296 RURAL CALIFORNIA 



ideal of the greatest profit from the least volume of 

 production'. The producers' plan was to use all 

 suitable land and supply a world of consumers; the 

 traders 7 purpose was to sell as much fruit as few 

 buyers could pay high prices for, so that their margin 

 would be greatest and his risk and investment least. 

 There is, of course, an irrepressible economic conflict 

 between these plans and the views and purposes which 

 underlie them. It was in 1885 that the man who 

 was then selling most California fruits in Chicago 

 declared that "New York could take so little that 

 it could be easily sent on by express from Chicago." 

 It was poor prophecy, for in 1917 the carloads both 

 of deciduous fruits and oranges which found a ter- 

 minal in Chicago comprised only about one-sixth 

 of the total shipments, five-sixths going east of Chi- 

 cago. The declaration of the traders' conception of 

 the opportunity for distant shipment in 1885 shows 

 how futile would have been the effort to build up 

 large production for distant shipment if growers 

 had not discerned their commercial needs and taken 

 steps to secure them for themselves. 



It required many faltering steps to make any head- 

 way at all. In 1885 the first serious effort was made 

 to attain self-marketing by growers, which the pio- 

 neers had declared fifteen years earlier would be the 

 only solution for producing problems. In October, 

 1885, the Orange Growers Protective Union was 

 organized in Los Angeles, and in November follow- 

 ing the California Fruit Union was established in San 

 Francisco. Neither of these organizations lived long 



