FRUIT GKOWF.US' ASSOCIATIONS IN THE MISSOURI VALLEY ll'J 



versity Place, and just after my car came in there was another car came 

 in and there were two of us there in direct competition with each other. 

 If we had been members of some large association so that we could have 

 gotten direct information from the markets at large, we would have been 

 in a position to determine where and how to have placed a carload of 

 iruit. That is just an illustration to show tho necessity for any grower 

 or shipper or dealer, wherever he may be, to work together under some 

 of our associations so that they may be able to place their crops of fruit, 

 whether it is their own growing, or a dealer placing it, to the best ad- 

 vantage. 



Professor Lorenz Green: If the gentleman will pardon me, I do not 

 believe that the gentlemen quite stated what they intended to say. He 

 said that they needed larger communities. It seems to me they need 

 smaller communities, not a large com.munity. The Ozark Fruit Growers' 

 Association handles several hundred carloads of strawberries every year. 

 That is made up of twenty or thirty smaller associations, and they have 

 been very successful, and their plan is what, we need in the Missouri 

 valley, one large central association to handle the produci of the smaller 

 organizations in the Missouri valley. 



T. F. Sturgis: There is one thing right in connection with this and 

 it is something I would like to call attention to. And that is, that any 

 association that has been suggested, such as a Missouri Valley Apple 

 Grov/ers' Association, would mean the establishing of a market for the 

 Missouri valley apple throughout the country as the gentleman has just 

 mentioned. In such associations all the growers in their communities, as 

 individual growers, ship and pack under che name of this association, and 

 it all goes out under one head. That is the case with the Hood River 

 apple, in the Hood River Valley Fruit Growers' Association. 



Now from an advertising standpoint is what I wanted to call atten- 

 tion to, rather than a growers' standpoint. The fruit growers of California 

 raised a fund to spend in publicity throughout the United States, and ad- 

 vocating prunes as a diet, and when that demand was created, the people 

 went and bought prunes; and this association that had put up the money 

 did not get the direct benefit but another association that started a cam- 

 paign and advocated the use of a certain prune, because of its quality, just 

 as we would advocate the Missouri valley apple, and after they had cre- 

 ated a demand the first thing a person thought of when they called to buj 

 prunes was the prune of this quality that had been advertised. Now I 

 think we should have a Missouri Valley Apple Growers' Association, which 

 would include both sides of the river. This should be organized, and a 

 campaign of advertising should be started, and the amount to each grower 

 would be very small. The market is here, and the demand is here, and 

 we could have apples just as good as the Hood River valley apple, or the 

 Ozark strawberry, or any other fruit. I want to see an association that 

 will boost the Missouri river valley, and I hope that next fall or next year, 

 if this plan of association is carried out as expressed by the committee, 

 that I help entertain you in Omaha, and that we will have a commercial 



