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G. Harold Powell and the Corporate Consolidation of the Modern Citrus Enterprise, 1904–1922

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

H. Vincent Moses
H. Vincent Moses
Affiliation:
H. Vincent Moses, Ph.D., is curator of history, City of Riverside, California, Municipal Museum.
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Abstract

This article answers, in part, questions raised by new rural and agricultural historians concerning how farmers interacted with the rise of large-scale organizational society in the era after the 1896 Presidential election. It argues that California citrus growers reacted by bringing the revolution of corporate capitalism to Southern California, 1893–1920. The article tests the activities of California orange growers against the theoretical models of Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. and Martin J. Sklar. It concludes that a pro-corporate group of orange growers embraced corporate managerial capitalism at a time when most other American farmers were in open revolt against industrialization. In 1912, these growers appointed G. Harold Powell, pomologist with the USDA's Bureau of Plant Industry, as General manager of their mammoth California Fruit Growers Exchange. By 1920, Powell and the Exchange board of directors completed the corporate consolidation of the citrus enterprise, and by example the reconstruction of California's potent agricultural empire.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 69 , Issue 2 , Summer 1995 , pp. 119 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1995

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References

1 Powell, G. Harold, “Address on Cooperation in the Distribution and Marketing of Farm Products Before the Scientific Staff of the Department of Agriculture,” USDA, Bureau of Markets and Crop Estimates, Washington, D.C., 6 Oct. 1921Google Scholar, n.p., Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), National Archives (NA); Powell, G. Harold, Annual Report of the General Manager of the California Fruit Growers Exchange, 1921–1922, Sunkist Records Center, Ontario, Calif.Google Scholar

2 Powell, Annual Report, 1922. Powell initiated Americanization programs, and provided year round residential housing for Exchange workers, most of whom were poor immigrants from Mexico.

3 The editors of Riverside City and County Illustrated (Riverside: Trade and Commerce Pub. Co., 1895)Google Scholar, Riverside Municipal Museum Collection, claimed that the Bradstreet Index identified Riverside as America's wealthiest city per capita in 1895.

4 Powell, G. Harold, Letters From the Orange Empire, ed. Lillard, Richard G. (Los Angeles, Calif., 1990), 1–26, 34, 37Google Scholar. Powell to Railey, Riverside, California 8 Jan. 1905, 21/1/84, box 13, Cornell University Archives (CUA); Galloway to Powell, 31 May 1905, BPI, USDA, NA. Powell boasted to his wife Gertrude that “You can hardly appreciate how much this means as there is no class of people in the east who approach the orange growers in intelligence and large business affairs.” Letters, 37.

5 Articles of Incorporation of the Southern California Fruit Exchange, 1895, Sunkist Records Center, Ontario, Calif., 1. SCFE Board Minutes, 21 Oct. 1895, Office of the President, Sunkist Growers, Inc., Sherman Oaks, Calif.

6 Articles of Incorporation of the California Fruit Growers Exchange, 27 March 1905, Sunkist Records Center, Ontario, Calif. Capitalized at a modest $10,000, the CFGE sold one share of stock each to the thirteen directors, at $100. The rest of the stock subscription went to local member associations and district exchanges. The incorporation papers defined the mission of the CFGE “to act as agent for, and representative of Fruit Exchanges and other kindred corporations … in the packing, picking, handling, marketing, shipping and selling of oranges, lemons… and all other California grown products … to engage in a brokerage, factor and commission selling business … to engage in a shipping business… transportation business … to perform all such other business operations as are germane or incidental to the purpose above mentioned” (3).

7 This discussion of the marketing mechanism of the Exchange is condensed from G. Harold Powell, “The California Fruit Growers Exchange,” The California Citrograph (20 May 1915): 12–13c; Holman, Charles W., “Keeping Faith with the Consumer,” Technical World Magazine, 20 (Dec. 1913): 531–537, 618Google Scholar; James H. Collins, “Marketing California Citrus: Sales Methods That Dispose of 30,000 Cars,” The Country Gentleman (29 Jan. 1916): 198; Collins, , “The Biggest Marketing Exchange: California's Citrus Organization and Its Manager,” The Country Gentleman 81 (15 Jan. 1916): 3–4, 132Google Scholar; and Powell, “Revolving the Consumer's Dollar Backwards,” California Citrograph (Jan. 1916): 10–11.

