454 CALIFORNIA FRUIT SOCIETIES. 



trade. Organized as it was, however, it must do business to 

 live, as certain expenses were necessary in order to do any- 

 thing; and as there was little or no capital stock with which 

 to meet any. deficit, the failure to earn commissions meant 

 bankruptcy. Before incurring these ex})enses some actual 

 assurance of business seemed necessary, and while the large 

 shippers who were most active in the movement could supply 

 a great deal, they could not guarantee sufficient to insure 

 success; and they could not be assured from other sources, 

 because the majority of the growers were determined that 

 others than themselves should take all the risk, while they 

 would continue to make use of the old shipping firms which 

 they unanimously said they wished to get rid of, until it 

 should be demonstrated by others that a growers' shipping 

 organization should succeed. The forwarding houses, who of 

 course did not wish to lose their business, made no open 

 opposition to the movement, but quietly, as occasion offered, 

 encouraged distrust and suspicion either of the leaders of the 

 movement or of the particular plans proposed. 



But the leaders were determined men, and when they 

 realized that the mass of the growers could not be depended 

 on to sustain them in anything, in the end they did the onl}'^ 

 thing possible by practically compromising with the then 

 principal forwarding house, making it tlie principal eastern 

 agent of the Fruit Union, on condition of its refraining from 

 direct seeking for business from growers, at least in the dis- 

 tricts where the union was strong. This placed the union in 

 a condition to do business safely, and it at once became the 

 principal agency for the eastern deciduous fresh-fruit shipping 

 business, a position which it retained while it continued in 

 business, its sales exceeding, for some years, an average of a 

 million of dollars,* all conducted without the loss of a cent. 

 Its weak point was that its agency was far stronger than itself, 

 having abundant capital, and the control of the most important 

 eastern outlets for distribution, and also of the special refrig- 



* Its gross sales in 1886 were $345,416.98; in 1887, |€75,8«4.44; in 1888, 

 $773,117.42; a year or two later, $1,501,023.56. 



