48 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



together and go to one of the retail grocers to see if it would 

 be possible if they all paid cash to save a few pennies on their 

 purchases. This was done, and the request was granted. There 

 was some slight reduction in cost for the payment in cash for 

 the purchases, and from that small beginning very extensive 

 co-operative organiations have been formed in Europe which 

 have brought back to the people who are co-operators a very 

 important relief from the higher cost to which they had been 

 subjected. 



Xow in our country it has been more difficult for co-opera- 

 tive work to be inaugurated for the reason that we have been 

 such a great country ; we have done things on such a great 

 antl wholesale scale, that it has been difficult to concentrate, 

 particularly with our producers of food products, along these 

 co-operative lines. The only really successful co-operation, 

 perhaps, to which we can point is in the Northwest. There is 

 at the present time in California an organization known as the 

 Citrus Fruit Protective League, wdiich is working along the co- 

 operative line with wonderful success. That great organiza- 

 tion, which is doing business at the present time to the extent 

 of millions of dollars annually, has been enabled to bring to 

 the growers of oranges and lemons and other citrus fruits 

 very much more money than they had received before they 

 went into this co-operative organization. At the same time it 

 has been possible for them to so distribute their products over 

 the markets here at the East, our entire country and foreign 

 markets, that they have been enabled to furnish the consumers 

 witli all these choice fruits of California at a somewhat lessened 

 cost to them. Xow there is one illustration of how co-opera- 

 tion in our country has met with eminent success. 



We may also point to the illustration which comes to us 

 from our western fruit growers in Oregon and Washington 

 and the western states, where the fruit industry has been re- 

 cently organized upon a large scale. The reason for the great 

 success of our western fruit growers lies in this fact, and I 

 want to say here that 1 believe that the best fruit growers in 

 this country, the most succesful fruit growers in our United 

 States, will be found in this great western and northwestern 

 territory. They do so comprehend and understand the neces- 

 sity of working together along these co-operative lines that 



