THE GROWERS' SELLING AGENCY 127 



I assumed that a man who went into the Exchange just 

 packed up his fruit and let it slide and the Exchange did 

 the rest. Instead I found that each shipper in the Exchange 

 has absolute control of his own shipments, can ship when 

 he pleases, can reject offers, divert cars from one market 

 to another without dictation from any one, and these and 

 other rights are exercised more or less fully according to 

 the attitude of the association manager. 



In fact, the greatest attraction to me and one of the sur- 

 prising possibilities, was the fact that by the very nature 

 of things local management of each association has almost 

 everything to do with its possible success or failure. 



Under the new arrangements we will apply all the con- 

 fidential market information; it will be focussed on the 

 300 or 400 cars shipped by us from Redlands, and scien- 

 tific salesmanship and distribution thereby becomes [sic] 

 a possibility.^ 



Other associations, on the contrary, believe that the dis- 

 trict exchange should have quite ample powers and then 

 be held responsible for satisfactory results. They take the 

 position that a district exchange with its hands tied cannot 

 be expected to accomplish any startling results. The im- 

 portance of careful and alert salesmanship is by no means 

 minimized, but they think satisfactory marketing can more 

 certainly be achieved by building up a strong marketing 

 agency which can act quickly on its own initiative than by 

 making the district exchange refer all important decisions 

 to the associations for final sanction. In essence, these 

 associations take the position that packing is a technical 

 process and should be controlled by the association man- 

 ager, but that marketing is a business problem, that it re- 

 quires a different kind of ability to obtain the best results, 

 and that the association should meddle very little in market- 

 ing operations. 



If associations confine their activities chiefly to packing 



^Redlands Review: October 4, 1912. 



