520 CALIFORNIA FRUIT SOCIETIES. 



under similar conditions, turned to cooperation for relief. 

 After a year or two of preliminary discussiua, meetings were 

 called and a plan of organization agreed upon, substantially, 

 in principle, like that of the citrus associations, except that 

 no local organizations were provided for. A central corpora- 

 tion was to be formed, which should contract for the output of 

 its members for a term of years, at a gradually increasing scale 

 of prices, the agreement to become binding when contracts for 

 seventy-five per cent of the acreage of vineyards were secured. 

 This plan was a failure. The detail of visiting and laboring 

 with so large a number of vineyardists, many of whom were 

 in no financial condition to make or keep any contract, was 

 exliausting and excessively annoying, but as the movement 

 was led by the large growers, there was no lack of means for 

 expenses, and in the end, as it was claimed, agreements cover- 

 ing the required seventy-five per cent were secured. The 

 proposition that the proposed corporation should contract with 

 its members at certain rates had been based on a verbal under- 

 standing with members of the California Wine Association 

 that it should take the wines from the new corporation at the 

 same rates. When, however, the written pro])osal came to be 

 formally acted upon by the California Wine Association, it 

 failed of ado[)tion, and the project had to be abandoned. 



It was evident to those who had conducted the canvass 

 among the growers, that any new proposals which should 

 involve a pro rata contribution of the capital necessary to 

 enable the growers to be independent of the California Wine 

 Association, and other established wine merchants, could not 

 be carried through. But while there were perhaps thousands 

 of vineyardists, there were at the most but two hundred or three 

 hundred wine-makers equipped with tlie plant necessary to 

 produce good wine on any commercial scale. These made 

 their own wines, and bought grapes from their neighbors, and 

 so took the place of local associations in other branches of the 

 fruit business. While mostof tliem were seriously involved, 

 and some in distress, they were yet mostly sensible business 

 men, and formed ])racticable units of organization. If they 

 came in they brought with them the vineyards whose grapes 

 they purchased. 



