,28 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



The manager of the California Fruit Distributors, very truth- 

 fully says : "Unless your fruit passes through one channel, 

 which has all information in regard to shipments, amounts going 

 into different markets, and the condition of these markets, you 

 will never achieve success. As long as a number of different 

 •organizations are in the field working independently, you will 

 always be working at cross purposes and the results are sure to 

 Tdc disastrous. Your own competition will kill the price of your 

 7)roducts and this is entirely to your own disadvantage, with 

 no corresponding advantage to the people who buy and handle 

 V'Our products, as owing to this competition there is always 

 uncertainty in regard to cost of goods delivered ; and each 

 dealer is afraid that his competitor will be able to get the same 

 .'goods for less money, and is, therefore, unwilling to take hold 

 and push the business as it should be pushed." 



A sarcastic old farmer once remarked that the reason farm- 

 ers did not co-operate more was that there were too many of 

 them who would rather lose a dollar than see another make 

 two. It will be impossible for growers to realize in the greater 

 'distributing centres, as they otherwise might, until their rep- 

 resentatives follow the crop to its final destination. The yearly 

 loss to Maine orchardists resulting from lack of attention to 

 just protection in disposal of their fruit reaches hundreds of 

 thousands of dollars and will continue until practical co-opera- 

 tion becomes an actual fact.. 



The growing consciousness that by and through such organ- 

 ized bodies the future apple grower must unite to compete 

 with the western growers, now so thoroughly organized, places 

 this problem before this society as one of paramount impor- 

 tance. If the New England grower is conservative, and tena- 

 'cious of what he terms individual rights, that conservatism 

 must be disturbed; if he is, because of the experience of the 

 past, suspicious of others, that suspicion must give way to con- 

 fidence; if habit has established a method of disposal of his 

 fruit product, that habit must be broken by the introduction of 

 methods and practices now recognized as absolutely necessary 

 in every other department of industrial life. 



The individual unit must be lost in the chain of corporate 

 power. One man can handle the product of a thousand or- 

 'chards at less expense, and insure a better price, than one 



