1913. 
A FRUIT DISTRIBUTING SYSTEM. 
Paut II. 
Beginning.—W e started out on the 
fourth year with less than 20 per cent of 
the crop in the State. Wo began by 
selecting a few good men and hiring them 
on a salary and placing them in cities 
where we could get some good business 
and good results. The fifth year we 
gained a little, the sixth year we com¬ 
menced to got stronger, got better prices, 
and our growers commenced to got more 
money, more money than the outside 
growers as a rule. We ran along seven 
or eight years more, and then our friends 
came to us again and asked us to unite 
with them and form a selling agency and 
take them in with us. They were willing 
to concede that our method was the cor¬ 
rect method of doing business, but they 
asked to be taken in on the understand¬ 
ing that they themselves would be allowed 
to continue operating on a f. o. b. basis. 
We took them in. Some of our best men 
said, truly, “Gentlemen, you cannot mix 
oil and water, and you cannot mix two 
different ways o^ doing business; one is 
a speculative business concern, the other 
is a purely co-operative growers’ organ¬ 
ization, and you can’t mix these two 
things together.” We had a fairly in¬ 
telligent lot of growers, but there were 
enough with influence to bring us to the 
point of combining with what was known 
as the California Fruit Agency. Many 
thought that working together with those 
people for the benefit of the growers we 
would be in a better position. The ma¬ 
jority of the growers thought it was the 
right thing to do. Ilut we soon learned 
that there was only one way for us to 
succeed, and that was for us to sell our 
own goods, and make our own market, 
and stand by the grower who stood by us. 
And from that day forward to the pres¬ 
ent time the co-operative organization has 
strongly, steadily, year after year, in¬ 
creased. 
Marketing for Two Per Cent. —In 
the early days when we first went into 
the proposition it was a well-known fact 
that the commission man, the man that 
sold the goods for us, sold through a 
broker or any other way whereby he 
could get on an average of from eight to 
10 per cent for selling the goods. Dur¬ 
ing the last seven years tin' California 
Fruit Growers’ Exchange has handled 
something like 200,000 cars of fruit, and 
the cost to the producer has been about 
two per cent. There is no other business 
on earth done as carefully and as eco¬ 
nomically. We pack the goods and send 
them to market, and we get the market 
value for the goods. We have a man sell¬ 
ing the goods for us, and when they are 
sold he gets the cash in three days and 
deposits it in the bank and the money is 
sent to us. The old charge for picking, 
packing and loading a box of oranges on 
a car was 50 cents a box, after the fruit 
was delivered at the packing house. Our 
present average for putting a box of 
oranges on the cars is from 32 to 33 cents 
a box. 
A Supply Company. —We have what 
is known as a supply company. That 
supply company buys the material that 
the packing houses use, and buys the ma¬ 
terial that the growers use. On one 
item alone; two years ago we sold vetch 
seed to our growers for $3.10. The regu¬ 
lar retail price was $4.25 to $4.50. Last 
year we sold our growers all the cyanide 
and acid that they used for fumigation. 
Our growers had been in the habit of 
getting that material from one man, who 
imported it from Germany. We have 
saved our growers $200,000 alone on 
cyanide and acid. Shortly after we or¬ 
ganized there was a combine on the Pa¬ 
cific Coast known as the Pacific Box 
Combine. After they had bought all the 
box lumber in sight and told each box 
mill how many boxes they could manu¬ 
facture, they raised the price in a few 
weeks from 12% cents a box to 21 cents. 
One of our good friends was in the East, 
and he happened to meet a friend of his 
who had just invested very heavily in 
the lumber business. The company had 
just organized and was known as the 
American Lumber Company. This com¬ 
pany was anxious to get the contract. 
We made a contract with them at 12 
cents. They were willing to sell boxes 
:, t 12 cents, but as soon as the Pacific 
I’ox Combine found out \v«* naiT tins con¬ 
tract they went to the American Lumber 
Company and bought tin* contract on all 
the box lumber they had. When we 
realized the true situation, we said, “It 
is about time we consulted the growers.” 
We asked them if they would be willing 
to contribute a small amount of money 
and establish themselves in tin 1 box busi¬ 
ness and own their own mill if neces¬ 
sary. We asked our associations to sign 
a contract whereby they would agree to 
contribute three cents a box for five years 
to enable us to get a fund to go into 
the box business ourselves. On the 
strength of that we had a nucleus. By 
the end of tli.' first year we had $150,000. 
1 hat year we went to a large lumber con¬ 
cern which had encountered financial 
trouble, and advanced the money to tide 
over their difficulty, and made a contract 
tor several years. A little later they 
needed more money. We didn’t have 
much money to loan them, but we saw 
jhat we were investing in the best timber 
land on the Pacific Coast, so we borrowed 
the money and made them another ad¬ 
vance. To-day the California Fruit 
'.rowers’ Exchange, through the supply 
company, owns, through the failure of 
'his lumber company and transfer of its 
property to us, nearly 2C.000 acres of the 
hnost timber lands on the Pacific Coast, 
THli RURAI> NEW-YORKER 
1041 
wirn one or the finest box mills in the 
world. 
