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



MR. AIKEN. Mr. Chairman, I am like Professor Hussmann, who 

 disagrees somewhat. I especially agree with the paper just read by Mr. 

 Hotchkiss. I have had some experience in vineyarding, where I am 

 raising a table grape worth $100 a ton and am growing it on its own 

 roots. In one vineyard two years ago this last spring it bore enough to 

 pay for its culture. It was the Tokay. With my rich soil I can defy 

 phylloxera, at least for thirty or forty years, and I don't care what 

 happens after that. Let us go on and raise vineyards that will bear 

 large crops, and let us realize money from them. A neighbor of mine 

 has been growing Riparias for years past, and I can grow more grapes 

 on my two-year-old stocks than he can grow on his vines ten years old. 



PROF. HILGARD. The Riparias of ten years ago did not bear, but 

 the Riparias of to-day do bear. 



i"f MR. STEPHENS. Mr. Chairman, with your permission I will make 

 a statement. I am obliged to beg leave of you to grant your Committee 

 on Transportation further time. 



Upon motion of William Johnston, Thursday afternoon was fixed as 

 the time for the committee to report. 



PRESIDENT COOPER. We will now hear the memorial to the 

 next Legislature, prepared by M. Theodore Kearney. 



MR. KEARNEY. I believe it is generally understood, and the 

 feeling is universal among producers, that cooperation is what is 

 most needed in order to gain the utmost success, and for cooperation 

 you must have a foundation. The foundation is in the law which 

 enables you to form your association. That law must be of a character 

 which will assist you in your work and not deter you in your opera- 

 tions. As I understand it, the grain-growers are seeking to form an 

 association in order to market their product so that they will get 

 something out of it. Now, to reach that it is necessary for them to 

 make charters to get their wheat out of here. The men in San Fran- 

 cisco control the charters, and make you pay two prices for having your 

 grain landed in foreign markets. You must have charters for your own 

 vessels. In order to do that you must be sure that you have the con- 

 trol of the crop when it is produced. To control the crop 3^ou must 

 have an organization and that organization must be legal, and its 

 action must be legal and just, or the contracts will not be upheld by 

 the courts. It is the same way with the prune-growers. The gentle- 

 men who are managing the prune business are called on to make con- 

 tracts for the delivery of those prunes by the growers. How can the}^ 

 make a contract for the delivery of those goods unless they know they 

 control the crop ? How can they know they control the crop if 

 they make a contract that does not bind the grower in case he is 

 tempted to pull away from the association and sell on the outside ? 



