The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, May 24, 1917, Page 6

NS ——aw A general view of Riverside, Cal., from the hills. Riverside, about 20,000 population, is the premief orange town of So.utherrl California, supported entirely by the orange industry. The orange groves run right up to the city limits and stretch away in all directions, like the wheat fields in the Northwest. OW has the legislature treat- ed you? Have you got what you need in the way of laws?” I was in the office of the California Fruit Growers’ ex- change in Los Angeles and I put this question to one of the officers of the exchange. 3 “The legislature has treated us right, of course. We have all the laws we need to help us,” was the reply. . “Why has the legislature been fav- orable to you?” I asked. “We're organized,” he said._, This was all the reason he gave, and all I needed. He was an officer of an organization of farmers that has exist- ed for 21 years, and has dominated its field so thoroughly for the last decade that its members have forgotten that any condition ever existed under which lawmakers defied the producers. The reason was so simple to him that it needed no explanation. “We're organized,” was all he said. Another officer of this remarkable producers’ organization, which operates “the most highly developed system of marketing to be found in American agriculture,” to quote an official re- port, expressed the greatest surprise when I told him that the growers of the Northwest did not have everything the way they wanted in the way of laws. It had become habitual with him always to think of lawmakers as friendly persons, meeting every so often to pass laws that aid the devel- opment of farming and add to the prosperity of the men who produce the world's food. I wondered how long it would be before the farmers of the Northwest would look upon legisla- tures as this kind of an instrument, and I realized that when they do so look upon their lawmakers it will be only because of the same reason that has brought about present conditions in California—organization. CITRUS GROWERS NOW GET WHAT THEY WANT That these two officers of the fruit growers exchange had not given me a wrong impression of the attitude of the California -legislature, I found on reading the exchange’s report for last year, wherein is this sentence: “The Citrus Protective league, which was formed in 1906 to look after na- tional and state legislation and other public policy questions affecting the industry, was discontinued during the Yyear, because no large legislative or other important questions econfronted the industry as a whole.” This league was organized in con- nection with the business organization, the exchange, to get legislation the growers wanted. It disbanded because it obtained everything it wanted. The exchange now has the “rules of the game” framed so that they are fair to all and it can proceed unmolested in its “business of marketing the annual crop of oranges and lemons to the profit of the growers. Could you find a better testimonial of the effectiveness of organization? This condition has not always exist- ed in California. The orange and lemon growers have gone through the same fight that the wheat, corn and potato growers of the Northwest are now going through, only it all took place so long ago that present officers of the exchange do not know much about the details, and only the pioneer growers can recall the days when the citrus industry was fighting for its life, even as the Northwest farmers are to- day. The exchange was organized 21 years ago, when the orange and lemon industry was going to rack and ruin because ‘of unrestricted competition, lack of favorable laws, the unfavorable attitude of the bhusiness and banking world and “rules of the game” framed by those who took toll from the grow- ers, instead of being framed in fair- ness to the growers. The exchange, which is the business organization, and the league, which is the political organization of the growers, working together have changed all this. BRAND’S PLAN PROVED FAILURE IN CALIFORNIA I was struck with one feature of the present California situation that will particularly interest the farmers of the wheat states and the apple growers of the Pacific Northwest. It will interest them because it has to do with the United States office of markets, of which C. J. Brand is chief. As was told In these pages in “The Story of the Apple,” this office has recommended a plan of organization to rehabilitate the apple industry of the Pacific North- west, and an attempt is being made to work this plan out. Also, the office of markets has promulgated the new fed- eral grain grades, ignoring most of the contentions of the wheat growers of the Northwest in regard thereto. Now the office of markets has issued many bulletins on the organization of - the citrus growers of California, and they have all been full of praise for the organization and what it has and is accomplishing. - Yet this same office of markets has recommended a plan of organization for the apple industry THAT THE CITRUS GROWERS FOUND AN ABSOLUTE FAILURE. The office is attempting, in the Pacific Northwest, to organize the apple “shippers” in one association to control the field. The apple grower _is the producer. The apple “shipper” is almost always the middleman, who markets apples for a commission or who buys apples outright and resells them at a profit. The organization the office of markets is attempting to work