TWENTY-NINTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



101 



solution of this all-important question, and I shall first take my logical 

 and level-headed friend, Mr. Sprague. He told us, last night, in dis- 

 cussing this question of co-operation, that there was one underlying 

 feature that would never and should never be overlooked, namely, an 

 elastic manner of handling our productions. That means, fellow citi- 

 zens, that an arbitrary rule or an arbitrary price fixed upon am^ pro- 

 duction is calculated to get the producers of that production into deep 

 water. Now, the argument was simply this, from Mr. Sprague's stand- 

 point, that we must have a better plan, a better form of taking care of 

 our product, through distributing agencies, through local agencies in all 

 the markets, not only of the United States, but of the civilized world, 

 and through these agencies keep our fingers upon the pulse of the 

 people; we must gradually make for ourselves agencies in the different 

 cities and through them establish an elastic price, an elastic market, by 

 which we can accommodate prices to the conditions that exist, in the 

 interests of traffic, of trade. I submit that that is one of the chief 

 principles in everything, and it must be arrived at. No arbitrary rate 

 can ever be maintained against a people who can, if they will, get along 

 without the production of raisins. You know and I know that the 

 best people, those enjoying the most of the luxuries which the soil can, 

 under its most favorable conditions, produce, live a long, a happy life, 

 without ever tasting a raisin, and for that reason, as well as for the 

 general principle of elasticity in dealing in all commodities of com- 

 merce, we must recognize this principle and place the Raisin-Growers' 

 Association in a position to deal with it, and to deal with it intelligently 

 and constantly. 



So much for Mr. Sprague. Now, as for Mr. Kearney, the gentleman 

 who spoke this morning anent a proposition that had been presented 

 by a yovmg man — you gentlemen here remember it well — who related 

 the circumstance of his stepping into one of our local stores in the 

 " Raisin City," in the center of that wonderful production which has 

 given us so much wealth and so much fame, and he found, to his amaze- 

 ment, that in the local store, in the center of this enormous production, 

 with millions of pounds of raisins on the hands of the Association un- 

 sold, and apparently unsalable at the price established, he found to his 

 amazement that a small carton of raisins, weighing a pound, I think it 

 is, Mr. White, is it not? 



MR. WHITE. Two pounds. 



MR. McINTOSH. Weighing a couple of pounds, the price was 35 

 cents, or IT-g cents a pound for raisins in the raisin center of California. 

 Is that, friends, the kind of business through which we may expect to 

 reach the consumer and place our products upon the market? The 

 answer is evident. I submit that all of you know that the suggestion 

 should be carried to the limit that Mr. Kearney made; that is, that 



