BEGINNINGS IN CALIFORNIA 53 



Two packing houses might handle the same quality of fruit 

 and each put out a "fancy" grade, but that fact would not 

 at all prove that a fancy orange from one house was ap- 

 proximately identical with a fancy orange from the other. 

 Of all the fruit delivered, one house might segregate as 

 fancy only 5 per cent., while the other might use the same 

 term for 25 per cent, of its output. Similar conditions ob- 

 tained for the other grades. So a prospective buyer of 

 oranges in the Eastern market was not able to order by 

 grade, as is done in the case of wheat and cotton, unless 

 he happened to know the particular system of grading em- 

 ployed in the packing house from which he was buying, 

 and it was obviously impossible for each one of the numer- 

 ous California packing houses to be known personally to 

 any large group of Eastern buyers. Therefore buyers were 

 not likely to have as much confidence in the orange market 

 ias they would have had if quality had been more certain 

 and uniform; they would be particularly diffident about 

 sending orders to California for cars; they would only 

 buy on inspection. Responsibility of many packers for the 

 quality of their output existed only in imagination. A few 

 packers had reputations which they tried to maintain, but 

 too often green oranges or frosted oranges or mechanically 

 injured oranges would be sent forward on the complacent, 

 if short sighted, theory of caveat emptor, and indeed a 

 deceived jobber or consumer had scant recourse. This pol- 

 icy again made the trade timid about handling oranges and 

 precluded that expansion of consumption which was essen- 

 tial if the citrus industry was to live. 



Persons familiar with the chaos in grading and packing 

 methods and with the lack of responsibility for the quality 

 of the product were finally persuaded that the only remedy 

 i6r these conditions was through combining a large fraction 

 of the industry in one organization which would enforce 



