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TWENTY-NINTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



it has not been possible. Fruit-growing is an industry in which I am 

 particularly interested. I came to this State, Sacramento County, 

 twenty-six years ago, and stayed there about a year. I was then some- 

 what younger than I am now, and was engaged in teaching school. It 

 was in the vine district of that county and there were some beautiful 

 vineyards in the district, and that year wine and table grapes sold at a 

 very low price, the former as low as $6 or $8 a ton. I returned to that 

 district the following year, and found that from several vineyards the 

 vines had been removed. I remember one beautiful vineyard of eighty 

 acres in particular where that had been done, and I asked why it was. 

 The owner said that it was on account of overproduction, that he could 

 not get any price for his grapes, and therefore had pulled up his vines 

 and was going to sow the land to wheat. That was twenty-six years 

 ago, and, as General Chipman said, we have heard of overproduction 

 ever sijice. Fresno then had the Eisen vineyard of one hundred and 

 sixty acres, the only vineyard in the county. I came here in 1878, and 

 since that time have seen the acreage in vines in this county increase 

 to seventy-eight thousand acres, and we are not any nearer overproduc- 

 tion to-day than when we had but one hundred and sixty acres of vines 

 in Fresno County. We can double our fruit-producing acreage in Cali- 

 fornia in the next twenty years and not exceed the demand for our 

 fruit in the United States alone. However, there is one thing which it 

 seems we do forget; that is, that we are producing luxuries and not 

 absolute necessaries. We must get this product to the people, we must 

 take it to the consumer, and must not think, because we sit in our 

 offices and have put a price upon the product and the people do not 

 take it at that price, that we are therefore overproducing. This is not 

 the fact. Take the breakfast foods which are put upon the market; 

 they are advertised upon every fence in the United States, and the result 

 is an enormous consumption of them. The price is put upon every 

 package, and the putting of the price upon the packages of seeded 

 raisins was the best thing that was ever done for the producer and 

 consumer thereof in the way of marketing them, and we certainly 

 ought to prevent, if possible, this product from selling here at home for 

 35 cents a pound, when the producer only receives 10 or 15 cents a 

 pound for the same raisins. When we put this product into the con- 

 sumers' hands at a reasonable price, we will find that the production 

 will not meet the demands of the consumers, that there will be a 

 demand for every pound of fruit we can produce. 



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