MARKETING FRUITS—CO-OPERATION 
association. It is then graded and packed 
according to the rules of the association 
in the orchard or in the fruit house on 
the farm by trained men in the employ 
of the association. Under this plan the 
grading and packing of the fruit of the 
entire membership can be done with com- 
parative uniformity. Even then the pack- 
ages need to be inspected before they 
are accepted by the association. Every 
package rejected should be regraded and 
repacked or placed in a low grade. This 
system is in operation in several of 
the most successful co-operative apple 
growers’ associations in the United 
States. 
Another plan is to grade and pack the 
fruit at a central packing house owned 
and controlled by the association. The 
growers pick the fruit, haul it to the 
packing house, and there it is graded and 
packed by the association. This is the 
plan that was formerly in general oper- 
ation in the orange and lemon-growing 
districts and is followed to a limited 
extent at the present time. The objec- 
tion to this plan is that no two growers 
handle the fruit with equal care, and 
the different lots of fruit therefore vary 
in physical condition and in susceptibility 
to decay. Under this system there is 
a wide variation in the percentage of 
decay that develops in the fruit of dif- 
ferent members while in transit to mar- 
ket. If the fruit is pooled, the grower 
who handles his fruit carefully has to 
share the losses that develop in the fruit 
that has been carelessly handled. 
The most satisfactory plan in the cit- 
rus-fruit industry (and this may be ap- 
plied to some other fruits) is to have 
the association train gangs of laborers 
who shall pick the fruit of all of the 
members. The laborers should be paid 
by the day, as contract or piecework 
places a premium on rapid, careless work. 
In this way the picking can be stan- 
dardized, the quantity of fruit that passes 
through the packing house can be con- 
trolled, and the grading and packing can 
be uniformly done. 
This system has been generally adopted 
in the citrus-fruit industry as a result 
1279 
of the investigations of the Department 
of Agriculture into the causes of decay 
in oranges and lemons while in transit 
from California to the East. This in- 
vestigation showed that the decay was 
the result of the improper handling of 
the fruit in preparing it for shipment, 
and that it could be controlled by plac- 
ing the handling of the fruit entirely in 
the hands of the associations. The same 
laborers often fumigate the orchards of 
the members for scale insects and spray 
the trees wherever spraying is practiced. 
The Central Packing House 
The tendency in the co-operative move- 
ment is toward a central packing house 
where the fruit of the members is brought 
together and is graded and packed for 
shipment. In the small-fruit industry 
this plan is hardly practicable. It is 
sometimes successfully operated in the 
deciduous-fruit and in the grape indus- 
tries. There are about 200 of these as- 
sociation packing houses in the citrus 
industry in California, and the Florida 
citrus growers are rapidly organizing 
along these lines. A packing house is 
erected by the association, usually along- 
side the railroad, and is equipped with 
the necessary appliances for fruit han- 
dling and packing, the manager of the 
packing house being usually the general 
manager of the association. Precooling 
and cold-storage plants, box-nailing and 
labeling machinery, and other devices re- 
quired in the industry, are to be found 
in many of the association houses. 
The Pooling of Fruit 
There is a growing practice in the co- 
operative associations to pool and sell 
the fruit as a common commodity under 
the brands of the association rather than 
to sell the fruit of each grower sep- 
arately. The pool is an arrangement by 
which the similar grades of fruit of all 
of the growers are united and sold to- 
gether. At the end of a pool, which 
may vary from a daily pool in the sum- 
mer-fruit business to a monthly or semi- 
monthly pool in the citrus-fruit busi- 
mess or a season pool in the apple in- 
dustry, the grower receives his pro rata 
