CONDITIONS LEADlNd TO OK(iA XIZATION. 117 



tion of all kinds of fruit and fruit products increased far beyond 

 any existing demand, and far beyond any possible sales except 

 as new markets were created. The raisin industry, which, in 

 spite of warnings from official sources, was exploited long after 

 all possible remunerative demand had been provided for, was 

 the first to suffer, as vines came more quickly into bearing 

 than trees; next, eastern shipments of deciduous fruits became- 

 unprofitable; then followed the orange industry; and, finally, 

 the profits on prunes and other dried fruits began to disappear. 

 A community of fruit-growers beginning with anticipa- 

 tions based on conceptions more or less founded upon such 

 views of the industry as have been described, and ending under 

 such conditions as have been set forth in the last three para- 

 graphs, was ripe for cooperation. To add to their troubles 

 they found that, while in time they gradually learned the art 

 of producing good fruit, the problem of marketing, which was 

 still before them, was perhaps even more difficult. Their 

 orchards were twenty-five hundred miles from the center of 

 their most important consuming district; the nature of their 

 product did not permit, to any great extent, the use of sea 

 carriage, under existing conditions, and the major portion was 

 subjected to a land haul exceeding two thousand miles, and 

 extending to three thousand miles, where, at the Atlantic sea- 

 board, it competed with fruit and fruit products produced in 

 close proximity to those markets, or imported at one-fifth the 

 freight charge, from foreign lands, where it was produced at 

 one-half the cost of the California product. The Californian 

 orchardist or vineyardist, with no traditions or general informa- 

 tion in regard to his industry, had no knowledge of the 

 capacity of his market, or the extent and character of his com- 

 petition. At the beginning he made money, and continued to 

 do so as long as there was a market on the Pacific slope, and 

 west of the Missouri, for all his product; as the pressure on 

 the local market reduced prices, the sales, with characteristic 

 Californian energy, were pushed farther and farther afield. 

 The first attack on the eastern market with deciduous fruits 

 was with fresh fruit shipped by passenger trains in an ordinary 

 freight car, at a cost of $1,400 for ten tons, or seven cents a 



