54 PROCEEDINGS OF NINETEENTH FRUIT GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



every way to forward the completion of the canal, and give us an easier 

 and cheaper mode of transportation for our products. 



Mr. Berwick : I have made a point of urging on our Congressmen and 

 Senators the importance of this canal to the fruit-growers of California. 

 I wrote to Senator Stephen M. White in regard to this canal. I told him 

 the Californians were unanimous for that canal, excepting the railroad 

 people. He wrote back, saying that the chief opposition in Wash- 

 ington also came from the railroad lobby. To build a competing trans- 

 continental railroad might be possible, but this.. is the time to build that 

 canal, whatever may be done as to the railroad. I do not think the 

 fruit-growers will build the opposition railway in one day less than six 

 years. 



CO-OPERATION AMONG FRUIT-GROWERS. 



Mr. Sprague: Existing methods of opening and supplying markets 

 for fruit have proved insufficient during the past season, not only in the 

 East, but also in our own State, and we have got to provide for it. 

 Now, what does this mean? It means the necessity for cooperation 

 among fruit-growers. It must be for us to determine how our fruit shall 

 be shipped and marketed, independent of the two great shippers. It 

 seems to me that a discussion of the methods of cooperation may prove 

 an interesting thing for this convention to consider. Now, among the 

 very first things to bring about cooperation is that people should get 

 together and discuss that very subject of cooperation; but that is a hard 

 thing to do in a little bit of a convention like this, where there are only 

 one hundred and fifty members out of the many thousands of fruit- 

 growers in California. It cannot be done. The first thing to do is to 

 organize them. There must be a local organization in every fruit local- 

 ity in the State, that meets regularly to consider management, fruit- 

 growing, and fruit-marketing, and so on, and how we shall manage to 

 cooperate. Keep on those lines, and arrange to work harmoniously. 

 The foremost practical organizations in the world to-day are the organ- 

 izations of the great political parties. These great political organiza- 

 tions hold their power from the people, still they make whole States 

 vote just exactly as they desire they should. From the smallest aggre- 

 gation of fruit-growers there should be a larger organization, and from 

 that it should grow to any extent desired. There should be a first-class 

 man — a first-class fruit-grower — at the head of every one of these smaller 

 organizations, and then we should find thousands, instead of the pitiful 

 number that we find together here. Yet, ladies and gentlemen, this 

 thing can be done. 



We want to be able to ship our fruit independently. We want to be 

 able to gather in those fruits with an absolute certainty of profit. We 

 do most all of the work, and we take all of the risks, while the men 

 who handle the fruit have an absolute certainty of profit, and run no 

 risks whatever. Now I hope before this convention closes it will be 

 possible to present some scheme for the fruit-growers of California 

 assembled in this place to enable them to secure some profit from rais- 

 ing fruit. If the middlemen had been done away with the growers 

 would not have lost both this year and last. 



