TWENTY-EIGHTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



69 



nearly $1.60 per box cash outlay, to which must be added the profits of 

 jobber and retailer. The wages of employes, and other items entering 

 into the cost of picking and marketing have steadily increased for a 

 series of years, while the average selling price has declined. 



A FRUIT-GROWER'S WANTS AND DESIRES. 



By EDWARD BERWICK, of Pacific Grove. 



This paper professes to be simply an expression of individual opinion. 



One of the first things this fruit-grower wants is, he wants to knoiv — 

 to know where, after paying boom prices for land and water, after satis- 

 fying the exactions of materialmen and laborers, of the beef trust, the 

 oil trust, the lumber trust, after mollifying every other trust or distrust, 

 and after guaranteeing the railroad and refrigeration companies all the 

 traffic will bear — he wants to know where the horticulturist comes in. 



Almost everything this much-enduring person needs has risen very 

 considerable in value during the last few months (even the commission 

 merchants in San Francisco have raised their charges 25 per cent), 

 while, at the same time many orchard products have actually depre- 

 ciated: the fruit-grower has had to furnish more money from a smaller 

 purse. 



Obviously one of three things must happen: prices of necessaries must 

 come down; prices of produce must go up; or the grower will go broke, 

 the producer will fail to produce; for no man can continue in a business 

 that will not support itself and him. 



What I want to know next is why, in the face of these conditions, does 

 the fruit-grower aid and abet the circulation of boom literature in the 

 Eastern and Middle States? Special instances of unusually favorable 

 results, rarely achieved even under unusually favorable conditions, in 

 unusually favored localities, are published broadcast, as though they 

 were of every-day attainment all over the Coast. The result of this is, 

 that people flock in under false impressions and thousands are bitterly 

 disappointed and disgusted. The transportation companies, the chief 

 circulators of this aforesaid boom literature, are the chief beneficiaries. 

 Any one who declines to assist in this boom business is writ down 

 "unpatriotic." Why? Why, even if a grower were doing as well as the 

 printed matter would lead a reader to infer, should he invite all the 

 world to come and compete with him in business? Who has ever heard 

 of a lawyer, a grocer, a saloon-keeper, or even the editor of a newspaper, 

 who had a good thing, rushing out into the highways and hedges to ask 

 all the world to come and start as rivals in the same occupation? Then 

 why is the non-booming fruit-grower alone singled out as "unpatriotic," 

 because he declines to grind the S. P. ax? 



