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ADVANTAGES OF AN EXCHANGE. 



By E. F. Adams, of Wrights. 



It is suggested that I discuss several topics connected with State 

 cooperation in fruit marketing. 



I. The work of a State Exchange and the cost of maintaining it. 



Whatever we plan, business is certain to flow in the easiest channels. 

 In transacting business, no one will continue to pay for unnecessary 

 service. The problem to be solved, therefore, is to determine what 

 necessary services, if any, a State Exchange can perform more cheaply 

 and conveniently than can be performed by other agencies. If there 

 are no such services, we need no State Exchange. One popular 

 notion of a State Exchange is that of a prodigious commission house 

 selling all the fruit of the State. I am now speaking in relation to the 

 dried fruit trade, not fresh fruit, as to which I will speak later. Dried 

 fruit is sold through different channels and with more deliberation than 

 fresh fruit, but no State Exchange could ever possibly concentrate for 

 sale any large portion of it, nor, in my judgment, would it be desirable. 

 If the demand were greater than the supply I think it would be wise to 

 concentrate the stock under one management. Considering all present 

 circumstances, which might be set forth at greater length than the entire 

 permissible limit of this paper, but having specially in mind the one fact 

 that for some years to come we shall have evidently to rustle for custom- 

 ers, I think the more bright men we have rustling the better. I can 

 conceive of an Exchange which, even under present circumstances, could 

 sell the entire fruit product of the State to better advantage than it could 

 be otherwise sold, but the forces to create such an institution do not 

 exist. If a State Exchange sells any fruit it should be only an occa- 

 sional incident. We can create no State Exchange at present through 

 which all can sell their product more easily and to better advantage 

 than they can sell elsewhere. That being the case, it would have no 

 business that it did not struggle for, and a business enterprise which 

 can exist only by fighting for the business of its owners had better not 

 be started. A State Exchange can never become successful as a com- 

 petitor for business, but only by a general wish to intrust business to 

 it; all business competitors abuse and lie about each other, and all inter- 

 ests opposed to cooperation are as certain to drop their own quarrels 

 and unitedly attack any cooperative concern, as a band of town dogs 

 is to pitch on a country intruder. Under such circumstances a solicit- 

 ing Exchange is certain to lose influence, the management become dis- 

 contented, and all things go wrong. If ever a State Exchange exists to 

 sell the fruit of California, it will grow; it will not be made. I favor 

 local cooperative marketing, and I practice it because I find it more 

 satisfactory and convenient than any other form; so, in the long run, 

 will everybody, because it is so, and it will succeed. 



Assuming then the success of local cooperative marketing, let us see 

 what a State Exchange can do for the local association on better terms 

 than they can do themselves. 



In the first place, each local Exchange needs from one hundred and 

 fifty to two hundred brokers in order to reach all markets; these brokers 

 should be appointed after personal visits; very few local bodies think 



