PROCEEDINGS OF TWENTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 57 



we must have organization among the growers ; in fact, organization is 

 required for all our purposes, whether in dried or fresh fruits. We must 

 have strong organization, and a foundation for that organization that 

 will have strength. 



I have been here in San Francisco working on this matter for the last 

 few days, that is, to know in what manner we can draw and secure a 

 contract which will bind the grower to deliver his fruit as he promises, 

 and will yet be free from objections in the nature of trusts. There are 

 laws on our statute books which say, "You shall not form a trust which 

 will interfere with the free marketing of products." An individual may 

 do that if he owns all the property that produces the article which he 

 has to sell. The Standard Oil Company may buy up all the wells in 

 the country and all its distributing agencies and can say, as it is an 

 individual, the price shall be thus and so, and they succeed. But the 

 law contains a number of forms whereby individuals can not come 

 together and do that same thing. We unfortunately are a multitude, and 

 have to deal with the property of the different owners — a great many 

 items of property. A few — twenty or thirty or fifty or one hundred — 

 manufacturers can get together and fix their shares and sell whatever 

 they have to sell at whatever prices they desire, but it is different with 

 us in putting our farms into one company, and for that reason we can 

 not fix a price. The law says, "You shall not, as individuals, form a 

 corporation" and do what the Standard Oil Company is allowed to do. 

 That is where our trouble begins. We must have organization, and we 

 can not depend entirely in that organization upon the bond of honor. 

 In our discussions in San Francisco we have heard a great deal about 

 the bond of honor. I can say for our Fresno growers that a great many 

 lived up to their contracts. Seventy-five per cent put their crops in the 

 association this year when they were tempted by higher offers to sell on 

 the outside. There is a minority, however, and it takes but a small 

 minority to demoralize the market when you say the price shall be so 

 and so and the article shall not be sold for less. As an illustration, 

 you take the raisin-growers' crops. We have three or four thousand 

 carloads of raisins to sell; the association may have thirty-five hundred 

 carloads under its control. The other five hundred cars may be on the 

 outside ofi'ered for sale by the commission man or packer or by the growers 

 themselves. There may be a dozen of them to handle that five hundred 

 carloads. On general principles, the Eastern man doesn't believe that 

 the growers can get together and stay together, and then he is offered 

 a portion of those five hundred carloads, and he is ofi'ered them by a 

 hundred different men, and his suspicion is confirmed that instead of 

 our having seventy-five or eighty per cent of the growers, we have not 

 got fifty per cent, and that it is therefore not safe to buy from us. There 

 is where the mischief of the minority comes in. Some of the growers at 



