COOPERATIVE ORGANIZATIONS 295 



made available to the effort to organize the fruit 

 and other productions of California, In all the 

 course of development of plans and conceptions into 

 concrete operation, which covered several decades, 

 there was a prevalent feeling of equality and mu- 

 tuality among participators., whether their property 

 holdings were small or large. The principles of 

 true cooperation,, which they sought to understand 

 and apply to the settlement of questions of profit- 

 able production, exerted a strong influence on their 

 attitudes and relations towards each other. Long and 

 persistent effort toward cooperation, reason and fair 

 play, not only attained these ends but constituted 

 also an adult school in humanity and citizenship 

 which has profoundly influenced the quality of Cali- 

 fornia rural life. 



During the first quarter of a century of produc- 

 tion of special products for distant marketing (ex- 

 cept in the dawning of great ideas of commercial in- 

 dependence for agriculture which have been noted), 

 effort was naturally centered on cultural problems. 

 About 1885 there arose to common view the impera- 

 tive need (which previously had been dimly dis- 

 cerned) of beginning correspondingly strenuous and 

 systematic effort on the commercial side. It then 

 began to be clear that such great production of fruits 

 as natural conditions favored and human enterprise 

 and industry were capable to attain, could only en- 

 counter financial frustration unless the producers' 

 ideal, of the greatest volume of production with rea- 

 sonable profit, could be substituted for the traders' 



