PROCEEDINGS OF TWENTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 133 



it. Two or three of the leading citrus counties do this work at the 

 treasury's expense, afterwards collecting from the lands treated. Los 

 Angeles County still requires the orchardists to do their own fumigation. 

 No new scale pests have developed since your last reports were out, nor 

 is there evidence that parasites have taken the contract to disinfect the 

 orchards of Southern California. 



Upon the question of marketing you have heard a greater voice than 

 mine, one that has been heard all along this coast and its influence felt. 

 It is not boasting to say that Southern California has set the pace for 

 cooperative effort among all other farming communities. Great as the 

 actual achievements in this line have been, greater is the feeling of per- 

 manent security that has been engendered by the success of the Citrus 

 Fruit Exchange. Were it not for the work of this cooperative institu- 

 tion, there would be no breadth nor vitality in my subject to-night. The 

 association has given to the agricultural world its greatest example of 

 the elimination of the unnecessary elements of a great industry, without 

 the formation of a trust. It has increased the profits of the producer 

 without taxing the consumer to do it. The manipulator, speculator, 

 and even honest but depleting fruit merchants have been apportioned 

 to thirty or forty per cent of the orange crop. They hold on to that 

 through a strenuous endeavor that would appall even our great Presi- 

 dent. The idea of charging producers just what it costs to sell their 

 fruits has unified the policy of 4,000 orange-growers, and made the 

 Southern California Fruit Exchange the greatest fruit merchant the 

 world has ever seen, giving that organization the record of handling 

 millions of dollars every year, with losses from collections and disburse- 

 ments so small that they do not amount to the value of 15 carloads in 

 an aggregate sale of 25,800 made since the Exchange assumed control 

 of its own fruit from the orchard to the market end of the line. The 

 orange in Northern California is feeling the impulse of this great move- 

 ment, and may soon be listed with the Exchange, for it is said that 

 where even a few are assembled together the Lord will be with them 

 just the same. 



