Ashland tidings. [volume] (Ashland, Or.) 1876-1919, 1916-03-20
Plan To Solve
Market Problems


tance to the fruit growers Of Ashland
and the Ashland district will be made
within the next two weeks as a result
of proposition set before a gather
ing of fruit growers at the CONNER
cial Club last Saturday afternoon by
c. E. Bassett, marketing expert from
the Department of Agriculture Of the
United States.
Mr. Bassett is the head of the field
force of the market bureau estab-
lished by the government, and for the
past two years has been making a
study Of the fruit problem of the
northwest. The plan as finally decid-
ed upon after consultation with hun
dreds of growers and shippers, and
which was presented to the Ashland
fruit growers Saturday by Mr.. Bas-
sett, is to go into effect for this years
crop. "At first glimpse" as Mr. Bas-
sett expressed it, "the proposition
seems simple" but study of the solu-
tion which the government believes
Will dissolve the growers marketing
troubles shows it to be we'll planned
and comprehensive. Mr.. Bassett
made it plain that the department was
the servant of two classes only, the
grower and the consumer, and was
working for them alone. He stated
that the marketing system which is
being tried out in the northwest will
cost the grower nothing, the agencies
paying the cost, that the northwest
apple district was selected to try out
the plan because their problem
seemed to be one of the worst in the
country, and that the northwest
would get the benefit of the large
sums of money spent by the govern
ment in trying out the plan. Should
the plan succeed with the apple prob
lem it will be applied to the cotton
and other problems.
First entering into a general sur
vey of conditions which have existed
heretofore in marketing fruit and
which are so familiar to Ashland fruit
growers as to need no repetition,
Mr.. Bassett stated that the impera-
tive necessity was that the growers
should keep up the present high
grade of inspection and grading be-
cause it was the finish of the north
west apples which gave them the
equal chance with the apples grown
nearer the great consuming centers.
After discussion of conditions of
the past year and stating that condi-
tions were in terrible state in some
parts of the northwest, in fact much
worse tlan in the Rogue valley in
many parts, he turned to the solution
which has been put into effect and
will receive its baptism of fire with
the coming of the 1916 crop. Ash
land is one of the last fruit-growing
centers visited by the organizers,
hence the project is well under way
and is receiving the backing of agen-
cies and growers alike throughout the
northwest. The big problem which
the department is fighting is the cut
throat tactics which have ruined the
cooperation and made every organ
ization and grower in the northwest
suspicious of one another.
The bureaus plan is simply to Or
ganize an incorporated agency, which,
by the way, has already been done,
this agency to have the benefit of
and distribute to the subscribing SELL
ing agencies such as the Ashland
Fruit and Produce Association, if the
local body becomes member, reports
I furnished by the bureau of markets
of the market conditions in every
market in the country, of the fruit
which is bound for each market and
all such information which has here
tofore been inaccurate and gathered
by each separate organization at i'm
mense expense.
The agency also keeps men in each
marketing center to inspect fruit as
it arrives, so that the Skin games"
practiced in the past by selling agen-
cies will be impossible. Thus the
plan is to organize under government
control an agency which will legally
furnish information and care for the
interests of the various agencies or
individual growers who become men,
bers of the agency. In the past grow
ers' organizations of great scope as
that attempted by the Spokane fruit
men have been illegal and impossible
because of that fact, as have also been
the attempts to form trusts of selling
agencies.
The proposed plan is merely extern
sion of cooperative principles to the
selling organizations of the entire
northwest.