CO-OPERATION IN FOOD-SUPPLY 185 



and marketing, so that success is more likely. A 

 local organization can cope with one commodity, but 

 may not be equal to dealing with a wide range of 

 produce, each kind of which, owing to the difference 

 in the conditions of production, necessarily needs a 

 separate organization. 



As an example of specialized co-operative societies 

 which have had literally gigantic success, one may 

 mention the American fruit growers' associations. 

 The enormous increase in the production of fruit 

 along the Pacific slope and in some of the north- 

 eastern States, such as Michigan, created a demand 

 for further outlets. The peach and grape growers 

 of California and the Oregon pear growers had to 

 find markets not only in the great urban centres of 

 the eastern States but also in other countries, and only 

 a very powerful organization with great reserves of 

 capital at its command could find out and study these 

 markets and supply their needs cheaply and profit- 

 ably. The fruit growers soon found that they were 

 getting under the thumb of the middleman, and they 

 combined to meet the danger. There are combina- 

 tions of this kind in all the great fruit-growing States 

 of America, and one of the most powerful and impor- 

 tant of these is the California Fruit Growers' Ex- 

 change, with head-quarters at Los Angeles. Some 

 years ago this association was dispatching to market 

 14^ million boxes of fruit annually, showing a gross 

 profit of 4^ millions sterling. This association is 

 really a federation, having its head-quarters at Los 

 Angeles, and its governing council is elected by about 

 fourteen principal district associations, which, in their 

 turn, have connected with them more than a hundred 

 local societies with an aggregate membership of 14,000 

 individual fruit growers. The exchange had agents 

 in the United States, in Canada, in London, and in 