8 Powell, “The California Fruit Growers Exchange,” The California Citrograph (20 May 1915): 12.

9 Ibid.

10 On the packer trusts and the modern business enterprise, see Chandler, Alfred D. Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), 391–401Google Scholar; U.S. Bureau of Corporations, Report of the Commissioner of Corporations on the Beef Industry, 3 March 1905 (Washington, D.C., 1905)Google Scholar. Kujovich, Mary Yeager, “The Refrigerator Car and the Growth of the American Dressed Beef Industry,” Business History Review 44 (Winter 1970): 460–482CrossRefGoogle Scholar, provides one of the best accounts of the rise of the packer oligopoly.

11 Holman, “Keeping Faith with the Consumer,” 537; for a sample of an early sales code, see Confidential Instructions to Representatives of the California Fruit Growers Exchange (Los Angeles, Calif., 1911), 29–30Google Scholar. “The following is a sample wire: ‘Koodoo gourdiness bromate smith gorgonize cimolite jones lexicon two cacuminate black one catadrome Williams lexicology three dispread four disprince five disprison.’ Which translated reads as follows: ‘Ship promptly at prices quoted F.O.B. California $2.00 Stag Navels Smith, $1.75 Royal Navels Jones; we will require the following for next week's shipment to be sold delivered, two Artesia Navels Black, one Quail Navels Williams; we will require the following for next week's shipment, in addition to F.O.B. and diverted orders specified: three extra fancy navels, four fancy navels, five extra choice navels.’” Confidential Instructions to Representatives of the California Fruit Growers Exchange, 29–30. This document and others are housed at the Sunkist Records Center in Ontario, Calif.

12 Meyer, Albert J., History of the California Fruit Growers Exchange, 1893–1920 (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1950), 208–228Google Scholar. In 1910 alone, the FGSC sold more than $2 million in supplies to member packing houses, essentially at cost.

13 See Articles of Incorporation, 27 March 1905, Sunkist Records Center, Ontario, Calif; and a broadside from the new CFGE, “Co-operative Marketing of California Citrus Fruits by the California Fruit Growers Exchange and Its Predecessor the Southern California Fruit Exchange,” 1 July 1907, 4 pp. This broadside said that the CFGE was organized “upon lines materially differing from any other co-operative organization, all the details had to be worked out with extreme care and caution.” Also see Cumberland, W. W., Cooperative Marketing: Its Advantages as Exemplified by the California Fruit Growers Exchange (Princeton, N.J., 1917), 145–46Google Scholar.

14 Daniel, Cletus E., Bitter Harvest: A History of California Farmworkers, 1870–1941 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1981), 32–34Google Scholar. Daniel's first chapter, “The Erosion of Agrarian Idealism,” is especially significant to the premises and conclusions of this study. The literature on California agricultural labor is vast and growing. It includes works from a variety of historical and theoretical perspectives. The basic ethnic makeup of this massive labor force has been in order, first Chinese, second Japanese, and third workers of Mexican descent. Certainly, Anglo-Americans and others have worked in the citrus industry in California, but they have represented only a minority since the 1880s.

15 On the rise of the modern managerial corporation and the coming of twentieth century capitalism, see Chandler, , The Visible Hand, and Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1990)Google Scholar. Martin J. Sklar advances a superb social historical analysis of the capitalist class that executed the corporate remaking of the American political economy during the Progressive Era in his The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890–1916: The Market, the Law, and Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1988). See pp. 2–13Google Scholar for his theoretical assumptions. Chandler and Sklar guide this work in important ways. On Roosevelt and Wilson, see Mowry, George, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 1900–1912 (New York, 1958)Google Scholar, and Link, Arthur S., Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910–1917 (New York, 1954)Google Scholar. On the Zeitgeist of efficiency and the effect of Frederick Winslow Taylor's ideas on the Progressives, see Haber, Samuel, Efficiency and Uplift: Scientific Management in the Progressive Era, 1890–1920 (Chicago, Ill., 1964)Google Scholar. For the best recent analysis of Hoover's agricultural policies, consult Hamilton, David E., From New Day to New Deal: American Farm Policy from Hoover to Roosevelt, 1928–1933 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1991)Google Scholar.

