CHAPTER VIII 



THE CENTRAL EXCHANGE OF THE COOPERATIVE 

 ORGANIZATION 



The third and in many respects the most important ele- 

 ment of the California cooperative structure is the central 

 exchange or California Fruit Growers Exchange. This is 

 the amalgam which holds the system together and gives 

 it power and efficiency. Growers could form associations 

 for collective packing of fruit; several associations could 

 even sell their output through a common agency; but if 

 they stopped there, they would be far short of that highly 

 elaborated marketing machinery which the citrus growers 

 have established in the California Fruit Growers Exchange 

 and which gives the citrus industry of California its unique 

 place in the marketing world. The central exchange is 

 what gives coherence to the efforts toward cooperation on 

 the part of the citrus growers; it gives direction and 

 strength to what would otherwise be an inchoate, inarticu- 

 lated mass of petty cooperative societies, each too feeble to 

 develop marketing efficiency, and each defeating its own 

 aims by helping defeat the purposes of similar societies. 



In 1916 the California Fruit Growers Exchange re- 

 incorporated as a non-profit, non-capital stock organization 

 as permitted under the California law. From this time 

 forward, therefore, it will have a new legal form, but since 

 its business operations are being conducted exactly the same 

 as before the change, the form of organization under 

 which the exchange system grew to its present proportions 

 will be described. 



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