SELLING AGENCIES 199 



of so many varieties and grades in each. The foreman 

 carries out these instructions and makes a bill of lading 

 to the railroad for shipment direct to the buyer or to 

 the place of consignment. A copy of the bill of lading 

 is forwarded to the general manager's office and, if the 

 case happens to be a sale that is already arranged, this 

 is forwarded to the agent in the city who has made the 

 sale. That agent then turns over the goods upon their 

 arrival to the purchaser, collects the money and returns 

 it to the general manager. 



Every so often, in some cases once a week and in other 

 cases once a month, these receipts are totaled up and 

 the flat tax which goes to pay the expenses of the ex- 

 change deducted; the balance is distributed among the 

 various local exchanges. The managing officer of the lo- 

 cal exchange then distributes to the individual growers 

 whatever their particular brand of fruit sells for. This 

 does not constitute a pooling of the fruit of different grow- 

 ers, but the fruit of each individual is sold separately, 

 and returns are made separately, so no one loses his 

 identity in any way. It is also a fact that the local ex- 

 changes do not lose their identity by combining with 

 the larger organizations. For example, two labels are 

 used on each package. The name of the local organization 

 on one end and of the larger exchange on the other. 



Benefits of Cooperation. Cooperative fruit-selling 

 organizations have been envolved to meet a particular 

 need, and while they have been instrumental in increas- 

 ing the price of many different kinds of fruit to the 

 producer, this has been brought about by the increase 

 of the quality of the fruit, rather than by the boosting 

 of the prices. In the second place, they have decreased 



