60 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
obligate themselves to practice meth¬ 
ods that will protect us all. Let us 
bind ourselves together in organiza¬ 
tions that will hold, and then we will 
succeed. 
Dr. Inman—I also want to tell you 
that under the California organization 
the man who produces ten boxes and 
the man who produces a hundred 
boxes stand on a parity with the 
largest growers in the association. 
This organization is not incorporated 
for the purpose of making money for 
itself. It never pays dividends. The 
men who operate the California Fruit 
Exchange are salaried men. They are 
employed by the association. I would 
not advise our people to organize an 
association here in Florida except on 
this strictly and purely democratic 
basis. 
As Dr. Richardson has said, we are 
supporting too many men at too great 
an extravagance. 
Mr. Reaves—I just wanted to ask 
Mr. Inman to explain a little further. 
We had experience down at Sarasota 
some years ago. We had an Orange 
Growers’ Union in this state then and 
local unions were organized, one at 
Sarasota and one at Oneco. I was 
president of the one at Sarasota and 
felt so much interest I also attended 
the meetings at Oneco. The union 
saw the necessity of properly distrib¬ 
uting the fruit and for that reason 
they had adopted the fruit exchange 
as a medium through which to ship. 
In order to get the fruit properly dis¬ 
tributed we tried hard to get all the 
growers to ship through the exchange; 
we knew that fruit shipped to com¬ 
mission men was not properly distrib¬ 
uted. One prominent shipper at 
Oneco said that he had a good com¬ 
mission man and he was going to ship 
to him. Another shipper by the name 
of Marshall hesitated, but finally 
joined and shipped through the ex¬ 
change. When the returns came, the 
man who had shipped to his commis¬ 
sion man said, “Well, Marshall, how 
are your returns ? Ha, ha; mine are 
way ahead of yours.” Marshall looked 
at them and said, “Doggone the Fruit 
Exchange, the Orange Growers/ 
Union and the whole business; I am 
going to ship to commission men af¬ 
ter this.” Commission men are sharp 
enough, and if they see that things are 
going against them, they are willing 
to make a little concession. His com¬ 
mission man saw the point and he used 
his opportunity to do us up there. Of 
course, a lot of the men who were ship¬ 
ping through the Exchange could not 
see through the little scheme and said 
to themselves, “Well, if the commis¬ 
sion men give so much better returns, 
we will ship to them after this and let 
the Exchange go.” That one man 
broke up the whole thing; everybody 
went back to patronizing the commis¬ 
sion business. 
The time has been when commis¬ 
sion men were necessary, but I believe 
that time is past. We have rapid com¬ 
munication to all points to which we 
ship, which makes it possible for us 
to sell if the commission business were 
out of the way, and I believe if this 
Horticultural Society would co-op¬ 
erate with the Association in Califor¬ 
nia, we could get a United States law 
against the commission business. As 
it is, hundreds of growers may ship 
to some one point, the market may 
become glutted and prices correspond- 
