The record-union., 1892-09-09
FRUIT GROWERS EXCHANGE.
Successful Work of Cooperative Plan
at San Jose.
A System Like That Which Made
Elgtn Headquarters for tho
Butter Trade.

With patriotic purposes plenty as
prunes the wideawake fruit men OF San
Jose organized movement last May de-
signed TO make their city the Elgin of the
prune trade in America
Some of them were Elgin men who
helped to make the fight that landed
Elgin at the top, and others Were quick
to see the point and the commonsense
way of reaching it. The first step is to
improve the quality and establish the
grade and the next to aggregate guam
tity OF uniform grade that will attract
large buyers. Finally they may inaugu-
rate the auction system of selling +. o. b.
At Elgin the buyers kept away from
sales, hoping to force producers TO sell
through commission houses. Stock ac-
cumulated In their cold storage and
grew scarce in market until it
was easy for their statesmen to
dispose of il very quietly The
commission men found that they needed
the stock to supply their trade and began
to patroniZe the auction.
+. NJ. RICHTER, President of Campbell
Horticultural Society, told the writer
that sales of butter, cheese and milk ag-
gregated S9,000,OO0 during 1891, and that a
Iob-A VI q 61CJl Ou IDG DuNlIlS anu Sell
ing members represented the cost to the
| association of doing the business.
The auctloneer only deyotes one hour
per week to the business, and.aside from
his fee from the association gets 81 each
from some fifty papers for Geographic re-
| ports of sales Their readers demand
them, as Elgin sales regulate prices or
largely influence them all over the United
States. The hundreds of large dealers in
New York think it ridiculous that little
| Elgin should fix the butter market for
the whole country, but still they must
consult her quotations for prices. They
have no such control of the output of but
ter as San Jose has in producing more
than half the prunes in America, and
| there seems no good reason why San Jose
men should not succeed in establishing
auction sales where all jobbing houses
dealing in prunes should be represented
and the crops of Solano, Sonoma, Tulare
and other prune-producing counties be
sold at San Jose by samples to be routed
in car lots by the purchaser from the
point of production.
The exchange has been operating large
drying plant at Campbell, in the center of
the San Jose fruit district, and has sue
ceeded in getting thirteen to sixteen cents
for it's different grades of apricots, partly
on account of extra quality and partly in
view Of an output about one fifth that of
last year.
Mr.. RICHTER thinks that the output of
farmers will be so great within five years
| that the market will be as flatas pancake
To aid in postponing that day their or
ganization is willing to contribute to a
fund designed to introduce the goods into
new markets.
AS we are constantly becoming more
adept and economical in producing and
handling prunes, and securing more sys-
tematic, thorough and cheap methods of
transportation and distribution, it is
claimed that when the time comes that the
production of prunes finds the level of
profit occupied by the wheat-grower no
other fruit will be in the race, as an arti-
Gle of daily necessity for the millions.
1T is not what its proprietors say. but