PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 95 



at less cost with better distribution and with fewer rejections. At 

 less cost, I said. Our freight and refrigeration charges to some points 

 are exorbitant. The railroad tells us that one reason we have to pay 

 so much freight is because they have to bring the cars back empty. 

 Now, if this is a fact, why did our association have to refuse to load 

 cars that were so strong with carbolic acid, salt fish and smoked meat 

 we were afraid to put grapes in them? Why did we load numerous 

 cars that had been previously loaded with cement, merchandise, and 

 provisions ? At less cost, I said ! Why should we pay the same freight 

 charges to Salt Lake and Denver as to Chicago? It is less than half- 

 way. Why the same freight charge to Salt Lake and Denver as the 

 orange grower pays to New York City ? Why the same refrigeration 

 charge to Salt Lake as to Denver. 



Now, consider distribution from two sides, one of getting of the fruit 

 into more cities, the other the act of not getting too many cars into 

 the same city. Without better organization this can only be remedied 

 to a small extent by the exchange of billings and divisions. The rejec- 

 tion of cars by buyers because the market has gone against them should 

 be reached in some manner, and can only be reached by organization 

 of some form. For if one firm has a car sold at 65 cents per crate and 

 about the time it arrives another firm comes along and offers one for 

 45 cents, the commission firm that bought at 65 cents is very apt to 

 ask for a reduction on account of some fly speck he has found. 



With these 10.000 cars of grapes to market our association realizes 

 that we have got to give up the idea of fancy prices, especially from 

 young vines and from some localities, and be willing to put our grapes 

 out in the West and Mississippi River country at a price based on a 

 reasonable rate of interest, on a reasonable investment with a reason- 

 able freight rate. Under those conditions we would open up new mar- 

 kets, send the Eastern grapes back where they belong, and by only 

 putting our choicest grapes in the far East we would make some money 

 for all. But we can not pay $346.50 freight and refrigeration for a 

 1,000-mile haul and do it. 



One thing our association learned is that in many of the auction 

 markets the receivers, when the markets are bad, bid in the grapes for 

 the companies they are acting for. There is no question but what this 

 has a tendency to steady the market. But this same receiver by taking 

 the chance will in nine times out of ten make five times as much as 

 the grower does who has spent a year raising it. If a large organiza- 

 tion had its own agents to cut up these cars it would add quite a sum 

 to the growers' profit. The danger now of putting car loads into small 

 cities is that half a dozen others may do the same thing and the market 

 get demoralized, the fruit old, and everybody disgusted. The dis- 

 tributors' organization of Sacramento has done much towards dis- 

 tributing the fruit properly, but it does not go far enough. It should 

 control the f. o. b. price of its different companies in all the districts 

 it buys in and it should have some form of inspecting, and stand only 

 for good goods. As long as the • distributors do or do not do these 

 things, and as long as the majority of the independent companies are 

 price cutters, it looks as though the growers themselves, through a 

 state organization, would have to take these various matters up. The 

 orange growers of the south had to do it ; the Georgia peach growers 



