72 



TWENTY-EIGHTH FRUIT- GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



Now, gentlemen, what Mexico can do, I think we ought to be able to do, 

 if we try hard. 



I read in the "Review of Reviews'' that two wealthy men in Ireland 

 are preparing to furnish that distressed country with auto-trucks, these 

 big trucks to convey agricultural products. What they are able to do 

 in a distres?ed country like Ireland you ought to be able to do here also. 



Now, gentlemen, you are the sovereign people; it rests with you to 

 direct your servants to go and do likewise. When you can post two 

 boxes of oranges to any part of the Union for 60 cents, and have them 

 delivered as quickly as are newspapers and magazines, your transpor- 

 tation question will be solved. What hinders? Railroad and express 

 company lobbies, do you say? Yes! But, far beyond these, your own 

 apathy and your blind devotion and docility to your party machine — a 

 machine operated, as you know, by corporation money! You are full 

 well aware that what is possible for Switzerland and Germany is 

 possible for America. You must admit this, or accept the alternative, 

 that our Government is inferior in this respect, at least, to the Govern- 

 ment of Germany. 



Now, I want every voter here, and every voter in the United States, 

 to join the Postal Progress League, and to pledge himself to vote only 

 for such nominees for Congress as will promise to make it their business, 

 first, last, and all the time,' to insist on the immediate institution of an 

 efficient parcels post. If our Postmaster-General does not know how, 

 and will not learn how, let us import a Swiss, or a German, or a New 

 Zealander, who does. 



Already 420,444,573 pounds of second-class matter are annually trans- 

 ported by the American, postoffice. That is more than three times the 

 weight of California's average transcontinental shipment of fresh decid- 

 uous fruits. It is no doubt important to feed the mind. There is one 

 thing prior in importance even to that, viz.: to feed the body. Bringing 

 producer and consumer in touch through the postoffice solves not only 

 the question of transportation, but also the whole question of marketing 

 and middlemen . 



And these three questions of marketing, middlemen, and transportation 

 I am sure every fruit-grower in this room wants, and wants badly, to 

 see settled. 



It would pay the grower then, and I almost think it would pay him 

 now, not to pack and ship frosted oranges and grass-green lemons; and 

 one of this grower's desires the past winter has been to find in Pacific 

 Grove some brand of oranges he could be sure that Jack Frost had not 

 already sucked dry, and some brand of well-cured, juicy lemons with 

 which to brew, for his friends, the refreshing lemonade (in view of 

 the fact that hard drinks are there held accursed). 



Steel roads and auto-trucks are another of the possibilities of the 



