PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 



45 



EVENING SESSION. 



PRESIDENT JEFFREY. The first item of the program to-night 

 is the ''New Horticultural Law." I will not speak to you very long 

 because I occupied three quarters of an hour of your time to-day. but 

 in order to follow up later in the evening with some very strong expres- 

 sions on the new horticultural law. it might be profitable to give a little 

 review of this enactment as it now stands on our statute books. 



About five or six years ago. perhaps, at the Santa Rosa convention, 

 there seemed to be a desire to reform the county horticultural law. 

 This law. as you all understand, the old law and the new. are optional 

 laws. The plan can not be adopted in any county without the initiative 

 of twenty-five freeholders and fruit growers. At the Santa Rosa con- 

 vention it was discussed and at every convention following until the 

 present. At one of these conventions, the one preceding the one at 

 Hanford. a committee of fruit growers and commissioners was appointed 

 to recommend a new law. This new law was formulated and presented 

 at the Hanford convention, that is. the convention that was held three 

 years ago, just preceding the assembling of the legislature of 1907. 

 The bill was presented to the proper committees, it was passed through 

 the senate without any opposition and brought to the second reading in 

 the other house. There was supposed to be no opposition to what the 

 fruit growers had prepared when, very suddenly, a telegram came to 

 perhaps the leader on the floor in the assembly to kill this law. I 

 believe it took nine votes to do it, if I remember, the way they had noses 

 counted; at any rate, this single telegram killed the law. as the saying 

 is. as dead as a door nail. The result was that our lower house of the 

 legislature failed to act at all, although the bill had passed the senate, 

 and we supposed it was what the fruit growers wanted and what they 

 were going to get. This left the matter just as it was. By the time 

 another year had rolled around there had been more agitation on this 

 matter, and it resulted in the appointment at Marysville of a committee 

 of five growers. I was authorized, that being the first convention I 

 held, to appoint a committee of five fruit growers and those interested 

 in horticultural matters to formulate a new law. This committee was 

 composed of Mr. Briggs. of the State Board of Trade, of Judge Shields 

 of Sacramento. Mr. Overall of Yisalia. Mr. Mills of Riverside, and 

 Mr. A. G. Kendall of San Bernardino, all men deeply interested. The 

 bill was presented in due form. The committee had two meetings at 

 Sacramento ; I was made an honorary member of the committee, and 

 we discussed all the principal points of the bill, and it was presented 

 at the last legislature. This time the fruit growers had spoken so 

 clearly on this matter and the reformation of the law was so necessary 

 that there seemed to be no opposition to the law anywhere. We got the 

 bill through the senate without any trouble— it was not in the perfect 

 form that we wanted it. but we got it through, and it stuck in the 

 assembly. While it was sticking in the assembly we soon found the 

 reason. Two men came up from Los Angeles and began to count noses. 

 I was one of the first men they visited in Sacramento, and they said 

 they had the Governor with them, the Governor was opposed to the 



