496 CJALlFOK^■lA FRUIT SOCIETIES. 



deluded eleven of their number into accepting the respon- 

 sibilities of directors, were utter humbugs, who cooperated 

 only with their mouths; of the whole hallful, but one, except 

 those chosen as directors, could ever be dragooned into risking 

 one dollar in the enterprise. The directors chosen were many 

 of them very substantial men; they subscribed properly to 

 the support of the movement, but did not feel called upon to 

 pay its entire expense, and none of them developed any 

 faculty of inducing others to come in with money. The 

 president, in the end, did something, but for a long time he 

 contented himself with explaining the plans of the Exchange 

 and receiving the warmest endorsement of their utility, he 

 assuming, of course, that well-to-do growers who so strongly 

 favored cooperation, would of themselves send in their sub- 

 scriptions and their checks. It took him a year to learn how 

 contemptible well-to-do people could be in money matters, and 

 that the promoters of important cooperative enterprises must 

 either pay the bills themselves or wrest the money almost by 

 force from reluctant victims. The smaller growers were far 

 the easiest to get money from, but of course they subscribed in 

 small amounts, and upon experiment it was found that the 

 expenses of reaching and canvassing them exceeded the cash 

 payment of twenty-five per cent upon their stock, and that no 

 one less fully informed than the manager, or less determined, 

 could get anything. In the formation of local societies the 

 request was constant that they should not, while they were 

 themselves organizing, be asked to aid the state movement, as 

 they needed all their strength at home. If it were called to 

 their attention that they would not have organized if some 

 one else had not paid the expense of agitating the matter 

 among them, and showing them how, and that they should 

 assume their share of the general work from which they had 

 specially benefited, they, of course, could not answer, but they 

 would not pay. In short, the entire year's work of the direc- 

 tors and officers of the Exchange was one constant struggle to 

 raise the money to pay the very modest current bills. In no 

 month, for the entire year, did the cash income equal the 

 current expense, although tiic par value of the stock subscrip- 



