PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS* CONVENTION. 137 



labor unions and use your organization to compel every part if it to 

 observe the principles of commercial honor when you take your product 

 to the man who is to be the factor and send it to the distant market. 

 [Applause.] We often hear — and I have had some of the same experi- 

 ences — about the sins of the commission man — and his sins are as 

 si-arlet. there is no concealing it [laughter], but the commission man is 

 a psychologist ; he has had experiences with many and many a rural 

 producer and he knows that that rural producer, if he can do it. will 

 send him a Christmas turkey with a stone hidden in its insides or he 

 will send him inferior fruit ; and so when the man from the country gets 

 back no profits for his shipment, but a bill for his freight and goes down 

 to jaw it out with the commission man, the still small voice of his own 

 conscience tells him that he didn 't do square with the commission man 

 in the first place. Be square with yourselves, absolutely, and you will 

 be astonished to find out how soon you can make every other man be 

 square with you. Be square with the consumer, with your commission 

 man, and when you make your organization make it ironclad, and 

 demand that it shall compel every member of it to be square [applause] , 

 and when you do that you have taken the first great step that will lead 

 to your prosperity and your finding of a market. In the first place, 

 then, the standardizing of your pack, to get to the consumer in the very 

 best condition, the very best quality that can be produced. Then attend 

 to your transportation matter. I don 't think you can ever get the rail- 

 road companies to go into partnership with the fruit producers in 

 California. I have this criticism to make of what Mr. Stephens' com- 

 mittee has done, that it is continually saying to the transportation 

 companies. ' k We want you to give us a rate that will protect us from 

 loss." Suppose the railroad company says. "All right, gentlemen, we 

 will do that, and then when we protect you from loss we want you to 

 divide the profit with us; we are in partnership." That won't do. I 

 don 't think that transportation anywhere in the world is d,one upon that 

 system or that principle. I sympathize greatly with your effort to get 

 the lowest transportation rate possible to reach your distant market. 

 When the interstate commerce bill was under discussion I was editing 

 a newspaper in San Francisco, and when it was under discussion before 

 congress to fix a uniform rate per ton per mile all over the country, I 

 saw at once that that spelled ruin for the California producer, that 

 there should be a differential permitted upon a long haul, and that a 

 long haul should be made by a railroad upon a less rate per ton per mile 

 than a short haul. And so I went to Washington and I dealt with Mr. 

 Reagan, of Texas, and other gentlemen, and perhaps had a small part 

 in procuring a differential, a less rate per ton per mile upon a long 

 haul. Now, what did I find out? Here were the fruit growers of 

 Georgia, the orange men of Florida, the apple growers of Nebraska and 

 Iowa, fighting like soldiers against that differential clause. Why? 

 Look at it as it is to-day. You will find those men, when a train of Cali- 

 fornia fruit goes by. frothing at the mouth because, after all, it is going 

 to the market at a less rate per ton per mile for the long haul. They 

 have the short haul and you have the long haul. There are so many 

 intricacies in the fixing of the freight rates that I think we would all 

 be fit for the insane asylum if we should try to straighten it out; but 

 certainly, the voice of a great industry that supplies so much profitable 

 tonnage to the railroads that reach this coast must be heard in reason 



