The Hawaiian gazette. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1865-1918, 1908-06-19
THE ORANGE IN
ITS HABITAT
advertiser Correspondence, Copyright
BY Frederic j. Haskin.)

| advertiser Correspondence, Copyright
by Frederic j. Haskin.)
LOS ANGELES, June las you eat
your orange at breakfast tomorrow you
may look upon it as q symbol of the
high-water mark of progress in the
application of cultural and economic
science to the world-old business of
producing food and wealth from the
soil. The California Washington navel
orange is grown according to scien-
tlfc method, and il is marketed by
a scientific method. Its history from
the beginning is romance. Oranges
and lemons have been grown in Cali
fornia for more than a century, but it
was not until the introduction of the
navel orange in 1874 that the present
era of progress began. The seedless
navel orange is in itself triumph of
scientific man. who desired to get rid
of the seeds which made the orange so
hard to eat.
The orange you will eat tomorrow
was grown in Southern California upon
land which would grow nothing in its
natural state. Water had to be brought
from a great distance and applied to
the land to give it life. If you were
to become so Interested in oranges as
to be impelled to go to California and
buy a citrus ranch, you would find sci
enee guiding your every step. The
land might cost you thousand dollars
an acre. Science and irrigation made
all that value. Five or ten acres would
be the size of it, and the chances are
that you would know as much about
growing oranges or lemons as you do
about running canal boats on Mars.
But the local citrus union would look
after you. One day you would find a
man under one of your trees with a
blanket spread out on the ground. He
is armed with a microscope and he
knows all about bugs. If your trees
need it, he will tell you when to fumi-
gate. If you neglect to do so, the
chances are that you will wake up some
fine morning to find the fumigators at
work in your orchard. So when it is
time to prune, or time TO irrigate, or
time to do any one of the thousand and
one things that must be done to grow
citrus fruit, the experienced practical
scientists of the community will see to
it that you do not lack for advice. If
you find a strange bug on leaf, you
take it to one of the government sci
entists always within reach. He gen.
orally knows what it is, whether it is
harmful, and if so, how to fight it. But
if it is a new bug, then the department
of agriculture begins right there to find
out all about it, and will spend thou
sands of dollars, if necessary. to that
end. So far does science 60 in grow
ing oranges.
But an orange grown is of very little
account unless it can be sold at a |
profit. When Southern California first
began to produce citrus fruit in con-
siderable quantity, it found that it
was so far away from the populous
centers of the East, where it must |
find consumers, that the profits were |
often wiped out by freights and com
missions. Men worked long years and |
planned skilfully only to have the re-
turns from their fist shipments come |
back in red"-the fatal red ink of the |
wrong side of the account ledger.
So it came about that economic sci
ence was applied 10 the packing, ship |
ping and marketing of the fruit-com-
pleting the circle of scientific progress
which wraps the orange from the bios
som TO the breakfast table. The grow
ers in each community formed local 4
acking organizations, they in turn /
form ed district organizations, and the
district bodies formed a central con-
Germ which is now known as the Cali
fornia Fruit Growers Exchange. This
scheme Of organization was worked out
slowly and gradually. step at a time.
The first movement toward intslli-
gent cooperation was the result of the
disastrous year of 1923. That year
many growers not only had to furnish
heir entire crop for nothing, but to
pay the packing and freight charges
besides. as the gross sales of the fruit
II the East would not cover the ex-
1enses. Then a convention met, its
declared purpose being to Provide for
he marketing Of all the citrus fruit
Il the lowest possible cost under uni
orm methods, and in a manner to
secure TO each grower a certain mar
leting Of his fruit, and the full aver
Lge price to be obtained in the market
or the entire season" This purpose
las been accomplished. The detail Of
he growth of the present organization
rom that convention is interesting.
iut il is unnecessary to set it out here
ct il suffice to look at the condi-
ions which did prevail under the old
ashioned methods and the conditions
{ the present
In the old days the growers were :
Il in cut-throat competition with each
Their There was no such thing as