THE EXCHANGE AND THE MARKET 215 



to be influenced by attacks on any organization, no matter 

 how unjustifiable the attacks may be. Here is an example: 

 After explaining how low prices for citrus fruits during 

 1 9 14- 1 5 were not attributable to the war or the tariff or 

 general business depression, one grower asks: 



Who is to blame? The method of marketing. Who is 

 responsible for the method of marketing? The California 

 Fruit [Growers] Exchange. . . . Mr. Exchange Grower: 

 At present you are standing in the doorway, right in 

 your own light, and you shadow every other man in the 

 business.^ 



The question arises, therefore, whether this elaborate 

 cooperative organization that has been so painfully evolved 

 is likely to be permanent, or whether it is simply an in- 

 teresting industrial experiment that will certainly succumb 

 as soon as adversity arises and may even fall of its own 

 weight. Cooperation among the citrus growers was not 

 the child of logic and a priori reasoning about a scientific 

 system of marketing but of necessity, and necessity has 

 thus far maintained it. With the extension of cooperation 

 beyond marketing into packing house and orchard supplies, 

 insurance and by-products, and with cooperation the start- 

 ing point in dealing with the large public policies affecting 

 the industry, the cooperative principle is probably more 

 deeply ingrained in the citrus industry than ever before. 

 Never was the exchange system in a sounder or more 

 flourishing condition than it is today. Those in the best 

 position to know are positive that cooperation has come to 

 stay, because it has "made good"; indeed, that it has done 

 things that the old systems did not and could not do. An 

 excellent summary of the present status of cooperation in 

 the citrus industry is given by Powell : 



2 MacRae : "Citrus Facts as Viewed by a Grower,'' in Riverside 

 Enterprise, May 20, 1915. 



