STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 4I 



A good cooperative system would direct your fruit to the 

 best markets. One of the principal objects of the "American 

 Fruit Growers' Union" is to divert and distribute the supply so 

 that markets are neither glutted nor without the products. Any 

 one who has had much to do with markets knows that at times 

 carload after carload of good fruit may come into a certain mar- 

 ket on a given day, with the result that the fruit cannot be sold 

 at any price, while perhaps only a few hundred miles away an- 

 other good market is entirely barren of that product. A good 

 selling agent in the employ of a cooperative concern could 

 watch the movements of fruit and avoid such conditions. 



Cold storage houses, similar to potato houses, built along 

 the lines of the railroads, fruit evaporators, and vinegar or 

 canning factories for the utilization of what would otherwise 

 be waste products, are also within the range to be covered by 

 cooperative fruit growing associations. It seems to me that 

 these should be considered seriously by Maine fruit growers. 

 An instance came to my attention a few years ago when seven 

 thousand dollars was paid to the growers of small fruits in one 

 locality where the crop would have been a total loss had it not 

 been for the fact that a couple of canning factories could use the 

 product. 



But, you say, all of these things require money, and this 

 brings us to what is perhaps the most important essential in 

 successful cooperation, — the necessity of a thorough going 

 business organization. Failure in the past in nine hundred and 

 ninety-nine cases out of a thousand has been due to poor busi- 

 ness organization and management. If you expect to get some- 

 thing for nothing, you better not go into a cooperative busi- 

 ness enterprise. 



Many farmers of my own acquaintance in this State, while 

 believing in the cooperative' idea, have refused to take even a 

 single share of stock. A successful cooperative enterprise must 

 be founded on the same laws of business as though a personal 

 business venture was being started. It is perhaps even harder 

 to start a cooperative enterprise than a personal one, for in the 

 one case one man with one mind is the directing force; and in 

 the other, a dozen, or perhaps several hundred persons with 

 widely varying ideas, all have their hand in organization and 

 management. The cooperative enterprise must, like others, be 

 governed by statute law. The foundation stone of cooperative 



