PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 101 



tion that it was on these two varieties that no money was made by the 

 growers. We fully believe, however, that could all of this business have 

 passed through one channel, results would have been far better. Com- 

 petitive shipping from California is the Eastern dealer's opportunity, 

 we can not blame him for buying at as low a price as possible, but 

 as our bread and butter depend upon securing a reasonable price for 

 our products, we certainly are very shortsighted if we do not make 

 every effort to protect our interests. It is quite customary for dealers 

 to wire us that so-and-so is quoting fruit for a less price than we 

 are asking, and we have do doubt that he is saying the same thing 

 about us to our competitors, and we are told that it often happens 

 that he makes his bluff work, and succeeds in buying at a lower price 

 than was established, when in all probability the original price was 

 fixed as low as it could be and show a living profit to the owner. If 

 all fruit was sold through one channel such things as this could not 

 be done, and the further we get away from this idea, the nearer we 

 get to calamity. With the limited output of the past this danger was 

 not threatening, but with the wonderful increase of the past few years 

 every thinking and conservative grower must recognize the fact that 

 we are drifting towards the rocks, from which nothing can save us 

 except united and harmonious effort. 



Much misconception of the object and aims of the California Fruit 

 Distributors exists in the public mind, and there are some growers 

 who have been taught to believe that the organization is a trust, formed 

 for illegal and ulterior purposes, but the truth of the matter is that 

 no enterprise ever undertaken in the fruit business has done so much 

 to advance the interests of the whole industry as this. We have long 

 since passed that stage of our business when our fruit could be sold to 

 good advantage anywhere — now we must give the most careful con- 

 sideration to each market, study its peculiarities and requirements, and 

 then give to it only so much, and of such kinds as it can handle at 

 paying prices. This is what the California Fruit Distributors are try- 

 ing to do ; what they are doing, so far as it can be done by any 

 organization which does not handle the entire output. With a con- 

 siderable volume of business passing through other channels, the desti- 

 nation of which is unknown to us, we are necessarily handicapped in 

 our efforts for perfect distribution and maintaining of prices, unavoid- 

 ably resulting in an occasional glut of auction markets and a lower 

 range of f. o. b. values, all of which is productive of loss. It is not 

 necessary to ask upon whose shoulders must fall, not only the direct 

 loss so occasioned, but. worse still, the depreciation of land values, 

 which always is sure to follow when our business is no longer profitable. 

 "United we stand, and divided we fall," is just as true of the fruit 

 business as of our national government, and is a lesson that fruit 

 growers must learn before our industry can be placed upon the high 

 plane of commercial success. (Applause.) 



PRESIDENT JEFFREY. The next address will be, "A Grower's 

 Marketing Agency," by W. C. Walker, manager of the California Fruit 

 Exchange, Sacramento. (Applause.) 



