12 PROCEEDINGS OF NINETEENTH FRUIT GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



continued this past season to be forced into needless competition with 

 itself, through the medium of rival auction houses, thus largely killing 

 prices, not alone in the chief markets, but also depressing prices in the 

 smaller tributary markets. 



I might take up a great deal of the time of this convention by ,deal- 

 ing with the past, and by pointing out who was responsible for defeat- 

 ing the wishes of the growers and preventing the establishment of the 

 desired consolidated salesrooms, but that could not bring back the past, 

 nor recover the losses that many growers have suffered as a consequence 

 of the continuance of the past evils. I assume that you, in common 

 with myself, are more interested in the question of how can we protect 

 the future, rather than to dwell on the past. 



It must be a self-evident fact that if neighbor will act with neighbor, 

 shipper with shipper, grower with grower, and all form one united whole, 

 the highest possible results may be looked for. If this, however, is not 

 possible, and neighbor will continue to needlessly compete with neighbor, 

 grower with grower, and shipper with shipper, then we may as well face 

 the inevitable, and make up our minds that existing evils are to become 

 permanent evils, and that the conditions of the past instead of improv- 

 ing are certain to become worse. I know of no good reason, however, 

 why neighbor and neighbor, grower and grower, shipper and shipper, 

 should not be brought into a harmonious whole, at least upon such 

 matters as are to their common interest, and in which all have every- 

 thing to gain and none anything to lose. 



I have yet to hear a single intelligent reason why it is not entirely 

 possible to establish and maintain a consolidated auction salesroom at 

 each auction point, where all the buyers, and all the sellers, and all the 

 auctioneers may be brought under one roof, so that the highest results 

 are attainable for the grower. Granting that this is brought about, will 

 it prove a panacea for all existing evils in connection with the shipping 

 of California fresh fruits to the East? Will this insure the growers 

 getting a reasonable price for their product? I hear some ask, and my 

 answer is: No; it will insure nothing of the sort. A consolidated 

 auction salesroom cannot be a panacea for all evils, and no one, least 

 of all myself, has ever made any such claim for that idea. A consoli- 

 dated auction salesroom cannot bring fair prices for fruit if ten carloads 

 are shipped to a five-carload market, nor if the fruit arrives in bad 

 condition, nor if it is poorly packed, nor if it is of inferior quality, nor 

 if it is shipped in the face of great domestic supplies. The consolidated 

 salesroom idea, or any other idea that the human mind can devise, 

 could not insure reasonable prices under any of the above-named 

 conditions. 



All that can be hoped for under the system of consolidated salesrooms 

 is to prevent the fruit from needlessly coming into competition with 

 itself, and to give to the grower the benefit of the fullest and the freest 

 competition among all the buyers in any one market, instead of, as in 

 the past, but a portion of the buyers in each market. While a consoli- 

 dated salesroom will not bring the grower a high price for poor fruit, or 

 for badly packed fruit, or for fruit arriving in a glutted market, it will 

 insure to the grower the full value of the fruit, whatever that value may 

 *be, which is more than the fruit-grower has been able to realize for his 

 product at any time and in any market when and where two auction 

 sales have been progressing at the same hour. 



