DRIED FRUIT AND NUT AS,SO(;iATIONS. 473 



among the growers toward the buyers of their product, not, 

 however, by any means so intense as that among the raisin- 

 growers towards the commission packers. The feeling, how- 

 ever, was less intense only for the reason that the growers 

 were in better circumstances, and at the time were receiving 

 better prices than the raisin men were obtaining, and also, as 

 a rule, were actually selling and getting the money at some 

 price, the increasing production not having then so demoral- 

 ized markets as to drive local buyers from the field, although 

 it was beginning to make them cautious, and their growing 

 unwillingness to meet the views of growers was leading an 

 increasing number of growers to consign their goods east in 

 the expectation — almost never realized — of obtaining better 

 results. 



Under these conditions, during the winter of 1890-1891 a 

 movement originating in one or two local societies of fruit- 

 growers led to the organization, in a fruit district near Santa 

 Clara, of the West Side Fruit Union, a cooperative society for 

 drying, packing, and marketing the fruit of its stockholders. 

 The plan accepted the principle of bringing the fruit for drying 

 to tlie drying-grounds of the society, thus concentrating the 

 fruit for shipment in car-load lots, and so performing one of 

 the functions of the local buyer. But it added other features. 

 The buyers, after receiving and paying for the fruit, graded it, 

 and packed it according to grade, and not in lots as purchased, 

 and as they bought as cheaply as they could, and at varying 

 prices, different growers received different prices for fruit which 

 went into the same bin; this grading was necessary, and as the 

 detail of keeping each owner's lot of each grade separate was very 

 great, and as prices would vary more or less during the season, 

 so that if kept separate one person was sure to get more than 

 another for the same grade, the union determined to make no 

 attempt to keep lots separate, but to grade the fruit as brought, 

 giving receipts for the quantity of each grade, and then selling 

 as if the product of one owner. At the end of the season each 

 owner received in payment for each grade of his fruit the 

 average price received during the season for that grade. As 

 the season went on, and sales were made, growlers received 



