450 CALIFOKNIA FRUIT SOCIETIES. 



to take the products, make reasonable advances, and market 

 them on commission, and the grower, unable to sell for cash 

 at any such rates as he had been accustomed to receive, was 

 compelled to accept; this action on the part of the local trade 

 immediately brought into the field, especially in the dried- 

 fruit branch of the trade, an army of men representing eastern 

 commission houses, who represented to the grower the superior 

 advantages of a commission house located in the center of 

 consumption, and soon great quantities of fruit began to be 

 shipped by growers for sale by persons situated thousands of 

 miles distant from the owners, and of whom the growers had 

 only such knowledge as was afforded b}^ the business card left 

 by the bright solicitor who obtained the consignment. Such 

 a condition of affi\irs of course opened the door wide to all 

 sorts of fraudulent practices, and as the opportunity to commit 

 frauds attracts those disposed to such practices, the commis- 

 sion business became infested with a great number of utterly 

 unscrupulous persons, whose dealings brought discredit upon 

 the whole business, and drew down upon all who were engaged 

 in it the indiscriminate wrath of the producers. Having no 

 means of distinguishing the honest from the dishonest, they 

 condemned them all alike. This was the more natural since 

 annually the increasing pressure to sell wrought constantly 

 increasing tendency to lower prices, so tiiat even the most 

 reliable commission houses were unable to make returns 

 approaching the expectations, and, in fact, the necessities, of 

 the consignors ; this again was aggravated from the fact that 

 only the very largest marketing centers were generally recog- 

 nized among the growers, and these were the dumping-ground 

 for everybody's product; and merchants there, with little need 

 to inj^est capital of their own, were enabled to supply their 

 wants from week to week, as one after another of the growers, 

 or of those who had advanced money on the product, directed 

 the goods to be sold for whatever they would bring, and with 

 the purchases at such sales were able to successfully compete 

 in the smaller interior wholesale markets with products 

 remaining in growers' hands, or in the hands of such local 

 buyers as still remained in the business. During all this time 



