FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
81 
gether because they had been turning 
their fruit over to commission men who 
% 
did not give them enough out of it to 
pay for the production of it. After 
they organized, they found they had no 
means of marketing their fruit except 
through the same people from whom 
they had been trying to escape. Then 
they formed a selling organization. 
They would get together and name 
prices, say, for the week following. The 
price named would be known all over 
the State among the growers. As soon 
as the growers who belonged to the or¬ 
ganization knew it, their competitors 
had it. The result was, that whenever 
the organization had sold at a price 
f. o. b., the people who were in compe¬ 
tition, the people controlling their own 
private line cars, would immediately 
put in their own cars, cut the price ioc 
or more, and force the organization to 
come down to their prices. Where the 
organization had no hold in the mar¬ 
kets the price held up, and the next 
season the people in competition would 
go to the growers and say: “It is fool¬ 
ish to keep up your organization. You 
are losing money by it. There is the 
record we made last yeason; your or¬ 
ganization did not get you as much 
money as your competitors were get¬ 
ting. In many instances we handled 
your fruit, anyway, so you had better 
drop this organization foolishness and 
come back to where you belong.” Oh, 
they drank the cup to the bitterest 
dregs before they ever saw daylight. 
They got less money per box for five 
million boxes than they got this year 
for twenty million. It was difficult, in 
many instances, for them to pay their 
packing charges, and in many, many 
instances their groves fell into the 
hands of the men who packed and 
shipped their fruit for them. 
I would say, as I have on many occa¬ 
sions, that although the statement is 
made time and again that the condi¬ 
tions in Florida and in California are 
totally different, while, as a matter of 
fact, the proposition you have to handle 
is the same as they had to handle. You 
are growing oranges and grapefruit— 
for what purpose? Primarily, to sup¬ 
port your families. Isn’t that true? 
There may be a few around this State 
who are growing oranges and grape¬ 
fruit for fun. But the most of you—- 
the great majority of you—are grow¬ 
ing them entirely for your financial 
health. 
After watching the game in Califor¬ 
nia for the past fifteen years, I want to 
tell you that the road you are travel¬ 
ing does not deviate one iota from the 
road they had to travel. But the suc¬ 
cess you have achieved in the last two 
years is more than they achieved in 
ten years. They had to blaze the trail. 
They were lost in the wilderness, not 
knowing how to find their way out into 
the open, and they had to make a path. 
You are traveling the road they blazer!. 
They made it possible for you to begin 
where you did. Their travel is at its 
end. Your travel is beginning. The 
path is there, already well defined, wit 
all unnecessary errors taken out. In¬ 
stead of beginning from the ground up, 
