178 the monthly bulletin. 



president, J. P. Bolton, our secretary, T. B. McKelvy, of Clovis, I. Tiel- 

 man of Fresno and myself from Selma, as directors. It looked that 

 afternoon like a hopeless task to go out and gather in all the peaches 

 and a million dollars to help pay for them without a single cent. All 

 the stock that was in store at that afternoon meeting was conrage, 

 determination and ambition. But. in everyday language, "we tackled 

 the job." 



This was on the twenty^second day of August, 1915. We agreed to 

 have $250,000 subscribed by the first day of January, 1916. .You 

 know it was necessary for us to have the money first. If we did not 

 get that amount by January 1, the subscriptions that we had received 

 up to that time would have been null and void. We adopted a plan 

 to go to the different schoolhouses in the county, generally in pairs, 

 sometimes we would all go together, but as our time was limited, we 

 usually went by twos or once in a while singlehanded. 



Our argument at those meetings w r ould be, the deplorable condition 

 that the peach market was in at that time could be overcome by all 

 of the farmers joining in and subscribing $20 an acre, one-fourth to 

 be paid on the call of the board of directors and one-fourth annually 

 thereafter, for we had figured that by getting $2(1 an acre, we would get 

 our million dollars and with that amount we could finance the corpo- 

 ration. At the close of the meetings, we were generally successful in 

 getting all of the farmers present to subscribe and appointed someone 

 to take charge of their district and add to the subscriptions. We 

 struggled along until we had $100,000 or more subscribed and it seemed 

 like a good many of the big growers would not join with us. At that 

 time even the banks gave us the glassy eye and thought that we would 

 not make a success of it. At one time, I myself, felt very dubious 

 after I had been talking with the president of the raisin association, 

 who is a very close friend of mine and who knew that I had worked 

 so hard with the raisin company to make it a success. I knew my 

 idea had considerable weight with him, hut he told me that if we had 

 in our contract that we would agree not to do business until we had 

 $600,000 subscribed and at least 75 per cent of the acreage signed up 

 he would then subscribe $2,500. I told him that that was our full 

 intention and though it was not in the contract at that time, it would be 

 after we got our $250,000. Well, ho said, "John, I am ready and 

 willing to go with you then." After that interview with Mr. Giffen, I 

 went over to our president, Mr. Glass, who by the way is one of the best 

 men in Fresno County for having the welfare of the county and com- 

 munity at large at heart. T related to him what Wiley Giffen had told 

 me and I said "Glass, hadn't we better do that? I am willing to have 

 that $100,000 re-subscribed which we now have on our list." He said 

 "John, we won't do it. If we make that chance, we will have to 

 change; for somebody else in some other manner and we will never get 

 anywhere. We are going to put this thing through and there is no 

 stop." 1 worried about it for a day or so and in the meantime kept 

 going around to the schoolhouses every night, gathering up more 

 money, getting more help and finally it looked to me like a big snowball 

 rolling down hill. We gathered more volume, therebj getting more 

 strength and more courage and when the first day of January came, 

 we had something like $330,000 subscribed. 



