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



by the men who control the policy of the transportation companies that 

 carry that product to market, and I am satisfied that sooner or later 

 you are going to get your rate, not in partnership with the railroad 

 companies at all, but by their fixing a rate that they will be justified to 

 their stockholders in fixing, that will greatly approximate your desires, 

 and when you get that rate don't profane the arrangement that has 

 been reached by so many prayers and tears and sacred and profane 

 methods, as that will have been reached — don't profane it by making 

 it the vehicle of sending to your market inferior product. 



I have long been satisfied that there is in the world a profitable market 

 for every pound and pint of California fruit product, either in its 

 primary or its secondary or its tertiary forms. That market you should 

 reach but you must reach it, as I say. with your product in first-class 

 shape. Why, see how easy it is. Some years ago, when the late J. Ster- 

 ling Morton was Secretary of Agriculture, he visited this coast and we 

 gave him a reception in the State Board of Trade, and he was asked to 

 talk about the marketing of California fresh fruit in London, which had 

 begun not long before, and he stood up and told the story. He said when 

 the sending of California fruit to London began he sent two representa- 

 tives of his department there to study the effect when it landed. He said 

 when the first lot was exposed for sale in London it was found that there 

 was one lot of fruit that was absolutely perfect in quality and in pack- 

 ing, and that sold for the highest price. The next shipment came along, 

 another lot under the same brand, and that was opened and found in 

 exactly the same condition as to quality and pack. When the third 

 shipment came the fruit under that brand sold at the highest price 

 without the package being opened; it had established its reputation. 

 He was asked whose fruit that was and he said Frank Buck, of Vaca- 

 ville. He had by that simple process established his trade-mark in 

 distant London. At the end of the season of 1894 — it had been a hard 

 year for all of us, the year of the railroad strike — I met Flickenger. of 

 San Jose, the canner, and I said. "I suppose you are busted, like every- 

 body else." He said. "No, I sold my pack at as good a price as ever 

 and I could have sold a hundred thousand cases more if I had had the 

 goods under my brand." I said. "How do you do it?" He said. "I 

 have a market in Europe, Asia. Africa, and the United States, and I 

 have taught my market that everything under my brand can be bought 

 without opening a can and the customers will be satisfied." There can 

 be a trade-mark and a brand established for the entire State of Cali- 

 fornia, so that the word "California" upon a package of fruit or a can 

 or a box of dried fruit can be a trade-mark so thoroughly established as 

 a legend representing commercial honor as that every bit of this product 

 going out of California will be taken by the market without examina- 

 tion. When you do that, when you reach that high plane, you have 

 done, in my judgment, the first thing that is necessary for protection. 

 Reach your market in that shape. Let production stand where it is. 

 without further expansion. Wait until that market so reached is absorb- 

 ing all you send to it, and then you can begin to talk about enlarging. 

 Then you can begin to encourage the stranger to plant trees and vines, 

 and not until then. 



So, as I say, the State Board of Trade is showing that we import into 

 California every year five million dollars ' worth of dairy products, and 

 we are saying to the people. "Plant alfalfa and get cows, milk them to 



