TWENTY-NINTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



113 



In the year before that they received a good deal more than the cash 

 price offered them. This year they again received a great deal more 

 than the cash price fixed, so that I wish to corroborate Mr. Hutchinson's 

 statement, that the shipper who will stand right up on the proposition, 

 even in these difficult times, will get more money for his product by 

 shipping it than by selling it to the cash buyer. 

 MR. STEPHENS. I agree with you there. 



MR. BERWICK. Mr. President, I made some remarks at Los 

 Angeles, at the last session we held there, to the effect that I had been 

 growing fruit for thirty odd years and had not made any money, and 

 because I published those statements I was called a "knocker." I 

 never have cared, and hope I never will care, what I am called in life, 

 so long as I do what Berwick thinks is right. I thought it right to 

 make those statements. Now, we hear a great deal about this fruit 

 business, as though the growers were all making money. For my part, 

 after years of hard work, I have not much to show for it. 



MR. JACOBS. I come in contact with a great many fruit-growers 

 of the Sacramento Valley, from Alameda County, and from a section 

 of the State generally around the bay, and I am satisfied that in that 

 valley — take any line of business in the State of California, and you 

 will find that the fruit-growers of the Sacramento Valley are just as 

 prosperous and successful as men engaged in any other business in the 

 State, and if you take the average class of fruit-growers along the Sacra- 

 mento River and in the Sacramento Valley they constitute just as 

 prosperous a class as any other class in this State or in this country. 

 It is a disgrace, as Mr. Stephens said yesterday, that one great shipping 

 firm has gone into bankruptcy through their past speculations with the 

 money which they have stolen, to use plain language, probably from 

 the groAvers, for when they got those private rebates it came out of the 

 profits of the growers. That is plain language, but it does not alter the 

 fact that the fruit-grower, under present conditions, is as prosperous as 

 those in any other line of business. Now, Mr. Chairman, I have a 

 resolution to introduce. It is: 



Resolved, That this Convention indorse the work being done by the California Promo- 

 tion Committee. 



I submit this resolution. 



PRESIDENT COOPER. The resolution will be passed over to the 

 Committee on Resolutions. 



MR. HARTRANFT. Mr. Stephens has said that we can go ahead 

 with planting and can go ahead in the regular expansion of our decid- 

 uous fruit industry when we shall have proper transportation facilities 

 and the necessary marketing arrangements to justify it. In the first 

 place, I don't believe that there was ever a useful instrument invented 



8 — F-GC 



