TWENTY-FOURTH ANNUAL FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 53 



one was the Memphis-Ogden case, in which the court has held that the 

 railroad that takes the fruit and guarantees the rate has a right to 

 choose the agencies by which it will carry it to its destination. The 

 Memphis-Ogden case was this: The shippers asked the privilege of 

 choosing the Pennsylvania & New York and New Haven & Hartford 

 as a route. The fruit was to be shipped over this route to some point 

 in New England. The railroad company took the shipment and 

 shipped it at the rate agreed upon over a different route. The shipper 

 denied the right of the road to change the shipment, and hence the suit. 

 It was exactly in accord with the decision of the United States District 

 Court in a similar case, in which the court held that the carrier 

 guaranteeing a rate to the point of destination had a right to choose 

 the agency to carry it. It seems to me that is good sense and good law. 

 On the other hand, the court has also said in the same connection that 

 the carrier had not the right to choose a more circuitous route, or a 

 longer or more dangerous route, but that they had a right to choose 

 the agency. 



QUESTION. Does the thirty per cent of the growers in your organ- 

 ization raise the prices for the seventy per cent remaining outside of 

 the organization? 



Mr. NAFTZGER. The grower says that if he cannot sell his goods 

 on the spot for as much as the exchange would get for them, he 

 will let the exchange take them. Consequently the speculator has got 

 to buy them at the prices that have been prevailing in the markets, and 

 he is not going to play ball with them. 



QUESTION. Would you suggest that all the products of the State 

 of California be centered under one general head? Do you intend us to 

 join you in this undertaking you have so far progressed in? 



Mr. NAFTZGER. I did not mean an organization in California 

 under one general head for the transaction of the business of these 

 various interests. I said the prune-growers would have their own 

 independent organization at this end of the line, the dried-fruit men 

 theirs, and the raisin men theirs, but that we should have some relation 

 existing here among us — whatever might be necessary — and that we use 

 the same Eastern agencies in the markets; that is, we appoint our 

 agencies in the markets. Take Chicago, for instance, we have three or 

 four men in Chicago most of the time. It would not require another 

 office, another telephone, another lot of stenographers, and all that 

 sort of thing if we joined our interests in Chicago. We could have 

 prune men, raisin men, dried-fruit men, all together in one office. I 

 stated it was with a view to a combination at the other end of the line, 

 making them great places for the distribution of California products. 

 So far as the Southern California Fruit Exchange is concerned, we 

 are now busy practically all the year either with oranges or lemons, 



