TWENTY-NINTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



47 



way that will bring profit and consequently give value to the land 

 when it is denuded of the fruit trees or vines. 



Now I desire to make a few remarks, brought to mind by statements 

 made on the floor here. With all due deference and respect to those 

 who are in charge and control of the California Fruit Distributors. 

 I wish to say that in this tabulated statement presented in connection 

 with the report of the Committee on Transportation, where there is 

 shown a deficiency of 3.110 cars unexplained, it is possible the car line 

 may be interested in the marketing of fruit. Now if it be true that the 

 Armour Company is in the marketing business — I am not saying that 

 it is. but I believe it to be — if through the power of the Distributors, 

 which in my judgment it dominates, it can select markets and protect 

 those markets, where are those 3,110 cars, less possibly 150 or 250 or 

 even 500 that might be shipped by other institutions? Who sold them, 

 and what prices did they bring? Nobody knows, excepting those who 

 sold them. There is the wrong to you. Agents are sent out to buy 

 f. o. b. from the growers, who are offered, and the magnificent (?) offers 

 in many cases accepted, 30 cents a box for their plums and from 40 to 50 

 cents a box for their pears, and that is why last year was such a dis- 

 astrous year to the growers. The fact that Porter Brothers had just 

 been reported as being bankrupt, and there being no possible competi- 

 tion, as they believed, they felt it was discretion on their part to accept 

 those prices, and a very large amount of fruit on the Sacramento River, 

 in Placer County, and other localities, was purchased by the Earl Fruit 

 Company, shipped East and sold in the name of the grower, so that 

 when you read the name of John Smith, from Portland, or any other 

 place, receiving $4 a box for his pears, you said: "What a magnificent 

 price Mr. John Smith is receiving for his shipments" ; and when plums 

 were reported sold at from $1.75 to $2: "Why. what a magnificent profit 

 Mr. Edward Berwick is making on those shipments," when Mr. Edward 

 Berwick had previously surrendered all proprietorship to the Earl 

 Fruit Company. These are facts, gentlemen. The little tabulated 

 statement issued last season attracted a great deal of attention in the 

 railroad offices and, no doubt, in those of the Armour Company and of 

 others interested in making their millions out of you gentlemen. They 

 hooted at the statements at first and said they were incorrect. I went 

 to the State Board of Trade and invited investigation. Twice, person- 

 ally. I visited the California Promotion Committee and solicited those 

 in power there to take the question up, for the reason that if the state- 

 ments were erroneous it was the duty of those trying to induce people 

 to come here and invest their means to establish the fact that they were 

 wrong. They intimated to me that they would do it. Two or three 

 weeks passed and I heard nothing from them, when I formally addressed 

 a communication to the California Promotion Committee, submittinor 