commerce’’ to fix the price of their product? b The growers of California found they had to go into politics to protect themselves. So they . formed the Citrus Protective League for polit- ical action. It served its purpose. They don’t need this particular League any more because the politicians have learned their lesson. They respect the orange growers because they have felt their ORGANIZED POWER. out in Washington, Oregon and Idaho, in the apple country, does not by its rules encourage or discriminate in favor of strictly farmers" or growers’ organizations or companies. In fact it discrimihates against™ them, as I pointed out in “The Story of the Apple.” A _KIND OF “CO-OPERATION” THAT WILL NOT WORK The citrus growers of California and the citrus shippers tried this same kind of thing 15 years ago. It was a kind of ‘“co-operation” that- did not work. It was called the. California Fruit agency and it was organized to control the market. It was a com- pact business organization and in 1903 controlled nearly 90 per. cent of the crop. It was managed by the most experienced and able men the citrus industry had produced. It was organ- ized under the most favorable condi- tions, yet in 18 months it fell apart— a proved failure. ‘Why it failed is interesting, because the office of markets of the United States department of agriculture is, trying to make the same plan succeed in the Pacific Northwest. The reason for the failure of this plan in Califor- nia is stated very briefly in an official report, as follows: “The fundamental purpose of a growers’ organization is service and maximum profit to its members; that of an outside interest operating with the growers' product is profit for it- self. The former develops through the upbuilding of an industry by its own efforts in response to economic neces- sity. The latter is supported by the industry and contributes nothing %o its upbuilding. These two purposes can not be harmonized in a working organ- ization.” This is the official verdict on the failure of the organization of growers and growers’ companies with middle- men and middlemen’s companies in California. The same verdict will * eventually have to be written when the government’s plan of organizing the apple industry is proved a failure, as it must- prove. You can not take growers into the same organization with interests which are economically opposed to the interests of the grow- ers, and make such an organization succeed. - The growers are primarily interested in profits for themselves; the middlemen in profits for ‘middle- Left to itself “the law of supply and demand” choked all the profit out of the orange business and resulted in a poor product and small sales, with nothing in it for the producer. How far would the orange growers have gotten if they had depended on “boards of trade” and “chambers of - SIX S AL g men, regardless ‘'of what the growe® gets, GROWERS FIRMLY AGAINST UNION WITH MIDDLEMEN So convinced are the California growers that there are no common in- terests and therefore no basis for ‘co« operation between producers and mid- dlemen, that last year they.flatly turn- ed down a much-touted plan of the newly created California State Market commission, to take the growers’ own exchange into an organization that was to include every: shipper, shipping company and buyer, regardless of whether they were strictly co-opera- tive farmers’ companies or not. The decision of the board of directors of the exchange is brief. It is as follows: “The board was unanimous in the conviction that the SAFETY and PERMANENCE of the citrus industry will be best served in the future, as it has been in the past, by the further growth of the NON-PROFIT, CO- OPERATIVE method of fruit' dise tribution and sale. This can best be accomplished by the handling of the product by the growers through the agencies which THEY THEMSELVES HAVE CREATED AND DEVELOP- ED.” No “co-operation” with middle- men for California growers! I have gone into this detail about the United States office of markets recommendations in the apple country and the experience with the same kind of thing in the orange country, because | think there is something the matter with the office of markets. Why would it try to foist such a plan on the apple growers? For the same rea- son, probably, that it is foisting an unfair wheat grading system on the wheat states. The office of markets for one thing is a compromiser; it wants to get along with everybody. It hates a fight. The apple middlemen are powerful; so are the mills and grain brokers in the wheat country. This may be partly the reason for its attitude toward pro- ducers everywhere—its veneration for things as they are, for accepted meth= ods and systems. It only proves that growers and farmers everywhere—the producers—will have to work out their own salvation, with force of political power, if necessary. WHAT IT COSTS GROWERS TO MARKET THEIR CROP Did you ever hear the word “Sun- kist”? You have if you can read and if you have read a newspaper or maga- zine during the last few: years, or if you are observing when you go into a grocery store. “Sunkist” is a private trade-mark and brand worth millions of dollars, because nearly everybody knows about it. It is the private trademark of the California orange growers, used by their own, co-opera- - tive marketing exchange, and when You think oranges, whether you live in Seattle, Fargo or Portland, Me., you think “Sunkist.” Because you do think “Sunkist” when’ you think P