DRIED FiaiT AND XUT ASSOCIATIONS. 483 



in obtaining funds for all necessary advances. Unfortunately, 

 the general tendency of the market was downward, the pur- 

 chasing power of eastern buyers proving very small. This 

 tendency the Exchange and the drying associations undertook 

 to withstand b}^ publicly setting the prices above the market, 

 and refusing to sell for less. The drying associations and 

 the Exchange worked together in this matter, their presidents 

 meeting weekly and agreeing upon uniform prices, usually 

 above the market. Their lead was generally followed by 

 other cooperative societies, organized in other parts of the 

 state, nearly all of whom held their goods mostly on borrowed 

 money, while outsiders sold out; and still the market went 

 down. In the end, while the Santa Clara societies made many 

 sales at better rates than were generally obtained, and while 

 their action, with that of the other cooperative societies, had 

 great effect in steadying the market and preventing utter 

 demoralization, they had to give in, after paying consider- 

 able interest, and sell, in the spring market, for no more 

 and perhaps less than outsiders realized in the fall. This 

 result brought out the great weakness of cooperation; the 

 growers who could not say too much for the Exchange in a 

 year when all went well, and who were perhaps strongest in 

 urging the Exchange to hold firm at the beginning of the 

 season, were prompt to condemn the action of their agents 

 when it appeared that they had been mistaken in judgment; 

 and a general desertion followed. The following year the 

 business of the Exchange and the Unions was small, but since 

 that time they have rapidly regained the confidence of the 

 people, and in the season of 1898-99 the number of persons 

 selling fruit through the Exchange was reported as slightly 

 greater than the total number of stockholders, which may be 

 an error, as the Exchange will not ordinarily handle fruit 

 not the property of its members. While the object, at the 

 beginning of the movement in the Santa Clara Valley, was to 

 obtain entire control of the product of that section, no serious 

 effort has ever been made to accomplish that end. The 

 Exchange and Unions are the largest and most influential 

 factors in the trade. The Exchange brand is the acknowledged 



