THE .MONTHLY BULLETIN. 177 



benefit to the living. Let us hope that the lemon business will, in the 

 long run, iK'ncfit fro)n tlie experiences of the past year. 

 Some of the benefits that I shall hope for are: 



First. An increase in the protective tariff on lemons. Surely, it 

 should be easy now to demonstrate that our industry should have a 

 duty that will protect against our markets' being flooded with elicap 

 poor quality foreign lemons, produced by cheap labor, and shipped Ijy 

 cheap water transportation. 



Second. The bad results of the past year will make the growers and 

 I)ackers scrutinize more carefully their cost sheets and endeavor in 

 every way to lower these as much as possible, and, at the same time, 

 increase the quality and quantity of their production. 



Third. The excessive amount of decay reported in many cars on 

 arrival in eastern markets and the object lessons of how this decay 

 affects values will certainly cause growers and packers to bend every 

 effort to seek the causes. Nothing detracts from good results in the 

 lemon business so seriously as excessive decay, and the good or bad 

 reputation of any brand and its ability to command the highest market 

 price in any market depend largely on the record that that brand has 

 made for good keeping quality. 



Appreciating the importance of this, the California Fruit Growers' 

 Exchange, through which is shipped eighty per cent of all of the 

 lemons of the State, has permanently added to its force a field man, 

 or supervisor of all of its lemon packing houses. Mr. G. W. Hosford, 

 one of the ablest and most experienced lemon men of the State, has 

 been employed in this capacity and is making regular rounds of the 

 Exchange houses, studying the records of these houses and pointing 

 out to the managers the weak places in their methods of picking, 

 handling, grading and packing. To my mind this is one of the most 

 important steps in advance taken by the Exchange within my knowl- 

 edge. Hitherto the Exchange said to the local association, "We will 

 take your fruit and market it to the best of our ability, leaving it 

 entirely to your judgment as to how that fruit shall be handled and 

 packed." The result of this naturally was that good association man- 

 agement got good results and bad management bad results, and the 

 figures gotten by bad association management were used to discredit 

 the Exchange system of marketing by those interested in so doing. 

 This field department will undoubtedly result in greatly improving 

 the quality of the pack from the Exchange houses. Even this early, 

 improvement is noticeable in the standardization of grades and in less 

 decay by reason of better handling and by the proper classification of 

 green, light green, and ripe fruit at the washing machines, which means 

 that much of the ripe fruit which has been allowed to be packed under 

 extra choice and choice brands at the expense of good keeping quality, 

 will not, in the future, be packed under those brands, but will be packed 

 under ripe brands and sold on its merits. 



Out of all of the grief of the past year, therefore, have come better 

 business methods on the part of the grower, packer and seller, which 

 are resulting, and will result more and more as time goes on, in placing 

 in the markets of America a better California lemon, which undoubt- 

 edly is the best lemon that the world produces when it is handled 

 properly, and when this fact is generally recognized among the jobbers, 



