THE CALIFORNIA FRUIT UNION. 455 



erating cars, which were in due time brought into use. In 

 1894, after a prosperous year's business in 1893, the union 

 went out of business. 



The causes of this failure in cooperative effort were due, 

 first, to dissensions among some of the large shippers, who 

 were the original leaders, involving a lack of unity in pusliing 

 the proselyting work, at a time when the influences, if heartily 

 united, were strong enough to unite every grower, and make 

 it impossible for competing agencies to establish themselves. 

 Second, the senseless folly of the majority of the growers, who 

 were ready to suspect the motives, and criticize the acts of 

 those charged with the duty of directing the affairs of the 

 union. As the business increased, new shipping-houses nat- 

 urally made efforts to get in, with no care whatever for the 

 interests of the growers, which imperatively demanded, in 

 this branch of industry, one directing head eoutroUing the 

 entire volume of the business. Tliese new firms found that 

 their readiest means of obtaining a foothold was to instil into 

 the minds of growers a suspicion of their own agents; the 

 notion was spread widely that the eastern agents controlled 

 the business, and that, as a matter of fact, it was not their 

 own agency which the growers were supporting, but a private 

 forwarding-house, and they were so utterly silly that, with 

 that notion once in their heads, their strong impulse was to at 

 once rush into the arms of some opposition concern. As a 

 matter of fact, it is unlikely that the forwarding-house ever 

 troubled itself in the least about the control of the union. It 

 had no motive to do so. The union collected the fruit for 

 shipment, and the eastern agents received and sold most of it. 

 The more the union could collect, tlie more the agents would 

 have to sell; and the more prosperous the union, the more 

 profit there was for the agents; and it made no difference to 

 the grower whether the forwarding-house controlled it or not ; 

 the important thing was to concentrate the fresh shipping 

 fruit under one management; and it made no difference to 

 the growers what that management was, so that it was compe- 

 tent; and in this case incompetence was never charged. In 

 fact, it was very competent The main thing with the growers 



