PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-THIRD FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 219 



eventually recover much of the ground which we have heretofore lost, 

 compared with our sister states. 



They took up and discussed and have favorably considered the parcels 

 post and the postal savings bank. They believe in and have deter- 

 mined in favor of not only a fine but imprisonment for managers of 

 corporations who violate the laws of their country, taking the ground 

 that an ordinary fine on a large trust or corporation is inadequate 

 punishment, and that the only way to create terror of the law among 

 those people is to throw the offenders into prison. They believe in and 

 have favored the initiative and referendum in politics, and I believe, 

 ladies and gentlemen, after listening to the discussion, as I have, among 

 those people who have given thought to it, that it has many features of 

 merit, and I am impressed more particularly with the merit of the 

 referendum in the city of Sacramento, where I live. They have adopted, 

 in the charter of that city, the privilege of referring questions to the 

 people which may be refused or defeated by their elective officials. Not 

 long ago the city trustees refused a franchise for certain rights of way 

 for the Western Pacific through that city. The matter was referred, 

 under the law, under the referendum, to the people of Sacramento City, 

 and they voted twenty-four to one in favor of what their trustees had 

 denied; and where twenty-four people to one desire a thing it is evi- 

 dent that they ought to have it, and it is evident also that their elective 

 officers were not in sympathy with the desires and demands of their 

 constituents; and hence those constituents in this case were saved to 

 themselves by the referendum. 



They also believe in and have favored liberal reciprocity treaties 

 looking to the enlarged consumption of the products of the American 

 farmer in foreign countries; and I believe a policy of that character, 

 which might with consistency be advocated by the fruit-growers in con- 

 vention in the State of California, looking to modifications of our tariffs 

 on farm and orchard products, marketed one country with another, 

 would lead to a great increase in the consumption of our products. 

 And while on this subject I want to say that the world is hungry for 

 what you produce, and I want to repeat what I have said before, that 

 if the horticulturists or agriculturists or fruit-growers of California 

 were organized into one corporate body they could spend, and be justi- 

 fied in spending, perhaps $100,000 a year out of their aggregate income 

 to exploit the markets for their products, and they would make money 

 by the operation. Corporations organized to place some single article 

 of food product on the market, whether it be a breakfast food or a baby 

 food, spend a large portion of their income in advertising and exploit- 

 ing the merits of that product. * Why, in the jungles of Africa and the 

 prairies of Siberia you will find on every rock "Mellen's Food," and 

 Mellen's Food was started in a hole in the wall in Boston with $500, 



