70 



TWENTY-EIGHTH FRUIT -G RO WE RS 5 CONVENTION. 



When you tell a gullible public of the big things you raise, tell them 

 also of the big things so many of us can not raise — the big mortgage. 

 If that has been true in the past, as many of you know but too well it 

 has been, is it likely to be less true in the future, with increased expenses 

 and diminished receipts ? 



One of my desires then is, to stop this fruit-boom foolishness. No doubt 

 it will result in the survival of the fittest orchards and orchardists- 

 Many of the misfits and unfit are already grubbed out or sold out. 

 Meanwhile, the skilled horticulturist, on a well-selected orchard, finds 

 life none too easy, because his failing competitor, though losing money, 

 helps to glut a limited market; for, as our canners and shippers have 

 realized, there is a well-defined limit, even to a "world market." 



It does not take an overpowering number of carloads of any kind of 

 fruit to glut even Covent Garden market, in London, England. And 

 the citrus fruit-grower knows, to his cost, that even if his market were 

 unlimited, the railroad company's equipment of suitable cars and 

 engines is entirely too limited. Let the fruit-growers, then, send forth 

 their fiat, that this misleading booming of their industry be stopped. 



Another want is a time-schedule on East-bound fruit-cars. The 

 grower guarantees the freight charge before the car leaves the railroad 

 depot. He pays for the service of transporting his perishable goods, 

 expecting that that service will be some real service to him, and that 

 his goods will be delivered at their destination in reasonable time. 

 Through some inefficiency, mishap, or negligence, the goods are unduty 

 delayed. Instead of a carload of salable fruit, a carload of mushy 

 rottenness arrives at the terminus. The railroad company, in place of 

 a service, has performed a non-service, a disservice. Surely, the very 

 least it should be called upon to forfeit would be the charge made the 

 grower for a real service. There is no valid reason why fruit trains 

 should not make as good time as cattle trains. 



But this point was so full}?- discussed in a former paper at our last 

 San Francisco Convention, and one of the cures for this inefficient service, 

 government ownership of our railroads, occupied so large a space at a 

 former Convention in this city, that I will not occupy your time with 

 them now. 



I want to remind you of what may seem, to some of you, more nearly 

 present possibilities: possibilities not merety of cheap transportation, 

 but of such a widening of markets as would almost justify the biggest 

 boom you. ever imagined. 



Looking over the British postal guide a year or two ago, I was struck 

 with the fact that in a list of countries covering some ten pages of that 

 guide, and embracing names of places which you and I rarely hear pro- 

 nounced, the United States was almost the only country with which 

 there was no recognized " parcels post." 



