152 



TWENTY-EIGHTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



that business there are willing to take hold of it and buy our fruit of 

 us. We can put our fruit in storage there, and as they sell they will 

 pay us for it. One of those firms told me they would rather do that 

 than to take it as they do now, buy five or six hundred tons and store 

 it and keep it. They would rather have a place they can go and get it 

 any time they want it and furnish their customers with it. 



VICE-PRESIDENT GRIFFITH. What proportion of the raisin 

 crop is in the combine there? 



MR. HUTCHINSON. Really, I don't know. Very nearly all of it. 



VICE-PRESIDENT GRIFFITH. That makes <a great deal of differ- 

 ence. If all the dried fruits were in the exchange, you could do as you 

 pleased with it. 



MR. HUTCHINSON. That is what we are trying to get— all— and 

 all parts of the State. The northern part of the State has taken it up 

 very vigorously, and they are all right. We have npt got entirely 

 organized yet, of course. That takes time. But I'think that it will be 

 thoroughly organized and we will have 75 to 90 per cent of the fruit of 

 the State before it is time to deliver. That was the report I got from 

 the president. 



MR. DORE. So far as I understood Mr. Nourse in talking with him 

 and in his public addresses, he has sought all the time to give the peo- 

 ple in every locality the widest liberty in the expression of their views 

 and in the carrying out of any plans of organization that would not be 

 inconsistent with the general plan. There has been no cast-iron 

 arrangement made by which the whole State should conform to a regu- 

 lation of a body organized and started at Fresno — not by any manner 

 of means. On the contrary, he has sought to have the whole State 

 organized and then to have representatives from all parts of the State 

 help to map out a plan of work for the organization, and particularly 

 with regard to selling or holding. The great thing is to get together. 

 If we haven't too many fruit-producers who, as stated by Mr. Naftzger 

 yesterday, know more than everybody else, I think we will be able to 

 get together. 



MR. STONE. The great point which I wish to make, Mr. Chairman, 

 is this, that the central exchange which they speak of forming at Fresno 

 after they form their local associations is already in existence in Los 

 Angeles. Now, if they would form their local associations and immedi- 

 ately every local association, as they are here, would affiliate with the 

 Los Angeles association, all right. But when they ask that after they 

 have formed their separate associations they shall then unite into 

 another strong body, why, the strong body is actually in existence. 



MR. DORE. I don't know as to that. 



MR. STONE. That is the point which I wish to make. I wish to 

 avoid another strong body of that kind being formed in Fresno, there 



