand.
Such dealers rarely invested in year-round storage facilities and tended
to drop out of the trade when demand slackened. Banana Man Nick,
who claimed that he bought ''mostly nines'' from United Fruit, expressed
frustration with the ''little fellows'' who sometimes bought up the ''lower
quality'' fruit and undersold him. The Tsones Brothers noted that United
Fruit's practice of selling deck ripes at lower prices allowed jobbers to
undercut each other—and they pointed to Nick as an example: ''He gets
decks, Jamaicas, and some sevens. He never buys first quality fruit.'' 123 Just
who the ''little fellows'' were seemed to depend upon who was doing the
underselling.
The comments of the Worcester-area jobbers notwithstanding, the
1929 marketing survey suggests that small-time fruit vendors such as the
peddler immortalized in the pop song ''Yes! We Have No BananasToday''
were not the primary threat to wholesaler livelihoods. Instead, the prolif-
eration of cash-and-carry chain stores such as A&P and Krogers reflected
the growing consolidation of retail food markets that potentially weak-
enedthepositionoffruitjobbers.Bothretailchaingrocersandlarge-scale
agribusinesses staked their financial success on high-volume sales and low
profit margins, a shared business strategy that was mutually reinforcing.
In the late 1920s, the Midwest-based Krogers chain began purchasing ba-
nanas directly from the importing companies. The A&P reported that
their stores often used bananas as a ''leader'' item, sold at cost, in order
to lure customers from competitors. However, the dominance of chain
stores was by no means complete in 1929: About 40 percent of the con-
sumerssurveyed''usually''purchasedbananasfromchains,butmorethan
50 percent of the consumers bought bananas from independent retailers,
includingstreetvendors,whocontinuedtoplayanimportantroleinpoor
and immigrant neighborhoods. 124 Wholesalers and jobbers would remain
a crucial link in the banana commodity chain during the first half of the
twentieth century.
If it is true that most retail banana sales were transacted through
the hands of ''housewives,'' fruit quality standards were set primarily by