8 BULLETIN 1237, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
active, competition among the buyers was keen, and it seems impos- 
sible that any agreement to divide the territory could have been 
maintained. Probably the fairest statement is that the buyers were 
as helpless as the growers in the face of market conditions which 
they could not control. 
FAILURE OF THE MARKETING SYSTEM. 
There were two important weaknesses in the marketing system: 
First, the marketing of the crop was in the hands of a number of 
shippers. No single buyer or shipper could maintain efficient mar- 
ket connections, nor have any means of knowing how many cars were 
being shipped by other shippers to a particular market. As a result . 
glutted markets were very common. The buyers and shippers also 
seem to have adopted the short-sighted policy of engaging in price- 
cutting wars for the purpose of driving their competitors out of 
certain markets. (1) The fruit was distributed in a haphazard 
way and little attempt was made to regulate shipments with relation 
to demand. 
In the second place, no systematic attempt was made to develop 
a market for citrus fruit in the smaller cities and towns. These mar- 
kets, in so far as they received supplies at all, received them irregu- 
larly and after they had passed through the hands of one or more 
wholesalers in the terminal markets. Consequently, local freight 
and added handling charges made prices to consumers unduly high 
in the small markets. In addition, the uncertainty of the supply 
offered no inducement to retailers to push the sale of citrus fruits 
and in effect placed oranges in the class of an occasional luxury. 
Furthermore, although there were many markets in the United 
States that could consume 1 carload of oranges a week, these mar- 
kets would become overstocked if 2 cars arrived the same week. 
There was, therefore, an immense undeveloped market for citrus 
fruit 4 awaiting only intelligent and controlled distribution to make 
it available to the growers. Although this market might have been 
developed in time by the dealers, the chances are that it would have 
been done much more slowly and imperfectly. A middleman works 
through established trade channels. It is not to his interest to insti- 
tute experiments or innovations, because he has everything to lose 
from the failure of an experiment in distribution and little to gain 
from its success. So long as he receives the daily or weekly supplies 
which he can distribute at a reasonable profit, it makes little differ- 
ence to him whether the product is marketed at prices satisfactory 
to the grower or whether the channels through which it reaches 
the consumer are the most direct and economical. In other words. 
his attention is naturally focused on a single link in the marketing 
chain, and it is only when curtailment of bis supplies becomes a real- 
ity that he may be expected to devote any attention to the grower's 
problems. 
It required, in this case, the organized efforts of the growers — the 
men who must market, not a relatively small portion, but the entire 
cro]), at a profit, and who pay the cost of faulty distribution — to effect 
the necessary improvements. 
i Affording to the eleventh (1890) crnsus of thr United SI ates, cities and towns with n pomiUtion of 
from 1,000 to 100,000 had a total population of 16,410,483 in L890, while cities with a population of over 
i totaled 9, 607 ,960 inhabitants. 
