COOPERATIVE ORGANIZATIONS 293 



on as the offspring of aspirations cherished and of 

 efforts put forth during the last four decades. Agita- 

 tion for the special-purpose associations began in 1875 

 and many short-lived organizations were undertaken 

 from time to time thereafter. Their demises were 

 due to various conditions, viz., the impracticability of 

 the plans proposed; the unwillingness of growers to 

 take the risks ; the opposition of private trading con- 

 cerns which naturally desired to protect their vested 

 interests; the advantages such concerns enjoyed at 

 that time in rebates from transportation companies 

 and in cheap capital from recognized commercial 

 credit which was then not available to organized 

 producers. 



Various other causes and conditions operated 

 against the earlier efforts at cooperation but there was 

 one strong connecting line which led from one deter- 

 mined venture to another and from one disappoint- 

 ment to another until, by its continuous action, dif- 

 ficulties began to disappear and achievements began 

 to be realized. This unbroken influence toward suc- 

 cess was exerted by informal assemblies of fruit- 

 growers, called California Fruit Growers Conven- 

 tions, which began in 1881 and which have been held 

 annually or oftener until the fifty-fourth of them con- 

 vened in Los Angeles in 1921. At these conventions 

 all cooperative organizations for fruit handling by 

 producers have had either birth or christening and 

 to these conventions all which succeed report their 

 plans and attainments. From the very beginning 

 hundreds of growers have gone from end to end of 



