protective organization to be realized with State aid, even though the California Farmers Union only lived long enough to send a memorial asking Congress "to regulate freights and fares on overland railways and protect the people against impositions and oppressions by railroad monopolies."

In 1873 the projectors of this Farmers Union. joined with many others of the same kind and organized the California State Grange, a branch of the national order of Patrons of Husbandry, which was then valiantly attacking the old systems against the farmer in nearly all the states east of the Rocky Mountains. The California State Grange attained large membership and influence which endured for a decade or more, until much of its force was diverted to the Farmers Alliance. At the time of the greatest attainment of the Grange in enrolling farmers, which was about 1880, there had been no equal gathering of membership in any general farm organization. The Farmers Educational and Coöperative Union has a strong organization but is limited in geographical spread in California. Other undertakings have also attained limited area of influence and various lengths of continuous existence. The California Farm Bureau Federation (branch of the American Federation of Farm Bureaus) organized in 1919 had in 1921 a larger membership than any other association of all kinds of farmers has hitherto attained in this State and is working more aggressively in the general farming interests. The Farm Owners and Operators Association was organized in 1918 to

include actual farmers as full members, non-operative land owners as associate members and duly certified farm laborers as affiliated members. This association was reorganized in 1920 as the Federation of American Farmers, looking toward organization of proprietary farmers for promotion and protection of their interests by political policies similar to those adopted by the American Federation of Labor but toward somewhat contrary purposes.

SPECIAL COOPERATIVE SELLING ORGANIZATIONS

The organizations which have attained greatest success in California and have given the State a reputation for successful coöperation are not those which undertook to associate all kinds of farmers in united action and influence. They are the groups of producers of particular products, the chief purpose of each being to give its own product the best merchantable form and quality and to control the marketing of it in its own way, in some cases through its own selling agencies, in others by price fixing to the general trade. Such associations now cover nearly all the leading farm products and their numbers and various fields of action may be learned from the list of those operating in 1922, as given in Appendix J.

Although few of these organizations existed in their present form and plan of action a decade ago, for most of them are much younger and all have vastly increased their operations and business facilities quite recently, nevertheless they may be looked

on as the offspring of aspirations cherished and of efforts put forth during the last four decades. Agitation for the special-purpose associations began in 1875 and many short-lived organizations were undertaken from time to time thereafter. Their demises were due to various conditions, viz., the impracticability of the plans proposed; the unwillingness of growers to take the risks; the opposition of private trading concerns which naturally desired to protect their vested interests; the advantages such concerns enjoyed at that time in rebates from transportation companies and in cheap capital from recognized commercial credit which was then not available to organized producers.

Various other causes and conditions operated against the earlier efforts at coöperation but there was one strong connecting line which led from one determined venture to another and from one disappointment to another until, by its continuous action, difficulties began to disappear and achievements began to be realized. This unbroken influence toward success was exerted by informal assemblies of fruitgrowers, called California Fruit Growers Conventions, which began in 1881 and which have been held annually or oftener until the fifty-fourth of them convened in Los Angeles in 1921. At these conventions all coöperative organizations for fruit handling by producers have had either birth or christening and to these conventions all which succeed report their plans and attainments. From the very beginning hundreds of growers have gone from end to end of

the State and remained several days in session for the purpose of deciding what growers can do to advance the industry in which they are involved and taking the initial steps to do it. These conventions with their gatherings of fruit-growers for unprescribed discussion and untrammeled action are not only carrying progress forward from year to year but from generation to generation-as described on page 171.

On this foundation of continuous interest and confidence and of unbaffled effort, California's notable structures in special-purpose coöperation have arisen. They are original in design and function and novel in some of the particular purposes they aim to serve, and in the methods developed for such service. The architects who planned these structures, the masterbuilders who translated the plans into visible forms and the leaders in organized industry and trade who have brought plans and forms into concrete operation have been men of mature age whom the attractiveness of California life and investment induced to bring their training and experience in professional and commercial life, and their accumulations of capital, from other parts of the United States for undertakings in agriculture. They already were wise in legal requirements and possibilities and in financial and com· mercial policies and operations. They won the confidence of those who had hitherto had little experience or observation beyond the lines of crop production; they spoke with authority to the managers of transportation, of finance and of established trade. All these masterful resources they enthusiastically