16 Sklar, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1; Chandler, The Visible Hand, 455–468, and Scale and Scope, 221–224.

17 See Danbom, David B., The Resisted Revolution: Urban America and the Industrialization of Agriculture, 1900–1930 (Ames, Iowa, 1979), 22, 29Google Scholar. Danbom's arguments are paralleled closely by those of Scott, Roy, The Reluctant Farmer: The Rise of Agricultural Extension to 1914 (Urbana, Ill., 1977)Google Scholar.

18 Bailey, L. H., The Country Life Movement in the United States (New York, 1913)Google Scholar. Bowers, William L., The Country Life Movement in America, 1900–1920 (Port Washington, N.Y., 1974), 69Google Scholar. Important contemporary Country Life monographs on various aspects of the “rural problem” include, among others, Butterfield, Kenyon L., Chapters in Rural Progress (Chicago, Ill., 1908)Google Scholar and The Country Church and the Rural Problem: The Carew Lectures at Hartford Theological Seminary, 1909 (Chicago, Ill., 1911)Google Scholar, SirPlunkett, Horace, The Rural Life Problem of the United States (New York, 1910)Google Scholar, Gill, Charles Otis and Pinchot, Gifford, The Country Church: The Decline of its Influence and the Remedy (New York, 1913)Google Scholar, Foght, H. W., The American Rural School, its Characteristics, its Future, and its Problems (New York, 1910)Google Scholar.

19 Western fruit growers received special mention by the Commission. In its discussion of monopolies detrimental to farmers, the commissioners cited the problem of “waterlordism” and the crying need to preserve access to irrigation supplies in the arid regions of the West. “Farm life in the irrigated regions is usually of an advanced type due principally to the small size of farms and the resulting social and educational advantages, and to intensive agriculture.” An outcome of the proper development of the arid regions by “irrigation may be a distinct contribution to the improvement of the country life of the nation.” Bailey, , Report of the Commission on Country Life, (New York, 1917), 71Google Scholar. California orange growers, practicing commodity production, were at that moment marching in lock-step with the Chairman's principal disciple, G. Harold Powell.

20 Worthy Overseer T. C. Atkeson of the Grange responded as a representative of Country Life antagonists: “I confess that so much talk about ‘betterment’ and ‘uplift’ in connection with the farmer class makes me just a little bit weary. Suppose we try a little of the ‘uplift’ business upon our senators, congressmen, and legislators, governors, trust magnates, stock gamblers, railroad wreckers, and rich malefactors. … It might be well for the National Grange to appoint a ‘Commission on City Life’ … to report on the conditions of city life and ‘what needs to be done.’… The farmers of the United States are all right, and the only thing that ‘needs to be done’ is to give them a ‘square deal’ before the laws of the land, and they will work out their own salvation in their own healthy and manly way.” Quoted in Danbom, The Resisted Revolution, 85.

21 Danbom, The Resisted Revolution, 41–42.

22 Roosevelt, Theodore, The New Nationalism (New York, 1910)Google Scholar. Also see the work of Country Life Commissioner Butterfield, Chapters in Rural Progress, 14–15.

23 Danbom, The Resisted Revolution, 74. According to Pete Daniel, “[t]he sources of the present agricultural structure date to the nineteenth-century notion that American farms should utilize labor-saving implements and that science should rule every sphere of rural life. Agriculture schools, the USDA, and state and local agriculture programs all stressed modernization and science. This program was but the cutting edge of a larger plan to force all farmers into commercial agriculture. Liberty Hyde Bailey … set forth his dream: ‘There will be established out in the open country plant doctors, plant-breeders, soil experts, health experts, pruning and spraying experts, forest experts, recreation experts, market experts, and many others,’ he accurately prophesied. ‘There will be housekeeping experts or supervisors.”’ Daniel, Pete, Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures since 1880 (Urbana, Ill., 1985), 291Google Scholar.

