BEGINNINGS IN CALIFORNIA 43 



chants. The plan of selling a crop outright to a buyer who 

 offers a lump sum or a given price a pound or a bushel and 

 of shifting to him the burden and risk of superintending 

 the succeeding stages of the journey to the consumer may 

 be satisfactory when the crop is a staple, whose price is 

 quoted from day to day and is therefore a matter of com- 

 mon knowledge ; or when it is a product which can be stored 

 without deterioration, and which commands practically the 

 same price in all markets after the necessary allowance has 

 been made for transportation. 



But citrus fruits were then an agricultural specialty; 

 methods of refrigeration were so ineffective that immediate 

 consumption was imperative; prices fluctuated enormously 

 from day to day and from market to market according to 

 weather conditions and the supply of fruit available. When 

 a car was billed to a certain market, there was no machinery 

 for knowing how many other shippers had taken the notion 

 to ship to the same market at about the same time. After 

 . the car arrived there was no means for withdrawing it if 

 the market was found to be demoralized. Therefore, as 

 soon as the citrus crop had increased to such an extent that 

 gluts were possible in the large markets to which the cars 

 were ordinarily billed, buying oranges on the trees became 

 not merchandizing but speculation, and speculation of the 

 most dangerous kind. Owing to the high fixed chdrges 

 such as packing and freight, losses through low prices in 

 the Eastern cities were sometimes heavy, hence a specula- 

 tive buyer could offer but little to the grower for his fruit. 

 In fact, there were times when no buyer appeared for part 

 of the fruit at any price. 



But the worst evils of speculative buying were due to 

 what the growers almost unanimously believe to have been 

 an agreement among buyers to fix maximum prices and to 

 apportion the producing area among themselves in a man- 



