THE C'ALII'OKXIA FKUIT KXCHANGK. 499 



detail of a large business, and not realizing the impossibility 

 of suddenly effecting so large a concentration, conceived of the 

 Exchange mainly as a connnon selling agent, which should 

 eventually control the entire fruit product of tiie state, and 

 some large growers outside the Exchanges expressed strong 

 desires that the Exchange should sell fruit. The creation of 

 an effective system of agencies, however, through which to 

 market a large volume of any commodity, requires time and 

 money, which the Exchange did not possess; in order, how- 

 ever, to comply with an apparent demand, the directors 

 arranged with a very responsible concern, for whose fidelity 

 they w^ere willing to stand responsible, for a more effective 

 selling service than the growers had ever had at their disposal, 

 at a rate so low as to involve a certain loss to the contracting 

 house except as the result of a very large volume of business. 

 The result again showed the unreliability of producers in the 

 matter of supporting their agents, and their tendency to 

 believe evil of them rather than good. Not a single grower of 

 those who had demanded the service, or a single association, 

 except one very small one, voluntarily placed a pound of fruit 

 at the disposal of the Exchange agency in any such way as 

 justified the expenditure of money or effort to find a market 

 for it,* and when the manager of the Exchange visited some 

 of the local societies fur the purposes of securing their business, 

 which, by the arrangement, would yield a small percentage to 

 the support of the state Exchange, he was usually regarded 

 with rather more suspicion than if he had appeared as a solic- 

 itor for a commercial concern, and the few contracts which he 

 obtained he got by more effort than a competitive concern 

 would have been obliged to expend. 



This, of course, i)ut both the Exchange and the manager 

 in a false position, and they ceased to solicit. The suspicious 



* What growers would do was to first try every other possible means of 

 selling their fruit, first carefully getting all the free information which the 

 Exchange could give them, and failing to sell, would give the Exchange the 

 chance of selling, if it could, and provided that the owner did not sell otherwise. 

 Evidently it would not pay to spend money to find customers under such condi- 

 tions. 