24 President Roosevelt to L. H. Bailey, 10 August 1908, in Report of the Commission on Country Life, 41–43. Embedded in the President's letter was a long quotation from a speech he delivered in May 1907 at the Michigan Agricultural College Semi-Centennial. Bailey himself had written that speech for Roosevelt outlining the conditions in agriculture upon the insistence of Gifford Pinchot. See also, Danbom, The Resisted Revolution, passim.

25 Bailey, The Country-Life Movement in the United States, 57: “The best example I have seen of the development of determination and fine social brotherhood is in the making of the Panama Canal. The making of the Canal is in every sense a conquest. It is a new civilization that the 40,000 or 50,000 folk are constructing down there. hellip;”

26 For biographical material on Jenks, see “Jenks, Jeremiah Whipple,” The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, ed., vol. VI, (Boston, Mass., 1904)Google Scholar; and Dictionary of American Biography, Malone, Dumas, ed., vol. V, (New York, 1932), 52–53Google Scholar. Wunderlin, Clarence Jr, Visions of a New Industrial Order: Social Science and Labor Theory in America's Progressive Era (New York, 1992)Google Scholar.

27 Sklar, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 282. See Proceedings of the National Conference on Trusts and Combinations, Under the Auspices of The National Civic Federation, Chicago, 22–25 Oct. 1907 (New York, 1908), 148–156Google Scholar for Jenks's summary to the assembly on the status of investigations into trusts and combinations. For a fuller analysis of the National Civic Federation and its influence in shaping the corporate political economy in the first years of this century, consult Weinstein, James, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State, 1900–1918 (Boston, Mass., 1968)Google Scholar. A view of the NCF from labor's side may be found in Montgomery's, David Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865–1925 (Cambridge, 1987, 1989), 259–290Google Scholar. The NCF concluded that organized capital and organized labor should negotiate binding contracts. They believed binding contracts would rationalize the markets and eliminate the violent clashes that were hurting them both in the pocket book and public opinion. On Jenks, the NCF, and labor, see Wunderlin, Visions of a New Industrial Order.

28 Houston, David F., Eight Years with Wilson's Cabinet, 1913 to 1920; with a Personal Estimate of the President, vol. I, (Garden City, N.Y., 1926)Google Scholar.

29 For a view of Powell's life see the following sources: Obituary, “George Harold Powell,” Cornell Alumni News, (2 March 1922); Powell, Lawrence Clark, An Orange Grove Boyhood: Growing Up in Southern California (Santa Barbara, Calif., 1988)Google Scholar, although limited in content about G. Harold Powell, this little book is valuable for its personal insights; also “G. Harold Powell, 1872–1922,” Fifty Famous Farmers, ed. Ivins, Lester S. & Winship, A.E. (New York, 1924), 167–178Google Scholar, a Country Life Movement oriented publication; “G. Harold Powell, General Manager, California Fruit Growers Exchange,” Those Who Have Achieved in the Citrus Industry, The California Citrograph (June 1921): 201–203, 295–296, written just six months prior to Powell's death; and Dictionary of American Biography, vol. 15, 1935, 145–46Google Scholar.

30 Powell to Bailey, 17 April 1912, CUA, Bailey Papers: “Dear Professor Bailey: I stay in Southern California. I was elected General Manager of the California Fruit Growers Exchange today and take the place next month.”

31 “Dear Gertrude: I spoke to a fine crowd yesterday on the invitation of the Secretary (Houston). He invited a number of Senators and Congressmen, a number of outside economists, the bureau chiefs and about twenty department people to hear what I had to say about the new Marketing Division. Rockefeller's representative, Dr. Butterick, was there and a number of the Southern Educational Board. The talk seemed to make a hit. The Secretary said he would be glad if I would take charge of the work, and Dr. Butterick said they would add to the salary from the Rockefeller funds if I would do it. I thanked them kindly. The Secretary has read the book (Cooperation in Agriculture) all through and spoke of it.” Powell to Gertrude Powell, 30 May 1913, Powell Family Papers (PFP), UCLA.

