41 



THURSDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 7, 1922 



The President : I am going to ask Dr. Taylor to present his 

 paper now, if he will please. 



Prof. Ralph H. Taylor: Through a previous arrangement 

 with our secretary I had assigned to me an entirely different subject 

 from that on the printed programme, "The Use of Nuts the Year 

 Around." I have prepared a paper on the original subject and so I 

 will proceed to deliver it in accordance with my arrangement with 

 him. 



I do, however, want to say first, in connection with the use of 

 nuts the year around, that we from California are vitally interested 

 in that problem. I know of no problem that faces us more at the 

 present time than the one of marketing the product that we grow in 

 competition with the tremendously increasing imports from abroad, 

 brought in from countries where labor costs anywhere from twenty 

 to fifty cents a day, and at the highest a dollar a day for what they 

 call skilled labor, most of it twenty to fifty cents, and with freight 

 rates across the Atlantic that amount to less than half of our freight 

 rates, or one-quarter of them. With the commodity in the hands of 

 speculators who are able in various ways to make tremendous prof- 

 its, and giving the public none of the benefit of these conditions, wc 

 find it almost impossible to market our product at a profit. We must 

 get it into the hands of the consumer cheaply. We are endeavoring 

 to do it. One of the plans is to encourage the use of nuts the year 

 around, and the California Almond Growers' Association, whom I 

 represent, are planning now to shell their own almonds and put 

 the kernels up in vacuum packages, both tin and glass, and make it 

 possible for the housewife, instead of going to the candy stores and 

 buying salted almonds for a dollar to a dollar and a quarter once or 

 twice a year, to secure her own almonds, blanche them herself and 

 use them considerably more often because she can get them cheaper. 

 We believe it is going to be worth while for us to go into the business 

 the year around. The demand at the present time is for almonds 

 for a brief period up to the first of January. Thereafter there is no 

 sale until the following November. Under those conditions you can 

 see that with increasing crops we are facing difficulties that are 

 almost insurmountable. Therefore we are changing the form in 

 which we are marketing part of our crop. I want to say to those 

 people who do recognize the value of almonds for food that it is 

 going to be possible for you to secure them in a most desirable form, 

 clean, wholesome and absolutely fresh, as almonds packed in vacuum. 

 They will be just as fresh as when they are put in from the 

 orchards of California. 



