The Question of Over-production. 35 



lessened the difficulties of distribution. But the 

 reader should be reminded that these appliances are 

 of use only to organizations, or to those growers who 

 have a large quantity of product; or, at any rate, to 

 those localities in which so much fruit is grown that 

 the community of interests amounts to an organi- 

 zation. 



There can be little doubt that fruit must tend to 

 become cheaper rather than higher, except for special 

 kinds and special markets, but the cost of producing 

 it will grow less at the same time. The fruit-grower 

 must acquire the skill to make his plantations bear in 

 the years of least heavy crop> and thereby escape, to 

 a large extent, the effects of over-production. This 

 c.an certainly be done. The very fact that there are 

 years of over-production and under-production shows 

 that fruit-growers have not yet mastered the con- 

 ditions which control their plantations. In orchards, 

 at least, there are more persons who discover their 

 crops of fruit than there are who produce them. 

 With the cheapening of the product, the demand 

 will be increased. The United States now leads 

 all countries in the extent, variety, excellence, and 

 abundance of fruits, and our people are pronounced 

 fruit -consumers : and this desire for fruit is very 

 rapidly increasing. In particular fruits, as in grapes 

 in the east, the price seems already to have fallen 

 to the very lowest point of profitable production, 

 and in these cases salvation seems to lie in the 

 hunting out of special markets, in devising more 

 secondary means of disposing of the product (as in 



