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TWENTY-EIGHTH FRUIT -GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



Orange men agree that the production is increasing; that in a few 

 years it may amount to from 30,000 to 40,000 carloads. They agree 

 that this year the demand has been lighter than last year, and attribute 

 this to various minor causes, all of which sum up into the broad fact 

 that the people who eat your oranges have not eaten as many as they 

 previously did. 



In your anxiety you overhaul your selling agencies, you appeal to 

 the railroads, you look for a dozen and one minor factors which we all 

 know need looking after, but you overlook the one great factor to which 

 you must turn for salvation — you leave out of account the great- consum- 

 ing public. 



Your "market" is not an actual reality to you; it is simply some 

 point to which you ship cars and where some man gets the most money 

 he can out of the oranges. You must come to realize that your "market " 

 is another set of human beings constituted the same as you and your 

 families are; that they have daily needs to be supplied and pleasures 

 to cater to; that they are open to argument about oranges, just as you 

 are about Grape-Nuts or Sapolio or Force. 



What I say regarding the orange can with some slight variation be 

 applied to other fruit products. *Our canned deciduous fruits, our 

 seeded raisins, our splendid dried figs, our prunes and other dried fruits 

 must and will some day be advertised in a systematic way. 



There should be a general advertising fund created and a certain sum 

 should be set aside each year for this purpose. I believe a tax (for 

 want of a better word I say tax) of not less than one cent per box 

 could be levied to advantage on every box of oranges and lemons, and 

 on every case of dried or canned fruit that leaves the State. The fruit 

 interests require and demand an advertising fund large enough to com- 

 mand the attention of the buying public, and there should be a fund of 

 this kind created, so that when occasion requires, the necessary steps 

 can be taken without upsetting the internal workings of the various 

 fruit organizations on the Coast. 



Taking it year by year, Southern California ships more than 20,000 

 carloads of oranges. There are 362 boxes in a carload. This gives the 

 annual shipment of oranges as 7,240,000 boxes. Now assuming that 

 the orange-growers felt the necessity of advertising oranges in order to 

 increase consumption, just let us suppose that they decided to spend 

 one cent per box for a year, and we will find that we have a sum of 

 •$72,400. I am speaking very conservatively when I say one cent a box. 

 It would not be unbusinesslike to spend ten cents a box, and this would 

 yield a fund of $724,000. 



Wherever practical I have always advocated the individual package. 

 A special brand is very desirable. It is not at all unlikely that we shall 

 some day see oranges advertised under a brand. It remains for some 



