26 PROCEEDINGS OF TWENTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



paring for the table, or by some short crisp statement regarding the char- 

 acter of the fruit, its good qualities, etc. It may be necessary even to 

 systematically carry these packages and sell them at the door-step. 



It is perfectly evident that we can not depend upon a spontaneous 

 demand; we must create one. Neither can we depend upon the usual 

 channels of trade for the proper exploitation of the markets. -Nobody 

 except the man whose sweat and toil produced the fruit has enough 

 vital interest in the product to push it constantly into consumption, 

 "unless he is paid for doing it. People in trade will devote their energies 

 to the article that is easiest to sell, and the moment the demand for any 

 particular article weakens, they turn their attention to something else, 

 out of which a more ready profit can be obtained. There will follow a 

 period in which the particular article neglected is not consumed in 

 necessary quantities. We can not wait for people to buy our fruits as 

 they buy flour, and meat, and shoes, simply of necessity. We must 

 educate them to require our products all the time, because they have 

 taste for them. 



But you ask, how can all this be done? It involves vast detail and 

 the expenditure of considerable money. It will surely be done, if it 

 can be made to appear that it will pay; but the individual grower can 

 not do it. He can not afford to do it on his own account, nor can he 

 atiord to employ agencies to carry his product and put it before the 

 people in the way suggested. Paradoxical as it may seem, I will there- 

 fore say that the best way to distribute our fruits is to get them 

 together. First, the interests of the many growers must be consoli- 

 dated. If you have grown weary of the word cooperation, let us call it 

 by that more modern term, ''community interest." 



It is true that the individual grower who packs his own product for 

 market could place in every package some suitable advertising matter 

 that would interest the consumer into whose hands it might fall, and 

 probably have the effect to cause him to buy more of the same fruit, 

 but even this form of advertising and of educating the buyers can be 

 carried on much more systematically and successfully by the coopera- 

 tion of the many. I have no doubt that the many thousand small 

 packages of seeded raisins given away by the people of Fresno to 

 visitors at the Pan-American Exposition will have the effect of making 

 thousands of new customers for their seeded raisins. I do not pretend 

 to be familiar with the method adopted for doing this work of distribu- 

 tion, but it probably fell so lightly upon the many parties at interest 

 that no one felt the expense. 



Last year the Southern California Fruit Exchange had printed half 

 a million circulars setting forth the good qualities of the California 

 lemon both for table and toilet; also, many formulas for the use of the 

 lemon. These circulars were distributed by putting them into the 



