io8 COOPERATIVE MARKETING 



Even if there is no special dissatisfaction within the or- 

 ganization it is not wise to let an association become so 

 large that the business as a whole overshadows its con- 

 stituent elements, namely, the individual members. Unless 

 the personal, enthusiastic loyalty of each member is elicited, 

 hopes for marked success are likely to prove illusory. An 

 association must have a reasonable output or the unit costs 

 of conducting business will be unnecessarily great. 



In general, the California associations number between 

 fifty and 150 members, include 300 to 1,200 acres of bear- 

 ing orchard, and have annual shipments of 175 to 850 cars 

 of fruit. Associations of medium size are often more suc- 

 cessful than the large ones. 



Most of the discussion of methods of picking, grading 

 and pooling has been based on the practice in regard to 

 oranges, chiefly because oranges constitute 85 per cent, or 

 more of the total shipments of citrus fruits. Now some- 

 thing may be said about lemons. The general principles 

 that should govern a cooperative society of course apply 

 to a lemon association. But it is much more common to 

 find associations that pack both oranges and lemons than 

 it is to find associations devoted exclusively to lemons. On 

 the other hand, numerous houses pack only oranges. 

 Lemons are often raised as an adjunct to the orange busi- 

 ness, that is, an orchardist may have a couple of rows of 

 lemon trees as a border around his orange grove, or he 

 may have two or three acres of lemons in a citrus property 

 of ten or twenty acres. Yet there are other growers who 

 devote themselves exclusively or principally to lemons. 



Since lemons are maturing all the year through, it is 

 quite common to pick them every month, and divide the 

 year into pools corresponding with the calendar months. 

 Though the association picking gang may at times attend 

 to the picking of a member's lemons, it is not the rule nearly 



