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=. [Sidenote: New York City can consume the world’s supply] 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. [Sidenote: The superiority of these finer pecans] 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. [Sidenote: The movement toward nut meat as the “true meat”] 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.