Ir Pays to Advertise.—W e had 
growers in California who didn’t want 
to contribute a dollar to advertise oranges 
and lemons. One grower said, “The idea 
of spending any money to advertise 
oranges; why it’s robbery. I won’t stand 
for it, no sir. You can’t have any of my 
money, because I don’t believe oranges 
need to be advertised.” We labored pa¬ 
tiently for two long years with the grow¬ 
ers, to get them to consent to allow us 
to use some of their money for advertis- 
J/lo finally agreed to let us use 
$10,000 as an experiment. We figured 
that $10,000 wouldn’t go very far. In 
the State of Iowa we had had very little 
trade. Proportionately speaking, we sold 
less goods in Iowa than in any other 
State in the Union. Why? There was 
a man in Des Moines who practically 
controlled the wholesale jobbers of that 
State, and he maintained that a legiti¬ 
mate profit on fruit was a dollar a box. 
He did not buy his fruit from the Ex¬ 
change, but from a broker. We found 
that the same condition had existed for 
three or four years in the State of Iowa. 
iV e were very anxious to get into the 
State of Iowa to bring about a different 
state of conditions. We found it was a rule 
among all dealers there to get 75 cents or 
«i dollar profit on every box. J3ofore we 
began our campaign, which is some six 
or seven years ago, the average price 
WaS on fr ? m to 75 cents, and as high 
as SO to 90 cents a dozen for oranges. 
Ihe same quality fruit was selling just 
over the State line for from 40 to 50 
cents. 
IIow to Advertise.—W e went into 
Iowa and began to advertise. We didn’t 
pretend to be advertisers. We didn’t 
know anything about advertising, and 
when we found that we had $10,000 to 
put into the business we selected what 
we believed to be the best advertising 
firm in the United States. They went 
jVCC ^ 10 . ^tate of Iowa and advertised 
California oranges. There was a big de- 
paitment store man in Des Moines who 
commenced to have people come to him 
for oranges. They had seen California 
oranges advertised. This man called up 
our agent and bought a car of oranges. 
In less than two weeks that store had 
sold seven carloads of oranges at 40 cents 
a dozen at a good profit, and had brought 
considerable additional trade to the store. 
Ihe other merchants awakened to the 
situation. They first went to our man 
and attempted to dissuade him from 
selling fruit to the department store, lie 
answered that he was not in the retail 
trade, and that when any man came to 
inm for a carload of fruit, he was obliged 
to sell. Ihe next year a number of those 
same people said to our man, “If your 
people are going to advertise we will take 
a half page ad with you, and if yon will 
just insert that they can buy vour 
oranges from us we will pay for the ad¬ 
vertising.” YV hat has been the result? 
Any man who has lived in Iowa knows 
that m two years we reduced the con¬ 
suming price of oranges half, and sold 40 
per cent more fruit. 
More Advertising— The first year we 
advertised California oranges because we 
duln t know any other way of doing 
business. The second year our adver¬ 
tising firm said to us, “You are adver¬ 
tising California oranges; you are giv¬ 
ing the other man who ships California 
oranges the advantage of your advertis- 
hey advised us to advertise a spe¬ 
cial brand, to get a copyrighted name to 
P*}* °, n - * n,it - We ndopted the name 
is link ust. Unit name is copyrighted ; 
it is the property of the California Fruit 
Growers Exchange. I have in my ex- 
change 1.) or 1(5 different packing houses 
and organizations. They cannot use that 
name unless they comply with the rules 
that the California Fruit Growers’ ex¬ 
change has laid down. That means that 
people all over the country the last year 
have been calling for "Sunkist” fruit, 
because they know that the word stands 
for something. 
that were in full 
revealed neither 
growth of any 
Trouble With Cherries. 
I purchased 50 Montmorency cherry 
trees. We set them out and they grew 
and did well up to July 1 when some of 
them began to show blight. The leaves 
seem to dry up and fall off as they do 
in the Fall. \Ve have examined them 
for insects, but have found none. Is 
there any formula of spray that I can 
use to overcome this? ' w. r. n 
Erie, l’a. 
We have observed a yellowing 
and subsequent falling of the leaves 
on Montmorency trees for several years 
bearing. Examination 
insect nor fungus 
kind. However, the 
trouble occurred the worst during periods 
of drought and it also was somewhat 
proportional to the type of soil. On the 
more open porous soils the trees were the 
more allected. One orchard in particu¬ 
lar had been liberally supplied with coal 
ashes to the extent that the surface soil 
was very open and here this trouble 
was very marked. On the other hand, 
tin* cherry leal spot will in sonic years 
cause considerable defoliation. This can 
be controlled by spraying early in the 
season. ___ v . E . G . 
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