THE ECONOMIC GAIN OF COOPERATION. 263 



The first result would be the bitter and unyielding liostility 

 of every wholesale grocer in the districts invaded. Of this 

 there can be no doubt whatever; nor is there any doubt that 

 the conduct of the fight on their part would be under far abler 

 direction than that which any rewards which cooperation is 

 likely to offer will bring to the management of the coopera- 

 tive side. And it is easy to see the lines on which they would 

 conduct the contest. Their first step would be to put all their 

 strength on any lines of goods which would best compete 

 with the California product. These they would advertise and 

 push by all possible means, diverting every order which came 

 to them, and which they could influence, to the competing 

 article, and not hesitating a moment to sacrifice profit, or even 

 incur small losses, in order to do so. This they would hardly 

 feel, since their business would be sustained on their profits in 

 other lines, while one product alone, and that not of universal 

 consumption or necessity, must bear all the burden of the 

 other side of the contest. The cooperative agency would be 

 seriously handicapped. In the first place, nearly all retailers 

 receive regular monthly visits from the traveling salesmen 

 of many wholesale concerns, who are very certain to get most 

 of the trade unless the cooperative agency employs the same 

 means. Now a good salesman traveling among retailers at 

 the east will cost $10 a day, for salary and expense; to earn 

 this at one-half cent a pound he must sell a ton of dried fruit 

 per day, six days in the week, the year round, which he can 

 not do. No single salesman traveling among retailers ever 

 sold thirty car-loads of dried fruit in the year. Even sup- 

 posing the impossible, there would be the general expenses of 

 the agency to be added, which would certainly bring the cost 

 of selling to retailers to at least three-fourths of a cent, which 

 is more than the average profit of the wholesale merchant; 

 and this is supposing impossible results from a traveling 

 salesman. With such sales from them as it is reasonable to 

 count upon, the cost of selling to retailers in tlie face of oppo- 

 sition and price cutting by tlie wiiolesalers, would probably be 

 four times the ordinary wholesaler's profit. 



But there is another consideration. Retailers are nearly 



