128 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
three years of its existence, for all its 
citrus fruits, f. o. b. cars packing houses, 
Florida, amounts to one dollar and sixty- 
three cents per box, this covering total 
shipments of more than three million 
boxes of citrus fruits for those three 
years, to which add the sixty-five cents 
average transportation charge, which 
will show a total amount received for 
the sales of the Florida Citrus Exchange 
of two dollars and twenty-eight cents per 
box f. o. b. destination for the three 
years. As the foreign goods can be 
brought in, as shown, at a cost of 
one dollar and sixty-three cents per box, 
including duty, this shows that the Flor¬ 
ida Citrus Exchange has averaged for its 
citrus fruits, delivered, sixty-five cents 
per box more than the cost to import 
foreign oranges, even including the duty 
of seventy-two cents a box. 
As the figures previously given show 
that it costs the Florida grower one dol¬ 
lar and seventy-five cents to deliver his 
fruit, and that he has sold it for the 
three years at an average of two dollars 
and twenty-eight cents per box, delivered, 
there remains an average profit of fifty- 
three cents a box to the grower for his 
fruit, from which must be deducted the 
selling cost of approximately fifteen 
cents per box, leaving a net profit to the 
Florida grower on the trees of thirty- 
eight cents a box average for the entire 
three years’ life of the Florida Citrus Ex¬ 
change. 
This amount of profit is too small, and 
should be fifty cents a box, net profit to 
the grower, which amount of fifty cents 
a box net profit to the grower the Flor¬ 
ida Citrus Exchange hopes to receive 
for its growers as an average on this 
year’s crop. In order to do so, however, 
it will have to increase its average selling 
price for this year twelve cents a box 
above that of the average of the preced¬ 
ing three years, which would make the 
average delivered price of Florida citrus 
fruits two dollars and forty cents a box, 
in order to produce for the Florida grow¬ 
er the fifty cents a box net profit on the 
tree that he should have to make a fair 
return on his investment. As it only 
costs the foreign grower one dollar and 
sixty-six cents a box, including duty, 
to lay his fruit down at Atlantic seaboard 
points, 'the Florida citrus grower will 
have to receive seventy-four cents a box 
more for his fruit in open competition 
with the foreign fruit at Atlantic sea¬ 
board points than the cost of the foreign 
fruit to import, including duty. 
WHERE THE DIFFERENCE COMES IN IN 
COSTS. 
First: Labor — 
As shown^ of the one dollar and ten 
cents that it costs the Florida citrus 
grower to put his fruit on board cars 
Florida packing houses, from sixty to 
seventy cents a box of this is for labor. 
The daily consular report already re*- 
ferred to gives in the Valencia district 
in Spain, average day’s wage for women, 
twenty to thirty cents; for men, forty to 
fifty cents. In Florida, women are only 
employed in the packing houses, and the 
wages paid them are as high as those 
paid the men for similar work. How far 
the women are employed in the groves 
in Valencia I do not know, but I do 
