44 



TWENTY-NINTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



learn from the metropolitan journals, are crying out in protest at this 

 situation and frantically beating the air for some aid. We are appealed 

 to here, and it is a question to be considered soberly, how can this aid 

 be given? As in other lines of trade or commerce, the farmers or grow- 

 ers, when they propose to do business, must get ready to do business, 

 submit to certain arrangements with each other, and make certain 

 agreements by which business shall be done. Now, in our judgment 

 the fundamental thing in the way of getting ready to do this business, 

 to reform the situation at San Francisco so as to do any business which 

 we deem it essential that we should do, is to get ourselves organized 

 locally in those districts in which it is of the greatest interest to have 

 that business well done. Now it is difficult to find, in the different 

 localities, men who are sufficiently self-sacrificing to devote themselves 

 to the public weal to such an extent as to step forward and attempt to 

 secure such local organization, but that is the point which is absolutely 

 essential. If there can not be found, in the various points tributary to 

 the San Francisco market, men who are willing to give their time and, 

 if necessary, some of their money to effect this work of organization, 

 these abuses will go on, and all our resolutions and all our attempts to 

 regulate them by act of the Legislature will fail. Combinations never 

 have been and never will be controlled by law effectively. It must be 

 by organization to enable us to do the business ourselves which we wish 

 well done. Now, gentlemen, I appeal to you to see that these organi- 

 zations are formed. 



MR. JUDD. Mr. President, it seems to me another horn of the 

 dilemma might be taken hold of. You understand how difficult it is to 

 get an organization in a locality where there is a diversification of 

 markets and of products and vast numbers of people differing on the 

 subject of co-operation. It seems to me that the Sacramento River 

 growers, for instance, should organize themselves, as they have done 

 already, and let them be their own commission merchants. I talked 

 the matter over considerably last year with our people, and it seems 

 that they are anxious for this proposition, but it is difficult of accom- 

 plishment. In the strawberry business, for instance, the commission 

 men themselves are in some respects largely interested as owners, and 

 other ow^ners are hampered or tied up to such a degree that it is difficult, 

 as the gentleman who just spoke has said, for them to combine without 

 sacrificing themselves. Now, I am confident that if the Sacramento 

 River growers will organize themselves, as I said before, as a conxmis- 

 sion organization for one year, just to demonstrate to the growers all 

 over the State the practicability of co-operation, and let us send to them 

 a certain amount every day to sell, on consignment, as we do to com- 

 mission houses — say they want 50 or 60 crates of strawberries or 100 

 or 150 boxes of apples, or whatever it may be — it seems to me that 



