BENEFITS OF COOPERATION 183 



keeping characteristics are certain to receive the preference 

 over their less competent or less fortunately located com- 

 petitors. In providing the marketing facilities and handling 

 the problems that concern the business as a whole there is 

 highly organized and effective cooperation within the citrus 

 industry, but in the distribution and selling of the crop 

 there is unrestricted freedom of competition. That is the 

 reason the exchange has been described as a system of 

 competitive cooperation. 



' This competitive cooperation keeps the whole exchange 

 system in a vigorous and healthy condition. Each grower 

 is striving to surpass his fellows as to quantity and quality 

 of fruit; each association manager is trying to organize 

 his picking and packing facilities to the best advantage and 

 so to distribute his shipments that they will yield the high- 

 est returns; each district exchange manager is working to 

 make a better marketing record than that shown by any 

 other manager; the management of the California Fruit 

 Growers Exchange and its various departments, inspectors 

 and agents are always bending their energies toward fur- 

 nishing a more efficient marketing medium than that avail- 

 able to any non-exchange shippers. 



To throw into relief the whole system of cooperative 

 marketing as developed in the citrus industry, let us follow 

 a car of fruit from grove to jobber when it is handled in 

 the typical way. (Almost any of the operations might be 

 performed in a different manner.) The process is some- 

 what as follows: The association manager, through at- 

 tending the weekly meetings of the California Fruit 

 Growers Exchange, through conferences with the district 

 exchange manager, and through his own observations of 

 the course of the markets, becomes convinced that his asso- 

 ciation should ship a certain percentage of its estimated 

 crop during a specified time. So at the meeting of his 



