FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
25 
almost seclusive isolation, shutting out 
our neighbors and fellow workers. While 
we have been doing this all those others 
with whom we are compelled to deal, 
Aave combined among themselves and 
with each other for aggressive mutual 
benefit. The fertilizer industries, the 
transportation lines, the commission con¬ 
cerns and the buyers; all and each have 
their well organized systems of doing 
business without encountering ruinous 
competition, and are reaping golden har¬ 
vests of profit. With us lack of any and 
all organized methods of mutual co-oper¬ 
ation in making our requisite purchases 
of materials and commodities necessary 
to our operations, and in the ruinous, fool¬ 
ish competitive manner of marketing our 
crops, have led to a point where our la¬ 
bors are not only unremunerative but de¬ 
structive of all gains. We have met and 
vanquished the evil influences of earth 
and air and it now behooves us to buckle 
on our armor and meet these last foes. 
The result can not be uncertain, our 
forces are now gathering and when we 
make a united and concerted effort, wc 
must and shall come out victorious. 
u Let us then be up and doing with a 
heart for any fate.” 
We are altogether to blame ourselves 
for the deplorable conditions now existent 
which bear down on us with such oppres¬ 
sive weight. If we would only give a 
little part of the time to the cultivation 
of mutual interests that we do to the 
cultivation of the soil we would soon get 
such results that our gains might be com¬ 
mensurate with our desires. 
Man is a gregarious creature and when¬ 
ever he attempts to flock by himself, he 
invariably makes a dismal failure. What 
we need and must have is mutual com¬ 
binations of our entire producing inter¬ 
ests, so that we can go unitedly into the 
markets and demand fair prices for pro¬ 
ducts and transportation. Our neighbors 
in California have in a most signal way 
succeeded in combining their mutual in¬ 
terests so that they are realizing splen¬ 
did returns for their products, and this 
too, without curtailing or interfering with 
individual rights. What they have done, 
we can do with such modifications of 
their system as may be requisite to our 
situation. 
Co-operative efforts have frequently 
failed, but usually this has come about 
through a too strong communistic ten¬ 
dency in the details. Co-operative move¬ 
ments and organizations where individual 
rights have been fundamental and re¬ 
spected have nearly always succeeded. 
Let us at once combine together in a 
final herculean effort to get redress and 
justice. If we do this intelligently we 
can not fail. 
Upon occasions like the present, active, 
conscientious thinkers and workers nat¬ 
urally fall into a line of thought and med¬ 
itation, having reference to the flight of 
time and opportunity; the dead past, the 
living present, the unborn future. The 
dead past with all its memories, whether 
prosperous or adverse, can give us only 
the unalterable lessons of example and 
experience; the living present we seize 
with avidity, in an eager strife to make 
it as a past an improvement upon that 
which may have preceded it; the unborn 
future we ardently hope may prove a vast 
improvement upon both the present and 
the past. It is probably a wise provision 
