September 22, 1999

The frenzy to start new businesses on the Internet has not resulted in big profits, but it has meant bargains for shrewd consumers, Saul Hansell reports. Also: articles on auction fever, on how the Web is reshaping old-line businesses and on the new role of advertising, and the diary of an E-cave survivor. Section G

Article discusses bitter labor battle involving Veje Leather, factory in New York City's garment district that makes leather handbags designed by Kate Spade, and immigrant workers who barely make minimum wage; workers, most of them recent arrivals from Ecuador and Dominican Republic, describe harsh working conditions and lack of health benefits; 10 workers contend that their efforts to organize workers with Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees resulted in their dismissal; photo (M)

Brooklyn Museum of Art, sharing its riches with Manhattan, taps 52 works from its collection spanning 20 countries and 5,000 years to be exhibited at Paine Webber Art Gallery on Avenue of Americas through Dec 3; photographs by Augustus Washington, free black in antebellum North, to go on view at Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery; photo; short list of nominees for coveted Booker Prize for fiction are announced: J M Coetzee, Anita Desai, Michael Frayn, Andrew O'Hagan, Colm Toibin and Ahdaf Soueif; Dennis Potter, one of foremost figures in British television, to be recalled with tributes starting Sept 24 in New York and Los Angeles at Museum of Television and Radio (M)

Relationship between Ocean Spray and cranberry farmers has soured because Ocean Spray, besieged by crises ranging from oversupply of cranberries to increased competition to some costly marketing mistakes, has sharply cut price it pays farmers for fruit; situation has become so dire that management has commissioned total review of its operations, hiring Bain & Co and Merrill Lynch & Co as its consultants; review could lead to big changes that might include sale of Ocean Spray to consumer-products company; being under someone else's wing would be radical departure for Ocean Spray, cooperative based in Lakeville, Mass, that is owned by 920 cranberry farmers and citrus growers; part of problem may be cooperative structure itself; Ocean Spray has board composed exclusively of growers who are also owners and suppliers of key raw materials and who may not be most objective critics of rest of business; cranberry farmers, including Betty Brown, blame Ocean Spray chief executive Tom Bullock, who is retiring, for industry's woes; Brown comments; graphs; photos (M)

Atlanta Braves defeat New York Mets, 2-1; photo (M)