Fruit Fanning for Profit in California, 109 



auy otlier cultivation of tlie soil. We are enjoying in 

 the current year the highest prosperity the fruit-growers 

 have known, and yet the whole enterprise has made its 

 way against continued predictions of over-production 

 and ultimate failure. 



The magnitude of the opportunity also suggests at 

 once the possibility of a special equipment and special 

 treatment of the whole subject. We are in plain view 

 of the ultimate possibilities of this industry, and the 

 time has arrived when we may safely prepare to adopt 

 such methods as to its commercial features as will take 

 it out of the list of ordinary commercial transactions, 

 and justify the inauguration of separate and special 

 instrumentalities of distribution. In its practical 

 aspect, the proposition demands the formation of a 

 commercial company for the sale and distribution of the 

 fruit. The auction method having proved successful, 

 it is practicable to send to every town or city in the 

 United States, where a market for a single car might 

 be found, a carload of fruit, to be sold at auction ; and 

 this fruit should be sent directly from the centres of 

 distribution in California, and regardless of centres of 

 distribution at the East, xis suiDplemental to this, it 

 is competent, over Eastern lines, to distribute fruit in 

 less than carload lots, over short distances of distribu- 

 tion. Thus continuing the present method of sending 

 all fruit to the great commercial centres of the country^ 

 for which a market might be found, let it be sup- 

 plemented by an organization which will establish 

 agencies in every town or city that will take one or 

 more carloads, and this be further supplemented by a 

 distribution, in less than carload lots, through the in- 



