PROCEEDINGS OF TWENTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 75 



chocolate and cocoa firm putting up a building at Buffalo that will cost a 

 million dollars, just for those two articles alone. Whenever the day 

 comes that California exerts a systematic and organized effort, and has 

 people with samples of prunes and apricots and peaches showing the 

 fine qualities of those articles and many others that you cook without 

 any sugar, much good will be done. I bought a little bottle of pickled 

 ripe olives the other day in Ohio. I asked the man if he sold many of 

 these, and he said, " No, not much." I bought some of them to show to 

 the family with which I was stopping, and to teach them how to eat 

 them. After that had been demonstrated to them, the woman said, 

 "You have played the dickens now; we have got to buy olives, and they 

 are a dear commodity." How in the world do you expect to sell your 

 goods and have people come here and hunt you up to get them when 

 there are thousands of people at the other end of the line raising the 

 same things and swearing that they are as good as those raised in Cali- 

 fornia? People have asked me if we raised apples in California. 

 Another gentleman asked me if they were good. I listened to 

 Professor Bailey deliver a very interesting discourse on California 

 before the National Pomological Society, giving his observations regard- 

 ing this State. He was very fair, and reminded the fruit-grower of the 

 East that California fruit conditions were not so very much superior to 

 theirs, but it was the California fruit-grower himself. He said the 

 difference was not so much in the fruit and soil, but it was in the man, 

 and he cautioned them to take on some of the California enterprise and 

 method in the matter of cultivation and care and bug-fighting. 



I heard Mr. Jacobs say yesterday that our canned peaches are not as 

 good in some respects as they used to be. I have heard people through- 

 out the country say that once they got very fine California peaches, but 

 they don't get them now. I believe that some of the canners are getting 

 careless in the selection of their fruits and syrups. You must be honest 

 with the foreigners. Be honest, and present good fruit to the markets 

 where you expect to sell. The same applies at home. You can not sell 

 poor fruit for a good price, and you can not fool the average American 

 customer more than two or three times. You must not claim supe- 

 riority for that which is not superior. 



I understand you have already passed a resolution favoring the action 

 of the people in St. Louis. I think California ought to be there, and be 

 there in good shape. It is going to be a fine exposition, and the world 

 is going to congregate there; the attendance is going to be good. The 

 fruit-growers and producers and consumers will be there from the great 

 Middle States, and there are going to be New Englanders come in from 

 the great places of the United States. If California was as enterprising 

 as she ought to be she would have an exhibit at the great food show . 

 of Boston and at the one now going on in Ohio, and at all those places 



