462 (JALIFOKNIA FKUIT SOCIETIES. 



found satisfactory, or at least it was insufficient to make the 

 business profitable in a falling market. As it was a prime 

 article of faith in the raisin district that there was "n© over- 

 production" — any suggestion of that kind meeting with prompt 

 resentment — the blame for the continually decreasing net 

 returns inevitably fell upon the cooperative management, just 

 as it had before fallen on the commission packers. In the 

 meantime, however, one or two well-managed societies, either 

 out of debt, or not involved beyond their means, and with 

 good credit at their banks, for a time proved helpful to their 

 members, but in the end were forced to succumb. 



It has been the constant aim of all cooperative effort in the 

 fruit districts of California, to concentrate the sale of the entire 

 crop under one management; in plain English, to form a 

 growers' Trust. Apparently the only way in which such a 

 result could be reached— if it could be reached at all — was by 

 first uniting the growers of the various neighborhoods in 

 cooperative packing associations such as have been described, 

 and then uniting the officers of these societies in one general 

 association. This, however, requires time; it can not be accom- 

 plished in one year or in two, and the community, in the face 

 of the general distress, was never willing to settle down to tlie 

 sure and slow process. For years there was annually a series of 

 mass conventions, wherein were considered plans for uniting 

 all the raisin producers of the state in one organization, to 

 which each should give his written assent, the agreement to 

 be binding on the signers when seventy-five per cent of the 

 growers, or of the acreage, should have signed. After each cf 

 those conventions, for some years in succession, a new plan 

 was agreed upon and committees formed to carry it aut. 



Those who were most active in forming these plans did not 

 usually understand the practical difficulties in the wa,' and, 

 not realizing the difficulties, provided no effective means for 

 overcoming them. In the first place, there are nearly three 

 thousand persons engaged in tlie industry, but a small fraction 

 of whom ever attend th« conventions. All these individuals 

 must be visited and canvassed in order to obtain signatures. 

 Experience shows that, however easy it may seem, there must 



