2i6 COOPERATIVE MARKETING 



At first, the growers were inexperienced in meeting the 

 attacks of those who were opposed to cooperation among 

 the producers. Powerful financial interests of various kinds 

 were arrayed against them and were organized to oppose 

 them. Vicious attacks were made on the integrity of the 

 officers. The results obtained by the associations were be- 

 littled, the grower's association contract was assailed in the 

 courts, and the methods of marketing the fruit were at- 

 tacked. The most determined efforts were made to show 

 that the growers' organizations were illegally formed. 

 Finally the growers combined with the buyers at one time 

 to market the entire crop, but this incongruous combination 

 of producers and dealers was dissolved at the end of a 

 year and a half. 



The history of the citrus industry in California is largely 

 a record of the progress in the cooperative handling and 

 distribution of the crop by the producer and his determina- 

 tion to receive an equitable share of the value of the labor 

 expended in its production. The battle has been won; the 

 cooperative principle is firmly fixed. It is the balance wheel 

 that gives stability to the industry and to the relations that 

 exist between it and the agencies with which it transacts 

 business. 



Fewer serious efforts are made now to break down the 

 cooperative principle among the growers. New schemes of 

 fruit marketing are proposed from time to time, the or- 

 ganizations are frequently attacked in the courts under one 

 guise or another, and other insidious movements are started, 

 all having in view the possible splitting open of the coopera- 

 tive organizations and a return to the methods of marketing 

 which would destroy the systematic distribution and mar- 

 keting now in operation and reinstate the chaotic specula- 

 tive methods that were formerly in vogue. The cooperative 

 movement in the citrus industry is the result of a slow, 

 painful evolution, and the grower does not appear to be 

 deceived by these efforts, no matter how ingeniously and 

 artfully they are conceived.^ 



* Powell : "Cooperation in the Handling and Marketing of Fruit," 

 from the Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture, 1910, p. 405. 



