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TWENTY-NINTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



got their raisins from the same regions. The raisin-growing regions of 

 Europe have not extended. They are the same as they have been for 

 centuries. Now, we went into the raisin business and we extended it 

 in that remarkable way which we have of extending any industry which 

 we take hold of with energy, and when it became important that we 

 should take care of our tariff I had an opportunity to go to Washington 

 with a committee from this city — Dr. Rowell and Colonel Forsyth — and 

 we made a fight for you before the Dingley committee which resulted in 

 the present tariff upon the raisin. We showed the committee that prior 

 to the production of raisins in California we had been importing into 

 this country quite as many raisins as we were then producing. There 

 had been some years when we had imported into this country more 

 raisins than we had up to that time produced in this country, and after 

 our raisins had begun to reach the markets of the East the importations 

 began to fall off, until now there are practically no importations of raisins 

 into the United States. We have the market, but we are not to-day 

 producing a great deal more than in former years when people paid 

 15, 20, or 25 cents a pound for them. I haven't the figures with me 

 now, but my recollection is that there were years when we imported as 

 many as 83,000,000 pounds of raisins, and that was a good many years 

 ago, when the population of this country was not more than perhaps 

 two-thirds of Avhat it is now. 



Now, the truth about the fruit industry can not be comprehended 

 and thoroughly understood by taking examples of failures any more 

 than the condition of any other business can be shown by examples of 

 failures. It seemed to me, when I came in here, that this Convention, 

 for a moment at least, had resolved itself into a convention of fruit- 

 destroyers, rather than a convention of fruit-growers. What is the true 

 function of our Convention ? Is it to assemble for the purpose of dis- 

 couraging the growth of the business in which we are engaged ? Should 

 we meet together to demonstrate that we ought to all go out of business, 

 and that our nurseries should be destroyed; to say to the people abroad 

 that, while we have these great natural advantages — unparalleled in 

 the world — we are not to utilize them ? 



If it is not fruit-growing, what inducement have we to offer the 

 immigrant coming here to make this State his home? We have the 

 dairy interest, it is true. We have the wonderful productions result- 

 ing from irrigation of these plains, which may be brought to great 

 perfection here and in enormous quantities. The dairy interest may 

 be very greatly extended, but suppose everybody goes into growing 

 alfalfa and making butter and cheese? How long will it take to stock 

 the home market with your butter, and then what condition are we in, 

 shipping butter to New York City, for instance, or to Chicago, right in 

 the midst of the great dairying interest of the East and West and North- 



