Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1885-08-29

ifornia interests.
SCHEME PROPOSED.
Hence, ! maintain that every middle
man, wholesaler and retailer, should be
done away with By a corporation composed
wholly Of fruit-rIisers, that the corporation
should contract with the railroads for a
train day, and should buy where it could
buy best, enough fruit to fill the specified
numberof cars, and should own or control,
by liked scale of prices posted over each
stand, a sufficient number of retail stands
in Eastern cities TO dispose of all the fruit
sent forward.
The shareholder and producer would
then get his profit over the present rates in
two ways-tirst and mainly by the higher
price his product would command at home
by the market being relieved OF so large
quantity daily exported and secondly, by
whatever profit was made on mis- share in
the corporation acting as shipper, iobber
and retailer In theory, of course, every
producer should have such share in the
company as his production bears to the
grand total crop, but practically those with
few or no shares would be benefited by the
general relief to the market.
1t viii not escape your memory ct this
point that many times the railroad man
ayers have thrown out the hint that any
combination able to guarantee a regular
number of cars per day would be able to
command special and much lower freight
rates than the present from the associated
railroad companies interested.
IS IT PRACTICABLE?
You, gentlemen, used to dealing only
with few acres of land and few men
and often, too, with but few or no dollars
may deem this an impractical scheme, and
every man now making living in hand
ling your production will re-echo the cry
and hinder, as far as possible, any leader
among you from coming forward to organ
ize such company. But is it any wise so
impractical as once would have seemed the
Western Union Telegraph Company, with
its finger at nearly every village and rail-
road station from the Aslantic to the Pa
citic, from Mexico to the most northern
wllds Of Canada? Is il anything so difficult
10 organize, as for John d. Rockefeller to
become master of the price of petroleum in
every hamlet of the civilized world :?
Would your own railroad and bonanza
kings say that it was impractical if they
owned your farms and could not get pay
for picking the fruit, TO say nothing of in
terest and living expenses while it was
growing?
Everyone interested in shipping, can
ming, drying or wine-making viii of course
oppose. They want fruit cheap.
THE PRESENT CONDITION
OF your business is perhaps best stated in
the words of one of the local authorities
well known to you all 1.-THE low price of
fruit this year means bankruptcy to many
and If no better next year, it will kill the
business"
If not so bad as that, no one doubts that
by foreclosures hundreds of families will
be choked out of their property, and the
hopes which have sustained them through
years of privation, and perhaps through
long journeys hither, unless some means
are adopted soon to put the wholesale prices
OF such leading fruits as peaches, pears,
plums, apricots, cherries and grapes above
one cent pound at San Francisco, by the
single box or basket, after picking, packing
and freighting for maybe 100 or 200 miles
Such company would naturally, as Incl
dental to the business, eventually operate
canning and drying establishments, and
thus again help to raise prices on the gen
eral market here, and by maintaining uni
form grades on large output would do
much to raise the general estimation of this
class of products, as smaller establishments
not III the fruit-growers' interest will never
do
SHOULD BE DONE BY GROWERS THEM
SELVES.
The capital which I am now offered by
one man for half interest in another en-
terprise $3.50, 000) would make a very re-
spectacle start in this line, but my theory
is that only fruit-growers should be inter
ested in this company. The ordinary cap
italist insists on having the greatest pos
sible profit on the least risk, and would
displace at once any manager or selling
agent who, ON his capital, undertook to put
Eastern prices down as low as possible for
the benefit of producers, but to the disad-
vantage Of the capital invested.
Those of your number who advocate
" cooperation" are right III their theory
that help cannot be from outside But with
the independent habits of thought and
action in America cooperative associations
cannot in practice be bound together suf-
tciently strong. 1t takes one-man power
to execute, backed by the direction of few
and the dollars of the many to deal in
this country with a problem of any such
magnitude as the one now before us.
The only safe allies can see for you to
have IN this matter-excepting the Eastern
consumers, who cannot be interested-are
those very railroad people who some have
been abusing as your worst enemies, but
VINO naturally are your best friends, if
honorably treated. You must sell all you
can raise, and they must carry East all you
can sell, and your interests are mutual in
opening Eastern markets and
MAINTAINING PRICES Low ENOUGH
To sell all that you can produce, and that
they can carry. Their interest exceeds
yours only in desiring such profits to YOU
that every available acre in the State
should ere long be producing fruit for the
Eastern markets, so that they might run
many trains o day, instead Of paltry five
cars @ day on passenger trains.
/ regret that have not your personal &C
quaintance to encourage an attempt at once
to organize q company among a few of
your most public-spirited members which
should offer 1 600 Of its shares at 500 each
to 1000 fruit-groWers land to them only, at
tirst), and when taken they should proceed
TO effect a permanent organization by the
choice of Well-known and able business
men for Directors, President, Treasurer and
General Manager, who should, as needed,
appoint assistants both East and West, and
start train day at the beginning of the
next season. If the 900 fruit-growers got
esch an extra S1O0 or $500 or 5000 for
their crop next year, what care they if the
whole thing went to smash sometime and
the 500 invested was never returned in
dividends? Eastern markets once estab-
lished at low prices, and a system of sup
ply organized, they would never get back
again to their present condition. If were
so situated as to carry through such an
organization l would, after investigation
both here and at the East, fix sum,
probably
LESS THAN ONE CENT PER POUND.
Which the expenses should not exceed,
and should endeavor to make all salaries
dependent on the amount of goods disposed
OF at profit, and not at all upon the max
ing large profit on the goods handled
Retail prices should only be raised when
the California supply of any particular line
was becoming insufficient TO fill the de-
mand at low prices.
Again, if in an executive position in such
q company, 1 should endeavor to be pre-
pared to purchase any of its stock offered
for sale, with the intention of making it a
permanent diyidend-paying stock after the