The Question of Over-production. 35 
lessened the difficulties of distribution. But the 
reader should be reminded that these appliances are 
of use only to organizations, or to those growers who 
have a large quantity of product; or, at any rate, to 
those localities in which so much fruit is grown that 
the community of interests amounts. to an organi- 
zation. 
There can be little doubt that fruit must tend to 
become cheaper rather than higher, except for special 
kinds and special markets, but the cost of producing 
it will grow less at the same time. The fruit-grower 
must aequire the skill to make his plantations bear in 
the years of least heavy crop, and thereby escape, to 
a large extent, the effects of over-production. This 
can certainly be done.. The very fact that there are 
years of over-production and under-production shows 
that fruit-growers have not yet mastered the con- 
ditions which control their plantations. In orchards, 
at least, there are more persons who discover their 
crops of fruit than there are who produce them. 
With the cheapening of the product, the demand 
will be increased. The United States now leads 
all countries in the extent, variety, excellence, and 
abundance of fruits, and our people are pronounced 
fruit-consumers: and this desire for fruit is very 
rapidly increasing. In particular fruits, as in grapes 
in the east, the price seems already to have fallen 
to the very lowest point of profitable production, 
and in these cases salvation seems to lie in the 
hunting out of special markets, in devising more 
secondary means of disposing of the product (as in 
