NINETEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 237 



and then the association can he guided by the advice of that 

 man. Another advantage is that the dealers will not dare to 

 give an inferior article of any kind to a large association. 

 They would dare to do that to the individual grower. 



Now I could go on and enumerate articles that we have 

 to have, on some of which we make a saving very often of 

 as high as fifty per cent, and running down from that to ten 

 per cent. That is a large saving on the cost of supplies. 

 That is one of the main advantages of co-operation, or of 

 buying these materials through the association. If you have 

 got the Grange, there should not be any trouble in working 

 up the spirit of co-operation among the farmers. Then there 

 will be no danger of over-doing the market, because every 

 man will have a chance to produce a certain amount of the 

 fruit. You do away with the spirit of one grower being 

 afraid to let someone else know what he is making out of 

 certain lines for fear they will go into that line. 



If you go into the system of working it co-operatively, 

 you will get higher prices for your fruit, because you can 

 get your men to look after that line. Now you take straw- 

 berries : You will have a market for your berries because 

 you will have the buyers coming in from outside, and after 

 you have studied every market and transportation facilities 

 which the association has, it enables you to put the fruit down 

 where you can get the best price, and where you can do it 

 the easiest, where they know they will get it easily, and get 

 it quick. In our own case, we are shipping to the western 

 market. We realized that our own market was getting filled 

 up, as you say your eastern market is here sometimes. When 

 we started that we thought we would be up against the 

 western fruit growers, and might have a pretty sharp com- 

 petition, and perhaps might have to sell below cost. We 

 built up a market right under their noses. You people down 

 here can very easily take the life out of their business, be- 

 cause you have got the markets right here at your doors. 

 You keep right on shipping. You can grow just as good 



