PROCEEDINGS OF TWENTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 39 



this vast interest of fruit in California, one of the largest interests of the 

 3tate — one of the very largest of all the products of California, as Mr. 

 Berwick stated this morning, running to probably $25,000,000 annually — 

 when this vast product gets ready to do business on its own account it 

 will do business profitably to its growers and to its owners. But fruit- 

 growers are afraid of expense. They don't seem to think that they are 

 paying the expenses, a small portion of which would insure better 

 methods; but they are enriching and preparing the other fellow to get a 

 mortgage on their property. Now, there is some expense attached to 

 this work; but look at the product upon which you have to exploit the 

 markets and establish your agencies. I stated to you in my address 

 that what I have done down South in a small way is but a beginning 

 of what California growers can do when they take hold all together. 

 As Mr. Thomas said, ''When you make the umbrella big enough for 

 us all." 



In our association to-day we have a payroll of $7,000 a month; yes, it 

 will take more than that — probably $300 a day for the working days — 

 to pay our employes. Why, we have a telegraph bill of $100 a day, 

 and it takes a carload of fruit every day to pay our expenses, but we 

 are selling hundreds of other cars, and at the same time after all is said 

 and done we do our business on less than one half the expense that has 

 ^ver been attached to any fruit-marketing that I am aware of. 



This is only the beginning of what can be done by the California 

 fruit-growers when they all cooperate and do business in the proper way. 



MR. BERWICK. After the Convention closed this morning I was 

 called to order by a statistician. He said the figures quoted by you are 

 -entirely to small, and makes the increase $35,000,000 over the period of 

 ten years since. It was an increase of $35,000,000 annually since 1890. 

 I judge we are not all fruit-growers here; sometimes we have com- 

 mission men with us when we are talking about the marketing of fruits; 

 but 1 wish to say that a serious thing happened to the fruit-grower this 

 year. We have been paying constantly in San Francisco eight per cent 

 commission on goods sold for us here. That is what you all had to pay 

 in the past; this year it was arbitrarily raised to ten per cent commis- 

 sion on goods sold in San Francisco. I wrote to my commission man 

 for the reason of this increase, and the reply was, "It is common all 

 over the Union; the ordinary charge is ten per cent, and this thing has 

 been coming for some time now." That is the only reason I got. If 

 there is a commission man here I would like to know why you have 

 been forfeiting two per cent of what was your money before. If you 

 sell a box of oranges for $2 they charge you a commission not only on 

 your freight and cost of packing, your boxes and paper and those 

 things, but also on their own commission. They charge you the full ten 

 per cent on the gross, and your box of oranges pays twenty per cent com- 



