34 



OFFICIAL REPORT OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



through which the Exchange, Campbell, West Side, and East Side 

 organizations have since that time made their sales. The spirit of 

 distrust, which is the farmer's devil, cast its malign influence over the 

 other organizations, and also over the individual fruit-growers throughout 

 the valley, and the agency failed to accomplish its full measure of 

 success. 



These associations, though not realizing the hopes of their founders, 

 have been of great value to all the fruit-growers in this valley. Many, 

 through selfish motives, have kept out of these associations, and thus 

 have injured themselves as well as those who paid for cooperative work. 

 The associations will market this year about one fifth of the cured 

 prunes produced in this county. It would seem from this statement 

 that four fifths of the prune-growers in Santa Clara County are still 

 enjoying all the profits and the pleasures that pertain to single 

 blessedness. 



We are also confronted with the condition of over-production, or, 

 perhaps, better stated as under-consumption. Last year the people of 

 the United States consumed about 75,000,000 pounds of cured prunes, 

 and we shipped to foreign countries about 10,000,000 pounds. Under 

 favorable circumstances Santa Clara County will produce about 

 100,000,000 pounds of cured prunes next year, and the rest of the 

 Pacific Coast about the same amount. Evidently we must induce the 

 people of the United States to eat more prunes, and we must also 

 expand the foreign market for the same, or we must lessen the produc- 

 tion of this fruit. What shall we do to be saved from bankruptcy? 



As it seems to be impossible to induce more than one seventh of the 

 prune-growers in this county to sell through the Dried Fruit Agency, 

 and as it is necessary to form a combination of at least seventy-five 

 per cent of the prune-growers on this Coast, in order to fix a minimum 

 price and to regulate the distribution of cured prunes, an attempt is 

 now being made to form a combination of fruit-growers upon a broader 

 basis than that of any existing fruit organization. This combination 

 will be known as the Pacific Coast Fruit Association, and it proposes 

 to grade, pack, inspect, and market all the cured prunes, and possibly 

 all the cured peaches and apricots produced on this Coast. This asso- 

 ciation is modeled upon the plan of the Raisin-Growers' Association, 

 and the contract which the prune-growers must sign is, in the main, 

 a copy of the raisin-growers' contract. This document has been pre- 

 pared by legal experts, who have tried to draught a contract that would 

 be acceptable to all parties and legally invulnerable. The following is 

 a short analysis of its principal clauses: 



1. The grower, in consideration of certain promises made by the asso- 

 ciation, agrees to transfer to the association an undivided one twentieth 

 interest in the prune crop grown on his land A. D. 1900. 



