384 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



Reverting to California, we may note the success of fruit 

 marketing interests in the operation of the California Fruit 

 Distributors, composed of fourteen incorporated shipping or- 

 ganizations operating one hundred or more packing houses in 

 the shipping and marketing of about six thousand cars of de- 

 ciduous fruits annually. 



Extending our observations into .the northwestern apple 

 country, we find that territory quite as progressive in the 

 matter of co-operative organization of fruit interests as in the 

 effort to lead the country in the production of fine apples. In 

 fact, control of 80 per cent of a normal season's crop of twelve 

 thousand carloads of boxed apples, there being about equally 

 divided between the Northwestern Fruit Exchange of Portland, 

 Ore., with three subdivisions comprising twenty-eight local 

 units within the states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho, and 

 the North Pacific Fruit Distributors, a coalition of shipping 

 associations and independent shipping companies heretofore com- 

 petitive with one another. 



These references to a few of the larger organized shipping 

 interests, most all of which have passed the experimental state 

 and accepted as substantial and successful institutions, must 

 be sufficient to indicate the success of co-operative effort along 

 broad, extensive lines. 



While considerable organization exists, combination among 

 fruit producing factors has not kept pace in that respect with 

 other lines of industry. Yet much good progress is being lately 

 made, thanks to greater assistance from state and federal de- 

 partments devoted to agricultural pursuits. 



As regards modes of marketing, we find to date but one 

 single co-operative organization (the Exchange of California) 

 sufficient in strength and tonnage to warrant the maintenance 

 of its own selling machinery on a complete scale — a trained and 

 experienced sales force quite as essential to the effective selling 

 operations of the important fruit shipping associations as the large 

 commercial establishment. 



Excepting the citrus fruit territory of California, no fruit 

 producing section extends its shipping period beyond a very 

 few months of the year, consequently the establishment of any 

 extensive sales force among the marketing centers by the in- 

 dependent co-operative association or exchange is obviously 

 impractical. 



