PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS , CONVENTION. 79 



these varieties are got from ' £ tippings, ' ' which means putting a shovel- 

 ful of soil on the tip of the new growth in the winter, causing it to take 

 root. By spring they are ready to plant. Thorough preparation of the 

 ground and good care afterwards will give the results obtained in all 

 other fruit planting. 



HARVESTING AND MARKETING. 



The first fruit growers' convention which I had the privilege of 

 attending was in San Francisco seven years ago. In one of the dis- 

 cussions there the Hon. John Markley made this remark, "We have 

 been telling the people in these conventions for the past twenty years 

 how to grow fruit, but from now on we must show them how to har- 

 vest and market it. " 



And these, friends, are the two most important factors in any kind 

 of fruit growing — proper harvesting and then getting the price that 

 will justify the cost and labor of production. 



Fruit raising of all kinds has had its ups and downs here in Cali- 

 fornia, where production has been easy, compared to reaching our dis- 

 tant markets, and our berries have been no exception to the rule. In 

 these years of development, or underproduction, overproduction, over- 

 consumption, and underconsumption, the berry business has had as 

 many stages of prosperity as the much-quoted prune. 



We have heard, in our district over by the coast, a great deal these past 

 few years of raisin growers ' associations, fruit unions, farmers ' unions, 

 fruit exchanges, and so forth. This, together with the canneries con- 

 tinually telling us that we were producing more than they could sell 

 onky at a low price, until we became infected with the microbe, or per- 

 haps "parasite" of cooperation. Or at least a part of us, for I believe 

 there has never been any community yet where the disease has reached, 

 but what a part of the inhabitants were immune from all forms of con- 

 tagion. 



Those of us who took "it" in the worst form talked cooperation in 

 season and out. This finally resulted last February in the formation of 

 the Sebastopol Berry GroAvers, Incorporated, under the laws of the 

 State, with a charter which allows us to do anything we might care 

 to do in the fruit and farm-supply line. This happily took place just 

 in time to prevent half of us having our wives leave us in disgust. I 

 wish to say that it is actually appalling, the amount of time and talk it 

 takes to get this virus to work. 



We incorporated with thirty out of one hundred and tw r enty-five 

 growers, secured a manager in the person of a party who had done con- 

 siderable berry-shipping business, thus securing all the available experi- 

 ence in this line. Our main effort the past season was to get as many of 

 our berries into fresh consumption as possible and thus relieve the 

 canneries. By the time the crop was ready we had increased our mem- 

 bership to eighty. We took up the matter of car-load shipments with 

 Wells-Fargo & Co., who gave us all the assistance in their power, with 

 the result of our sending a representative to the large Rocky Mountain 

 and northern cities, including Odgen, Salt Lake City, Denver, Butte, 

 Montana, Spokane, Seattle, and Portland, and of our dispatching one or 

 more cars to each of these cities. In some of them we did well, and 

 in some we did not, but all the time we were learning, and after the 



