266 THE FARMER AS A COOPERATOR. 



agreed price when delivered at the point where the concentra- 

 tion is to be made. This has tlie advantage of giving tlie 

 producer his money at once, and the furtlier occasional 

 advantage — if it be an advantage— that buyers in their anx- 

 iety to get their supplies with the least possible trouble and 

 expense, sometimes get to competing with each other and pay 

 more, in individual cases, than the product is worth. 



The immediate payment and closing the transaction is an 

 unquestioned advantage to the average producer, although in 

 the long run it must be paid for in reduced prices. For all 

 agricultural products require the entire year for consumption, 

 during which time they are of necessity "carried" by some 

 one, who must in the meantime sustain all the expense and 

 risk of storage, interest, insurance, shrinkage, and deprecia- 

 tion, and if, in the long run, there is not a profit on all this, 

 business could -not continue. As to the occasional or even 

 frequent instances where the competition of buyers causes 

 them to pay to producers more than the market value of 

 goods, I have only to say here that it is at least questionable 

 whether it is ever to the advantage of an industry to have 

 tradesmen lose money on its products. That this does occur 

 is proved by the frequent failures of the class of speculative 

 buyers who purchase largely with no definite idea of where or 

 when they are to sell. 



But in the long run this does not occur. On the contrary, 

 very large profits indeed are often made possible from the fact 

 that buyers as a class are alert, well informed, incisive, and 

 free to buy or not as they please, while the producer must sell, 

 and often must sell at least a portion of his crop at once, and 

 in all other respects is ordinarily at a great disadvantage with 

 the buyer. With the average of advantage so greatly on the 

 side of the buyer it is not possible that the average returns to 

 the grower should be all that they might be. 



The illustration which we are considering, of California 

 dried fruits, is perhaps an extreme instance of the disad- 

 vantage to the producer of competitive methods— a serai- 

 perishable product not in universal demand, annually increas- 

 ing, as the result of undue stimulus, mure rapidly than 



