DRIED FRUIT AND NUT ASSOC'IATIOXS. 485 



attraction for the people. Gradually, however, the area 

 devoted to deciduous fruits increased, and the product was 

 marketed dried. The growers were new to the business, and 

 knew little about either the cultivation or the curing of the 

 fruit, and the result was a generally inferior product, which 

 did not bring the price of the northern dried fruit, or any 

 satisfactory returns to the producers. The farmers of the 

 southern counties of California, liowever, are perhaps the most 

 intelligent and enterprising rural population in the world, and 

 were not likely to, and did not long rest contented with such 

 a state of affairs. The deciduous-fruit interests began to draw 

 out from the shadow of the great citrus industry, to meet 

 and organize for mutual advantage, and to talk of cooperation, 

 whose possibilities were well shown by the success of the 

 citrus associations, to be described in a later chapter. At 

 length, after a number of conferences, in October, 1897, the 

 Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce called a mass convention 

 of those interested in the deciduous-fruit industry to consider 

 the subject of cooperative marketing. After a day spent in 

 discussion, a committee was appointed to prepare a plan of 

 organization, which was duly reported to an adjourned meeting 

 of the convention a month later, and vigorously discussed for 

 anotlier full day. At the close of the discussion it was resolved 

 to form the "Southern California Deciduous Fruit Exchanges," 

 which was to consist of an incorporated society with that name, 

 whose members should be local "Exchanges" or "associations " 

 for collecting and curing the fruit, like the "Unions" of the 

 Santa Clara Valley. None of these local societies were in 

 existence, and they, of course, must be created before they 

 could join in the creation of the central society. This 

 involved months of hard canvassing, and traveling by rail 

 and private conveyance over a district comprising many 

 thousand square miles. Evidently this would cost money, 

 and, after unanimously requesting the most earnest of the 

 promoters to undertake the great labor of organization, those 

 present assessed themselves one dollar each to pay the expenses ! 

 There were thirty-seven of them who paid, and there were 

 thirty-seven dollars — perhaps enough to pay the postage bills, 



