Part 13

Why take more of your time with detailed copies of letters from customers ordering and re-ordering Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecans? Is not the fact that re-orders were received in itself the best evidence of superior quality when it is considered that the selling price of many of these shipments was $1.25 for 12 ounces, or at the rate of $1.65 per pound?

The man whose wife wrote the last letter questioned whether any one would pay this price—for an addition of fifty per cent. of the price of the average paper shell pecan was too much, in his opinion. He questioned the price =before= he sampled the nuts and noticed how much they were preferred in his own home and among his friends. =After= that the price was forgotten and the recollection of superior quality led him to re-order, just as it did many others.

For the past several years we have had to confine our sales almost entirely to mail orders, because the supply has failed to increase quickly enough to meet the demand. But in 1914 we made a test in one American city of only 51,000 population (based on the 1910 census) through one wholesale grocery firm. Paper shell pecans had not been previously known in this section, their salesmen said that it was absurd to attempt to market a 12–oz. box of Hess Brand Pecans at the retail price of $1.00, then prevailing. Yet grocers re-ordered and re-ordered till our available supply was exhausted—=the demand created by the nuts themselves astonished all concerned=.

The city in which this test was made was not our home town. It does not stand above the average in per capita wealth—nor is there any evidence to show that the people of this city are more likely to be interested in pecans than any average American. To make such a test in a large city like New York was impossible—for the entire yield of a 100,000–acre plantation, planted twenty trees to the acre, could not supply a week’s demand there, if New York bought pecans in the same proportion as the city cited above.

A leading agricultural publication says:

“Tyler is a Texas town with about 12,000 people who eat a carload of pecans every year. If New York ate pecans at the same rate, it would consume our whole crop.” (“Whole crop” refers to all of America’s crops combined, which is also the world’s crop.)

Why This Phenomenal Demand for Finer Pecans

There are many reasons for this remarkable demand for the finest grade pecans—despite the higher price—which reasons are briefly indexed on the five following pages.

The greatest of these reasons is the superior quality of these pecans, as shown by tests on pages 33 and 34—the fact that they have a greater content of easily digested nut meat, of attractive appearance and greatest nutritive value, which nut meat is easily accessible, due to their thin shells.

There is a strong movement the world over toward nut meat as the “true meat,” in which some have joined for religious reasons, some for ethical reasons, others from dietetic or hygienic considerations—and many others because of increasing knowledge of food values.

The Seventh Day Adventists will refer you to the twenty-ninth verse of the first chapter of Genesis, which reads:

“And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” They reason that according to this passage “true meat” grows on trees, and in this belief they are joined by many others for ethical, dietetic and hygienic reasons.

A 3½ YEAR OLD TREE on our plantation, photographed August, 1920. October it bore many clusters of large, fully developed pecan nuts. ]

Everywhere in America there are large numbers of people, organized and unorganized, who will not eat the flesh of any animal. In sanitaria of all sorts there is a tendency to reduce to the minimum the use of all animal meat or do away with it entirely. In one system of forty sanitaria there are practically no drugs used because the patients are put on a perfected diet system in which nuts are substituted for animal flesh. At Battle Creek Sanitarium alone, under Dr. Kellogg, over 10,000 patients have adopted the meatless diet. Nut meat is largely used there to replace animal flesh.

Nuts Meet the Demand For Uncooked Foods

Many physicians who specialize in diseases of the intestinal tract are advising the use of uncooked foods. Dr. Kellogg, in his book, Colon Hygiene, sums up one strong argument in simple, non-technical language when he says on page 223: “=Raw food resists the destructive changes which are produced by bacteria, while cooked food makes no such resistance.=”

Nut meat is practically the only source of both protein and fat, in large proportions, which it is safe to eat uncooked. This statement is readily proved by high authority.

In the Congressional Record for January 6, 1917, we read: “Nuts occupy a unique position in the list of important food products, in that, with the possible exception of a few other fruits, in =the raw condition they alone afford a fairly complete and balanced food for human beings=.”

The fact that nut importations in 1917 were nearly ten times as great in value as those in 1900—while the consumption of animal flesh had failed to even keep pace with the increase in population—is evidence of increasing public recognition of the great and varied advantages of nut meat over animal flesh.

Possibly you will find this increase in the consumption of nut meats even more surprising when you consider that there was practically twenty per cent. less butter sold from America’s farms in 1909 than in 1899, according to U. S. census figures. In other words, the consumption of butter, which is the principal table article competing with nuts in fatty content, was falling off to four-fifths during practically the same period while the consumption of nut meat was increasing so rapidly.

Perfected pecan nuts contain more protein than beefsteak, and almost as much fat as butter. Isn’t it only natural that people should want their nourishment and fat in this concentrated form—hermetically sealed and kept pure by nature? Is there any such assurance of purity and cleanliness on butter—or on beefsteak?

=Place a Hess Brand Paper Shell Pecan on a hat-pin, light the nut meat and notice that it burns like a candle because it is seventy per cent. fat.=

“At this age (eight to ten years) the best parts of the orchards under the most favorable conditions and in favorable years will not infrequently produce from twelve to fifteen pounds per tree. The average number of trees per acre of the orchards already planted is twenty. Twenty trees per acre, each averaging twelve pounds, yield two hundred and forty pounds per acre.” Speech of Congressman Frank Park, Jan. 6, 1917, as reported in the Congressional Record.

Pecans For Sundaes and Candies, Etc.

The young women of America, who have changed so largely from soda water and ice cream to nut sundaes, may not realize that they are getting increased nourishment—but that is the case. That this is no small element in the consumption of pecans is evidenced by the fact that one druggist alone uses 1,500 pounds of crushed pecan meat per year for nut sundaes—while hundreds might probably use as many if the true figures were known.

Enos H. Hess, Second Vice President, and some stockholders of the Keystone Pecan Plantation. ]

Nut candies are in such great demand that the best confectioners are astonished. But not all nuts are fit for use in summer. The confectioner who is anxious to produce a quality product, places his dependence upon the pecan—the finest of nuts—which nature has furnished in an air-tight shell, which assures satisfaction the year round. The confectioners of New Orleans—a hot weather city—long since learned their lesson and that city is almost as much noted for its pralines—a pecan nut confection—as for its wonderful fete, the Mardi Gras.

Pralines were too good to be confined to New Orleans alone. Along the boardwalk at Atlantic City and other watering places, and at the finer confectionery shops of the larger cities, they are in good demand. There is no other way to make acceptable pralines except by using pecan nuts—the finest pralines require that the nuts be whole, which, in turn, indicates another need for paper shell pecans.