28 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



systematizing the handling of goods that we sell. We have 

 only commenced what all successful manufacturers must 

 accomplish, namely: develop the selling end of the business, 

 and establish such settled practices and channels of trade as 

 shall constitute what might be called a permanent asset of the 

 business, insuring the individual a kind of initial guaranty of 

 profit. 



Let me illustrate : thirty years ago the people of southern 

 California undertook the production of citrous fruits upon a 

 large scale ; but they soon learned that something further was 

 needed beyond producing large crops of high-class oranges and 

 lemons. Their nearest market of adequate dimensions lay in 

 the Mississippi valley and eastward, 2,500 to 3,000 miles 

 away, over difficult mountain railroads, and with 1,000 miles 

 of unconsuming but burning desert haul between. It is not 

 strange that under conditions such as these a car of fruit was 

 largely rotted by the time it reached Baltimore, Boston, or 

 even Chicago or St. Louis, and that what was left would rarely 

 sell for enough to pay the freight. If this were true of car 

 lots, it was doubly true of small shipments ; and under condi- 

 tions such as these all but the largest growers were put out of 

 business before they had fairly begun. 



And so they learned their bitter lesson, these fruit growers, 

 namely: that it is one thing to grow a crop, and another to 

 market it ; one thing to anticipate a demand, and another 

 thing to cater to it profitably. They were literally forced into 

 co-operation of some sort, and ultimately the so-called fruit 

 growers' exchanges were organized. They each employ a man- 

 ager, — not at $1,000 a year, but at $4,000 and sometimes 

 $5,000 or $G,000. This manager is an expert salesman, who 

 knows and can invent ways of reaching the consuming public 

 and of stimulating its buying power. 



One of the first results of co-operation was the rule that no 

 man should sort his own fruit, whether he had a car load or a 

 wagon load of fruit. His responsibility ends when it is 

 delivered at the warehouse, where it is sorted, packed and 

 shipped by the officers and employees of the association of 

 which he is a member. It is therefore at once standardized 

 and the quality guaranteed to the consumer, whoever may 



