TWENTY-NINTH FEUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



237 



put out all of these raisins as seeded raisins. We want to fix a price 

 upon every package, and that price shall be 10 cents. We want our 

 raisins to go into the market at a low price, and not at 25 cents a 

 pound, as they have heretofore. We want that paster to go on every 

 package. We will say on each package, to ease the way: "Cut price, 

 10 cents, to advertise seeded raisins." That will let the retailer down 

 easy. He had been charging 15, 20, and 25 cents a pound for the same 

 raisins, and some explanation of the low price was necessary. When 

 we offered those raisins to the trade we found our greatest opposition in 

 Boston. The merchants there said they were not going to handle any 

 raisins with the price on them, that it was their business to get any 

 price they saw fit. We did not change the proposition. We sought 

 out other dealers who would buy them, and those jobbers found retail- 

 ers who would buy them, and they put them in their windows, a great 

 lot of them: 10 cents for seeded raisins, 10 cents a pound. The neigh- 

 boring dealer who would not buy them saw his customers going in to 

 buy those seeded raisins. Very soon he wanted some, and the other 

 man wanted some, and the jobbers all had to come into it; they had 

 to have those raisins, and those " stickers " remained on all the pack- 

 ages. That is one of the most important lessons that I have learned in 

 this fruit business. If the growers all over the State can organize, can 

 control the way in which our fruit shall go out and control the right to 

 put a price upon it, if we will do that we will solve this overproduction 

 problem right there. We do not wish to make enemies of the trade. I 

 have always since I have had anything to do with the Raisin-Growers' 

 Association favored dealing with the trade and using it as a means of 

 distribution. I have never been in favor of the producers or the Asso- 

 ciation establishing their own selling agencies, and I have come into 

 conflict with many co-operative men on that ground. I do not wish to 

 do anything in that way until we are so solidly combined that we can 

 stand that fight; but we can take this step forward, we can establish 

 our own packing-houses in every district throughout the Pacific Coast, 

 pack our products and retain the power to put the price on them, on 

 every package, every pound of prunes, of peaches, of apricots. If the 

 growers will get together and do that you will not for many years to 

 come hear of any overproduction. 



MR. JUDD. It seems to me that the question of overproduction is 

 largely local, inasmuch as, so far as my knowledge goes, every locality 

 in the State has overproduction in some one thing, not from the fact 

 that it has not a market value, but from the fact that something else 

 has a greater market value. I have heard several state here that they 

 had dug up their trees. That is true. The impression might be that 

 they dug them up because they had ceased to be profitable. That 

 might be true, too. I dug up thirty-five acres of orchard. Why did I 



