28 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 412. 



use of the flowers, but the large quantity of buds keeps the 

 plants in bloom several weeks. It belongs to the family Lina- 

 ceas, and is also known under the name of Linum trigynum. 

 It is interesting botanically in that it has three pistils, as its 

 specific name implies, which is rather uncommon in dicoty- 

 ledonous plants. Cuttings rooted in February and planted out 

 during the summer in the open ground, kept watered during 

 dry weather and pinched occasionally to keep them shapely, 

 will make nice plants by fall, when they may be lifted and 

 placed in a warm greenhouse, where they well repay the little 

 trouble spent on them. It is a native of the mountains of the 

 East Indies. 



Northampton, Mass. Edward J. Canning. 



Correspondence. 



The Prospects for California's Orange Crop. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — Unless some unexpected calamity should destroy the 

 orange crop of California, the state will send to market this 

 year the finest and largest crop of this fruit ever gathered 

 here. The output is estimated at ten thousand car-loads, two 

 thousand car-loads in excess of any previous year, and com- 

 prising three million boxes. At $3.50 a box in the east, their 

 value will be ten and a half million dollars, approximating the 

 gold production of California for 1894, which was about 

 thirteen million dollars. 



Shipments of last season's oranges to the east continued 

 until late in the summer. During the week ending May 9th, 

 224 car-loads left Riverside, the largest shipment ever sent 

 from anv one place during the same period. The first car- 

 loads this year went from Porterville and Oroville, in the 

 northern part of the state, a region which has been grow- 

 ing oranges for some years in but small quantities. It 

 is evident, however, that the northern Citrus belt, of which 

 Butte County is the centre, will prove a strong competitor for 

 early shipments and high prices, with the larger and better- 

 known orange-growing districts more than five hundred 

 miles to the south. Riverside sent the third car-load of oranges 

 east this year, and Redlands the fourth. These shipments 

 were at least three weeks earlier than the first shipments of 

 last year. The ruling price here has been $2.50 a box. These 

 early oranges answer for Christmas decorations, but they were 

 not fully ripe and not reallv fit to eat. No California oranges 

 are at their best before the first of February, and, as far as 

 establishing a permanent demand is concerned, these early 

 shipments do more harm than good. 



A vigorous effort will be made this year to market the Cali- 

 fornia fruit to the best advantage, and to market it all. For 

 this purpose the Southern California Fruit Exchange endeav- 

 ored to secure control of the entire crop. The growers are 

 naturally anxious to make the most of the absence of Florida's 

 competition, and the Fruit Exchange, which handled about 

 half of the orange crop last year, argued that the best way 

 was to form a combination of all the growers in southern Cali- 

 fornia, and practically to control the markets. This exchange 

 has a central executive board, composed of representatives 

 from eight subordinate exchanges. Its plan is to have repre- 

 sentatives in each distributing centre of the east to watch 

 the markets, to see that they are all fully supplied and 

 that none are overstocked. Orders are subject to the su- 

 pervision of the executive board, and shipments are to be 

 made on a pro rata basis. That is, if the market at any given 

 time is estimated to demand, say, two per cent, of the total 

 crop, each district forwards two per cent, of its crop. Pro- 

 vision is made for meeting undesirable foreign competition by 

 cutting prices, the consequent loss to he prorated among all 

 the exchanges. In brief, this is a daring plan to control the 

 marketing of a perishable product, which is not uniform in 

 quality, like oil or sugar or coal, and the market value of 

 which has always been determined by a number of uncertain 

 factors. The extension of this work through the year, so as to 

 include the shipments of green and dried deciduous fruits, 

 has also been contemplated. 



As oranges are a luxury, there can be no arbitrary fixing of 

 the price, but it was urged that systematic cooperation among 

 growers would develop new markets and obtain a foothold 

 among the old ones. The possibility of this was shown by 

 the successful work of the exchange last year, after the 

 Florida freeze, in forcing the California fruit upon the 

 markets of New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore. The 

 necessity of such cooperation was argued from the fact 

 that the growing orchards of California will, in the near 

 future, produce from 15,000 to 20,000 car-loads of fruit a 



year, the consumption of which will demand an active 

 representation in all the markets of the United States. This 

 would amount to four and a half to six million boxes, the 

 latter amount being the estimated Florida crop which was 

 destroved by frost last year. California expects competition 

 from Florida as soon as the latter state can grow new orchards. 

