L82 Till'. MONTHLY BULLETIN. 



the year around. The aim Is in the shell are very largelj used about 



the holiday times, and we of California have jusl aboul supplied- that 

 market. So it is up to us to find some means of disposing of the great 

 quantity of almonds which we know is coming to us and that we must 

 handle. For that reason, in addition to exploiting the markets, and in 

 addition to distributing throughout centers that have never before had 

 them, we have undertaken the almond-shelling business. We have' 

 established in Sacramento a nut-shelling plant, the largest of its kind 

 on the continent. I am telling you nothing new when I say that Cali- 

 fornia is the only state in the Union that produces almonds commer- 

 cially. We are operating in an untried field. We have bought land in 

 Sacramento and have installed the host machinery obtainable. We 

 have employed experts, not alone to build, but to create and invent 

 machinery for the handling of shelled almonds. We are still handi- 

 capped, however. There is one almond that is brought to America and 

 is sold here at the highest price paid for any almond, viz., the Jordan. 

 That market we are unable to compete in. for this reason: We can not 

 successfully crack the Jordan almond. Now. that seems singular. The 

 inventive genius of Americans along that line has not yet been able to 

 cope with the problem of cracking a Jordan almond without damage 

 to the kernel. We have tried to ascertain how it is done in Spain, 

 but it is one of those trade secrets that we have not yet learned. We 

 are going to send an expert to the Mediterranean, and we are going 

 to keep him there until he learns that secret, or until he dies. When 

 he comes back here, we, of California, will be in the Jordan almond busi- 

 ness. There is no reason why we should be selling an almond at 35 or 40 

 cents a pound, and letting t he cream of I tie market go to the Europeans, 

 at seventy-live cents and a dollar a pound. We purpose getting our 

 share of that business. We are going to do this through cooperation. 

 We can not do it in any other possible way. Today we have nearly 

 1,200 growers and they are as a unit in all this work. We have never 

 gone to our representatives from the various associations who come 

 to us direct from the people, and asked them for anything in the way 

 of funds for improvements or developments that they have not met us 

 more than half way. and wondered why we haven't asked for it before. 



Now, these are some of the things made possible by cooperation. We 

 believe that we can handle all the almonds that California can produce. 

 Previous to our organization there was a firm in Paso Robles that twenty 

 years ago had an almond orchard, but for two years they were unable 

 to sell their crops at all, and they tore down the fences and let the 

 stock in. We were producing aboul 1,000 tons of almonds at that time, 

 and there was no market for them. 



I was down at Lancaster in the Mojave Desert not long ago and I 

 saw a large almond orchard there, and alongside if some almond trees 

 that had been planted within the last year, and I said, "I see you are 

 going into the business more extensively." The grower replied, "Yes, 

 we are returning to it. Do you see that eighty acres of 'cots.' That 

 was all almond orchard once and I took them up." "Why," I said, 

 "did you take them up?" He answered it was because he couldn't 

 sell the crop. "1 kept those almonds two years and couldn't sell them, 

 but I joined the association about three or four years ago and now we 



