THE IRRIGATION AGE 



VOL. VIII. 



CHICAGO, NOVEMBER, 1895. 



NO. 7. 



CALIFORNIA FRUIT EXCHANGES. 



THE COMMISSION SYSTEM COMPARED WITH THE EXCHANGES. 



BY FRED L. ALLES. 



THE principal difference between the commission 

 system of handling fruits and the system of the 

 California Fruit Exchanges is that the former 

 is intended to benefit the fruit dealers and the latter 

 is of benefit mainly to the fruit growers. 



The commission system of handling California 

 fruits has always been managed mainly for the benefit 

 of the commission men. Naturally enough the men 

 engaged in this business exercised their time and 

 talents for their own benefit and not for the benefit of 

 the public. This is the usual rule in all forms of 

 commercial life and it would be folly to expect the 

 commission men to be an exception to the general 

 rule. Merchants engage in business usually to 

 benefit their own private bank accounts, and not out 

 of pure love for the dear people. So men have for 

 years engaged in the business of selling California 

 fruits on commission because there was profit in it 

 for them. 



EXTORTIONS OF COMMISSION MEN. 



Little need be said here of the plans of the com- 

 mission men, nor need details be given as to the 

 manner of conducting the business, save in a brief 

 way. The usual plan has been, and is to engage to 

 pick, pack, ship and sell a crop of oranges, charging 

 the grower from 35 to 50 cents per box for picking 

 and packing and a commission of ten to twelve per 

 cent on the gross proceeds for shipping and selling, 

 returning to the grower the net returns if any. Of 

 late years it had come to be quite frequently the case 

 that the net proceeds were NIL the division of the 

 4$2.00 received for the box of oranges being too often 

 made at the decimal point, the commission company 

 and the railroad company taking the dollar mark and 

 the figure 2 while the grower got the two ciphers as 

 his share. In fact there have been cases painfully 

 frequent where the grower not only furnished the 

 fruit but was called on in the end to pay a deficiency 

 to meet freight charges and commissions. 

 . Naturally, this state of affairs could not last long. 



The fruit growers would not have deemed these 

 losses such a hardship if the consumers were getting 

 the benefit, but they knew that the fruit was being 

 sold in open market at a fair price and thpy knew 

 also that the actual consumers of the fruit in eastern 

 and northern cities were paying a good price for all 

 the products of California orchards. And while 

 freight charges were extraordinarily high when fruit 

 shipments from the Pacific Coast were first begun 

 competition in railroads and the great increase in the 

 traffic have brought about reductions amounting now 

 to about 60$ of the original charges, in addition to in- 

 creasing the transit time from the slow freight service 

 of ten years ago to the fast passenger service of the 

 present day. 



The fruit growers of Southern California will rank 

 high along side of shrewd business men anywhere in 

 this country, and careful investigation and patient 

 labor on their part finally convinced them that the 

 germ of the trouble was the utter lack of system in 

 the handling of their crops. They soon discovered 

 that the commission men, in sharp competition with 

 each other, were flooding certain markets with fruit 

 while others were bare and when natural congestion 

 followed the rushing of ten carloads of oranges into a 

 five carload town, the commission men began to be- 

 labor one another, using the growers as clubs with 

 which to beat their business rivals. This was un- 

 doubtedly fun for the commission men but was sure 

 death to the unfortunate fruit grower. 



THE EXCHANGE SYSTEM. 



In starting in to change this lack of system the 

 fruit growers did not indulge in the old and worn out 

 cry of "away with the middle men." They realized 

 the fact that the grower of fruits in California cannot 

 deal directly with the customer in Illinois. They 

 knew perfectly well that jobbers in the East were 

 necessary to handle their crops in bulk and retailers 

 were necessary to place the fruit directly 