 Land in Florida is cheap, and the probabilities are that growers 

 will set out new orchards and take their chances of the 

 weather. 



These facts are understood in California, and certainly made 

 a strong argument for cooperation. The plan, however, failed 

 of support. The friends of the exchange claim that they will 

 ship this year about sixty per cent, of the entire crop of the 

 state. Its opponents state that not more than forty per cent, 

 will be handled by it. There are several principal reasons 

 for the partial failure of this plan. The first is the competition 

 between localities in southern California. The quality of the 

 fruit grown here depends upon climate and soil, which vary 

 to an extent that an eastern man can hardly understand. The 

 principal orange-growing region of southern California is 

 within a belt not more than one hundred miles in either 

 direction, and within this territory there is a wide diversity of 

 climate. The best oranges are grown in the interior, away 

 from the fogs and dampness of the ocean, and at an altitude 

 of from one thousand to fifteen hundred feet. The fruit 

 reaches its perfection in the San Bernardino Valley, where the 

 heat in summer is sometimes oppressive and where even the 

 winter climate is very warm. Here are grown the fancy Navel 

 oranges, which, in the absence of the best Florida oranges, 

 will be the finest fruit of the kind that can be procured this 

 vear. These oranges are in demand wherever they are 

 known, and manv growers are unwilling to place them in any 

 prorating or pooling arrangement with inferior fruit. Some of 

 the younger orange-growing localities are in better position in 

 this respect than the older ones, because they profited by the 

 experience of the latter in regard to the varieties which they 

 planted, with the result that the seedling and inferior varieties 

 were almost entirely discarded. 



A second consideration was that the exchange method 

 practically does away with f. o. b. (free on board) sales. The 

 price is determined by the executive board in the west and by 

 the several agents at the principal distributing points in the 

 east. The judgment of the latter is also final as to whether a 

 car-load of fruit ordered for any particular market shall be 

 forwarded to that market or not. These are distinctions 

 which might work against the growers of the finest fruit. If 

 the theoretical plans of the exchange could be carried per- 

 fectly into practice there might be no discrimination, but it is 

 hard to convince the grower of the best fruit that he will not 

 suffer from cooperation with growers of fruit of a less de- 

 sirable quality. Probably not more than one-fourth of the 

 oranges sent from California this year will be strictly fancy 

 Navels. Manv growers of Navel oranges believe that they can 

 sell them to responsible dealers and can know before the car 

 goes forward what the price is to be, an advantage which they 

 are naturally unwilling to abandon. 



In former vears the orange growers of California have 

 suffered greatly from the dishonesty of middlemen. Some- 

 times no returns whatever would be made on shipments 

 and no attention would be paid to correspondence. Some- 

 times the broker would pocket the proceeds, if any, and 

 draw upon the producer for the freight. The despair and 

 exasperation of an orange grower who has produced his fruit 

 upon land representing an investment of a thousand dollars 

 an acre and shipped it to market two or three thousand miles, 

 can be imagined under such circumstances. When com- 

 plaints were made and the dealer could be found, there was 

 always the excuse that the fruit was in bad order, and, as it 

 had long since disappeared, there was no way of verifying or 

 disproving his statements. Such extreme instances as these 

 have been less frequent for the past two or three years than 

 formerly ; but it has been a common thing for a dealer to re- 

 ject a car, after he had ordered it by telegraph, if he found, 

 after making the contract, that he could do better as regards 

 quality or price. The agents of the exchange will be on the 

 ground to look after such matters as these. They will know 

 whether fruit reported in bad order was really so, and dealers 

 who violate their contracts will be blacklisted, on investigation, 

 and thus be prevented from repeating fraudulent transactions. 

 Moreover, reputable dealers will be protected from the com- 

 petition of men who do not pay for their goods or do not 

 carry out their contracts. The exchange will guarantee the 

 quality of all the fruit wdiich it sells, and this fact will necessi- 

 tate a similar guarantee on the part of all other shippers. 



California growers confidently believe that their oranges 



