TWENTY-NINTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



45 



they would be Avilling to sacrifice in a way where necessary, and if they 

 will accept a situation of that kind I believe every locality in California 

 will keep them flooded with the produce they want and let them sell it 

 on commission. Now I would like Mr. Sprague to consider that propo- 

 sition and answer it. 



MR. SPRAGUE. Mr. Chairman, in reply to that I will say that I 

 am astonished, in the first place, to see how absolutely necessary it is 

 for co-operative organizations to advertise. What Mr. Judd proposes 

 is exactly what the Sacramento River growers have been doing in the 

 past two years. In the past season they have conducted a business, 

 running into hundreds of thousands of dollars, very successfully, in the 

 San Francisco market, realizing, as some of the growers present will 

 testify, better prices than the commission merchants themselves realized 

 for the products sent them. They have a very fine business to-day and 

 a very fine business location, and they are soliciting your consignments, 

 for the purpose of making themselves strong, so that the situation can 

 be properly controlled. They ask all of you, everywhere, to forward 

 such of your consignments as you wish to come to the San Francisco 

 market, to their house, The Growers' Co-operative Agency — that is the 

 name of the firm — and whenever you get ready in your locality to 

 organize a local association and send a representative to help conduct 

 that business, you will be welcomed with open arms. The address of 

 the Agency is 425, 427, and 429 Front street. It is very necessary that 

 they should have consignments throughout the year — potatoes, onions, 

 citrus fruits, if you have any, and strawberries ; during the summer the 

 Sacramento Valley, of course, furnishes very large supplies of fruit and 

 produce, but during the rest of the year they have to depend on the 

 products that come to the San Francisco market from other sections of 

 the State. Throw the weight of your influence toward that institution, 

 and, my word for it, gentlemen, the evils of the San Francisco market 

 will be corrected, but they can not be in any other way. ^ 



DISCUSSION ON TRANSPORTATION. 



PRESIDENT COOPER. If there are any ladies or gentlemen present 

 who wish to discuss the report of the Committee on Transportation, it 

 is now in order for them to do so. 



MR. JUDD. Mr. Chairman, we know that this State is the most 

 completely overburdened with high transportation rates and the poorest 

 service of all the United States. In some places where we have suc- 

 ceeded in getting an electric line or something of the kind we have got 

 a little reduction, affording some competition in our own State, but 

 what we want is to compete with other States. A little while ago you 

 read in the papers, relative to the investigation of the affairs of the 



