FLORIDA >STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
S3 
what their position is and what they 
should do. 
As a matter of fact, the sales man¬ 
ager of the Florida Citrus Exchange, 
the California Fruit Exchange, or any 
other organization that works on the 
same principle, ought not to be called 
on to advise any sub-Exchange as to 
anything about his own fruit. It is his 
business to know, and if he does not 
know, he is not doing what he is paid 
to do. My business is to keep tab on 
the markets on the other end of the 
line; keep tab on my salesmen; to have 
them advise me through telegraph. 
The conditions change every day. I 
have to keep in touch with it every 
day—every hour of the day. I must 
read every telegram hot off the wire 
and form my conclusion and convey 
that intelligence to the sub-Exchange 
manager in the country. The next 
morning he gets it out of the bulletins. 
If it is his car about which a salesman 
is wiring, and wants instructions, he 
ought to have sense and experience 
enough to say right off the reel what 
he wants done with that car, and he 
will never succeed until he does have 
sense enough. We forecast the mar¬ 
ket. We have been very much in the 
position of the weather man. He fore¬ 
casts the weather as he sees it just at 
that time; so do we. However, we can 
tell more what the average grower of 
Florida is going to do than the weather 
man can tell what the wind is going 
to do. 
Last fall we started out with the 
proposition that the green fruit be held 
in Florida. Now, have you ever heard 
anything like this: “Yes, sir; it ought 
to be stopped. They ought to pass a 
law up there in Tallahassee to stop it. 
It certainly hurts the sale of our fruit 
more than anything else. It certainly 
ought to be made a penitentiary of¬ 
fense; but, as long as the other fel¬ 
low wants my fruit green, and will pay 
for it, I am going to let him have it.’' 
Ever heard that? We have. How long 
is the “other fellow” going to want it? 
He gets one car; then he never wants 
another. I wish every orange grower 
could read the telegrams coming into 
my office during September, October, 
November and December. They all 
told the same story: “It is no use to 
put your oranges here. Nobody wants 
them. They are green, sour, unpala¬ 
table. The buyers are taking Califor- 
nias and not going back to Floridas”— 
and they never did. Who is responsi¬ 
ble? We told you exactly what would 
happen. We proclaimed it all over this, 
country. ? 
The general manager of the Florida 
Citrus Exchange engaged in a cam¬ 
paign which made many of the grow¬ 
ers smart. But for this publicity cam¬ 
paign, we never would have raised the 
price from $1.50 f. o. b. to $1.70 f. o. b. 
—which we did in November and De¬ 
cember. 
This green orange proposition is a 
more serious proposition than the av¬ 
erage man thinks it is. An event that 
occurred this week gave me much sat¬ 
isfaction. One of my neighbors was 
requested to sign a petition to his legis- 
