94 PROCEEDINGS OF NINETEENTH FRUIT GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



county organize an association, and let them hire an auctioneer by the 

 day or by the year. That is one way, I believe, to kill this thing of 

 paying 7 per cent for green fruit or 5 per cent for dried. 



Mr. Righter: I suppose that you pay 7 per cent for the use of that 

 money for five days. Why not pay the freight on that end? 



Mr. Stephens: I will state, for the gentleman's information, that the 

 freight is not paid until the car arrives at destination. 



Mr. Righter: Then you pay 7 per cent for no time at all. 



Mr. Sprague: There ought to be some action on our part looking 

 towards cooperation. There is no use for us to cry out, " What 's the 

 use?" until we can make up our minds to do something. If you can 

 start at this meeting of the Fruit Growers' Convention to do something, 

 very well. If not, you might just as well shut up about cooperation. 

 It has not been followed up. I am unwilling to say that it cannot be 

 done. It can be done. We must get up and do it in the right way, and 

 when you have found how to cooperate, you will be able to do so prac- 

 tically, as fruit men, entirely apart from Mr. Earl or Mr. Porter. Begin 

 at the beginning by cooperation. It is the only remedy. 



Question, Is there any known remedy for the strawberry -root borer? 

 Mr. Craw: The best thing to do is to take up the vines. 



Question, What results can State cooperation accomplish? What of 

 these should be first attempted? What will it cost each incorporator to 

 have these things done? 



Mr. Walton: In the first place, in order to speak intelligently on 

 the subject of cooperation, we ought to understand what cooperation 

 among fruit-growers is, and I will define it in this way: It is doing our 

 own business at cost. Who are cooperators? Those persons who will 

 submit their product to pay the expenses of cooperation. In the trans- 

 action of that business there are two points which are very essential 

 before any great degree of advancement can be made in cooperation in 

 the matter of marketing and handling our fruit products. The Cali- 

 fornia Fruit Exchange was the result of a convention held at Los 

 Angeles and a convention held in San Francisco. A board of directors 

 was elected, consisting of seven active fruit-growers, who spent a large 

 portion of their time in trying to organize the fruit-growers of the State 

 into local associations. We found that, in order to prevent one section 

 of -the State competing against the other, it was necessary that the 

 entire State should take up and adopt the same system. It was a 

 question whether there should be State organization first, or whether 

 local organizations should be formed first, and the State organization 

 be organized by the local organizations. The latter course was adopted. 

 There are now twenty-two local organizations in the State. At a meet- 

 ing of the directors last January a movement was made to make a 

 central organization out of those already formed, and to that end there 

 was a concentration of these organizations in Santa Clara Valley. Mr. 

 Righter, who is a director and a member of the Board of Control, can 

 give you all the information as to the results of that concentration. 



Mr. Righter: The concentration to which Mr. Walton refers is the 

 result of the combination of organizations in Santa Clara County. 

 They united and formed the selling agency known as the " California 

 Dried Fruit Agency," located at San Jose. 



