52 COOPERATIVE MARKETING 



fact that buyers and packers seemed to be consistently pros- 

 perous convinced the growers that there was money in 

 citrus fruits even if they themselves had been losing. There 

 seemed to be a good margin of profit both in packing and 

 in selling oranges, and the growers concluded that if these 

 profits could be transferred to themselves the result would 

 be the same as if they had made their profits on the agri- 

 cultural rather than on the commercial end of the business. 

 It would also be apparent to any thoughtful grower that 

 since the fixed charges for equipment and agents for pack- 

 ing and marketing, respectively, are extremely heavy, a 

 large increase in the amount of fruit handled in one pack- 

 ing house or consigned to one agent would greatly reduce 

 the unit costs for these necessary stages. A corollary from 

 this conclusion would be that, if buyers and packers were 

 making satisfactory profits when employing inefficient 

 methods, a scientific system which had a few centrally lo- 

 cated, well equipped packing houses which could be run 

 to capacity and which had one agent to represent the asso- 

 ciated producers in each market rather than an agent for 

 each packer, might easily contain within itself the possi- 

 bility of achieving marked financial success. The cost of 

 collecting the information prerequisite to intelligent market- 

 ing would also be trifling when apportioned among a large 

 number of shippers, but nothing less than prohibitive if 

 attempted single handed. 



Standardization of product and responsibility for it are 

 two points where agriculture in general has lagged far be- 

 hind manufacturing. As long as the packing of oranges 

 was performed by numerous independent firms or individ- 

 uals, there was the greatest diversity in the manner of pack- 

 ing and the care with which the labor was performed. The 

 chief objection, however, to the individualistic system had 

 its basis in the impossibility of establishing definite grades. 



