CONDITTOXS LEADIXd TO ORGA XIZATloX. 443 



necessarily pursued with longer continued, more unremitting, 

 severer, and more prosaic labor than any other agricultural 

 business in the world. There is no more romance in digging 

 about fruit trees than there is in digging post holes. It is far 

 harder to plow an orchard than a grain field, for the trees are 

 in the way. I would as soon saw wood as to stand on a ladder 

 all day long, straining every nerve to reach high branches 

 that I can't reach, in pruning, thinning, or picking. I know 

 no occupation more certain to produce backache than the 

 continuous packing of fruit, whether sitting or standing The 

 sun-kissed orchard in August has a .usual temperature of 

 one hundred forty degrees Fahrenheit, which, in the moist 

 atmosi)here of the east, would mean death to most of us, 

 and which, while safe enough in California, is about as desir- 

 able a place for a white man to stay out of as exists. The 

 waste of the "luscious golden fruit" which accumulates about 

 a packing-house, is about as nasty a mess as I know of As 

 for leaving the work for others, if there was ever a business 

 requiring the constant, unremitting, and individual attention 

 of its owner, who must, withal, have no mean account of 

 technical skill, it is the fruit business. The owner de})ending 

 on his orchard for an income, who attempts to conduct its 

 operations from a hammock in a shady nook, may contemplate 

 with certainty an early visit from the sheriff, on business of 

 the most pressing nature. It is only the keenest of men who 

 can make money by delivering a perishable food product in a 

 market twenty-five hundred miles distant by land, in com- 

 petition with food products raised on equally good land, held 

 at one-half the price per acre, and which pays not more than 

 a tenth of the freight. The men who do this do not operate 

 from hammocks. 



This contrast of the actual with the expected conditions of 

 our fruit industry is necessary to an understanding of the 

 origin and growth of our cooperative societies. A certain 

 .glamor with which the poetic instinct of mankind has sur- 

 rounded the fruit industry rendered a large element of society 

 an easy prey to real-estate interests which existed in California 

 on the magnificent scale ueculiar to the state, and which 



