In the 1940s and 1950s, Eugene Peters was part owner of a successful trucking company that shipped fruit from the Benton Harbor Fruit Market throughout Midwest.
This here was a ticket that you’d give a grower, then you would keep a copy. The buyer would keep a copy and give the farmer a copy, and then they would know what stall to take his stuff to, and it would have the price of how much it was. He would recognize who would grow good fruit, and he would recognize how many of them would cheat on their fruit. If the inspector did not catch you, you could find good strawberries on the top and rotten ones on the bottom. That’s the way it went.
Well, we would start strawberry season right here in
When they started the new market in the 1930s, if you were a local person with established credit, you could write a check. Then the farmers would get paid and would run to the bank to cash it. Some of them would literally hold the check till the following year because they did not want to make too much money in a certain year because then they would have to pay taxes. But his gambling was his buying and selling produce.
My uncle started using migrant workers back in the [19]30s, before the war. Most migrant families would stay in through the summer and some would stay year round. We would also have second and third generations of people coming up out of
Hassle Farms out at Keeler they grew enough strawberries that the buyers would send trucks right to their farm and load not just one truck, but maybe five of them or so right, at their farm. He was one of the largest strawberry growers for years.
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WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY / THE HERITAGE MUSEUM AND CULTURAL CENTER