58 



TWENTY-NINTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



It has always been a mystery to me that men who in other respects 

 show so much intelligence as do farmers, and especially fruit-growers, 

 are as a class so utterly lacking in capacity when called upon to deal 

 with commercial affairs. I use the term lacking in capacity in a 

 comparative sense, and to show you how much I am justified in doing 

 so I ask you if you have not had object lessons in the value of co-opera- 

 tion sufficient to convince and convert even the most primitive intelli- 

 gence ? Can you name five per cent of the things you pay out your 

 money for in these days for which you are not forced to pay a greatly 

 increased price through the leverage of co-operation or combination ? 

 From the great financial trusts, the great railway corporation combina- 

 tions, through nearly every manufacturing interest in the world, down 

 through all combinations of mechanics, miners, and other skilled and 

 unskilled labor, even to the thousands of Italians who with pick and 

 shovel are digging subways in New York, who can not speak a word of 

 English, are in a foreign country, "and have but quite recently left work 

 in their own country that paid them but 30 to 40 cents a day and yet 

 who here insist upon getting $2.00 to $2.50 a day — all, all can combine, 

 and will, when necessary, starve themselves and their families in their 

 determination to succeed, but the intelligent growers of cured fruits find 

 it impossible to make even a half-way creditable effort to do so. Is this 

 not true ? And if it is true, is it not cause for the blush of shame to 

 cover the face of every one of us ? 



Among the cured-fruit producers we have an association of raisin- 

 growers which is only partially successful and has been kept alive from 

 year to year only by a miracle, because so many of them in their blind 

 selfishness seek to gain a little advantage over their more enlightened 

 neighbors by staying on the outside. 



We have had weak and half-hearted efforts to organize the producers 

 of cured peaches, apricots, and pears, but with no success. 



As to the effort to organize the prune-growers, you all know about 

 that miserable failure. And yet while the prune-growers are this sea- 

 son making a desperate effort in a detached way to force up the price 

 of prunes to a 3 or 3^ cents basis, every man familiar with market con- 

 ditions, and the absolute fruit famine this year all over the world, 

 knows that if the growers were united in a marketing organization 

 they could get 4 cents easier than they are getting 2-| cents now. In 

 France the prune-growers are getting three times the price the California 

 growers are getting, and for no better fruit, in fact not as good as ours. 

 In Hungary some weeks ago some of the prune-growers not knowing 

 the situation sold at a low figure, others found out about the scarcity 

 and at once raised the price 100 per cent, while those who sold early 

 almost created a riot because the government officials were slow in 

 issuing their crop bulletins. Pray God that we may develop some of 

 that spirit here in California. 



