PROCEEDINGS OF TWENTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 47 



knowledge. Those minute details you can not get out of any consular 

 service. But those items which appear in the current literature of the 

 country to which he is assigned he can get, and this information is the 

 greatest possible information to the fruit-growers. But the details you 

 can not get outside of those actually engaged in the business. 



It demanded a great deal of work when we went into that correspond- 

 ence. We had the labor, in the first place, of inducing the State 

 Department to take hold of the matter. Congress would make no 

 appropriation without the recommendation of the Secretary of State. 

 We entered upon a correspondence which lasted about five or six weeks. 

 The difficulty was to make them know what was wanted. When that 

 was accomplished Secretary Hay thought he would be able to do what 

 we wanted without an appropriation, and I want to see that done. 

 Before this Convention adjourns I want the most emphatic resolutions 

 made in appreciation of what these representatives have done. The 

 people in Washington and the consuls don't understand just what we 

 want in the way of information, and those matters will have to be 

 explained to them more in detail. In their inexperience, however, they 

 desired to do the very best they could do, and most of them sent us 

 long reports containing the information that was sought, but it was 

 mixed up with a great deal of other matter. That stuff comes in here 

 by telegraph or mail, and is turned in iji the evening to the editor of a 

 daily paper. There may be a great deal of this matter, and he has got 

 to cut the copy down. Now the young men who do the editing are not 

 expert fruit men, and can not pick out the most salient points. If the 

 matter could be edited by the Associated Press and sent out to the 

 country papers it would be of more benefit. We have not only got to 

 get this information, but to get it where every fruit-grower can get the 

 advantage of it. You have got to get the country papers to demand 

 the Associated Press to send it. This will cost money, and they are 

 disposed, all of them, to cut down their telegraphic messages. If 

 those papers who receive those telegraphic messages know their con- 

 stituents demand it they will get it for them. This needs the work 

 of a committee to see to the editing of the stuff here before it is 

 distributed, and the members of the Convention don't understand 

 that this stufi" costs money. Until it reaches San Francisco it is 

 paid for by the Government; they will not pay for any further 

 distribution of the news. The best plan would be to have the stuff come 

 to us in San Francisco and let us distribute it from here. What we 

 should do to-day is to thank the State Department and the consuls 

 interested for their great service to the fruit industry of this Coast, and 

 next to constitute a committee who has got the time to give a little 

 supervision to the matter and see to it that this news is distributed after 

 it gets here, and that it is cut down and put in a shape so that the 