32 Powell, G. Harold, Cooperation in Agriculture (New York, 1913), 5–6Google Scholar.

33 Ibid., chapter 1.

34 Lillard, in Powell, Letters from the Orange Empire, wrote: “The lives of some women and men, certainly Powell's life, are all of a piece. His family was quaker and prosperously rural. His grandfather and father grew apples on Hudson Valley farms near Ghent. His father, (a close ally of L. H. Bailey), who lectured and wrote on pomology and floriculture, founded the New York State Agricultural Service, and took charge of the New York State Exhibit in the Agricultural Building at the World's Columbian Exhibition in 1893 in Chicago (as well as the state's Farmers’ Institutes).” See also Forrest Crissey, “The Crop Scout,” The Saturday Evening Post (Nov. 1910): 24–27.

35 See Ritchie's, Robert Welles interview with Powell, “The Religion of Cooperation,” The Country Gentleman, 85, (4 Sept. 1920): 13, 41Google Scholar.

36 L. C. Powell, An Orange Grove Boyhood, 41–42: “My father's parents wintered with us for varying periods Grandpa Powell with his white sideburns and gentle face always deferred to his wife Marcia. She had a reputation as a determined Quaker prison reformer, including Sing Sing, and in cleaning up the worst saloons. She did her best with me on quiet evenings when I lay sprawled reading by the fireplace She would put down her reading and demand, ‘Lawrence, will thee stop snapping thy gum!’”… “[my father's sister] Elizabeth Powell Bond (Aunt Lizzie to us) spent her life in service at Swarthmore, finally as dean of the college.” Aunt Lizzie's favorite chapel service talk at Swarthmore was “Cooperation: The Will of God.…” Powell kept a copy with him all his adult life. It is now stored with the Powell Family papers, Coll. # 230, UCLA.

37 Consult Wilson, Joan Hoff, Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive (Boston, Mass., 1975), 6–30; 48–53; 58–101Google Scholar.

38 For definitions, see Chandler, Scale and Scope, 16–17; Teece, David, “Economies of Scope and the Scope of the Enterprise,” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 1 (Sept. 1980): 223–247CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Panzar, John C. and Willig, Robert D., “Economies of Scope,” American Economic Review 71 (May 1981): 268–272Google Scholar. As Chandler indicates, however, these studies deal with production, not distribution.

39 Powell, G. Harold, “Cooperation in the Handling and Marketing of Fruit,” Yearbook of the USDA, 1910 (Washington, D.C., 1911), 391Google Scholar. Compare this statement with Jenks, Jeremiah Whipple, The Trust Problem (New York, 1900)Google Scholar, chaps. 1, 2, & 3 on competition and combinations.

40 Powell, “Cooperation in the Handling and Marketing of Fruit,” 393.

41 Ibid., 396.

42 “[J]ust as the consolidation of capital in other industries is necessary for its own protection.… Things must be done in a large way if the fruit grower is to deal on the same level with the combinations of capital with which his product comes in contact at every step from the orchard to the consumer.” Powell, “Cooperation in the Handling and Marketing of Fruit,” 390–391.

43 Powell, Cooperation in Agriculture, 7, 36–39; Powell, “Fundamental Principles of Co-operation in Agriculture,” Circular No. 222, University of California, College of Agriculture, Agricultural Experiment Station (Oct. 1920). Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., The Visible Hand, 6–8.

44 Powell, Cooperation in Agriculture, 36–39.

45 Ibid., 8–9, 212. On monopoly and regulation, from point of view of Jenks and the NCF, see Proceedings of the National Conference on Trusts and Combinations, Chicago, 22–25 Oct. 1907Google Scholar (New York, 1908), 148–156; and Jenks, The Trust Problem, “Competition and Monopoly,” 56–76, and “Legislation,” 212–226.

46 Powell, Cooperation in Agriculture, 12–13.

47 Ibid, 23.

48 Jenks, The Trust Problem, 8–9; Powell, “Cooperation in the Handling and Marketing of Fruit.”

49 Journalist Walter Woehlke captured the character of Southern California orange growers in an article written for Sunset magazine in 1911. Woehlke observed that “the orange-grower is not a farmer.… He is a specialist in citrus fruits, a manufacturer whose raw material, soil, water and sunshine, is transformed into the finished product by living trees instead of machinery.” In fact, Woehlke argued, the grower is really “a business man whose mode of living, whose pleasures, recreations and intellectual pursuits are identical with those of other business and professional men living in suburban homes.… “Walter E. Woehlke, “In the Orange Country: Where the Orchard is a Mine—The Human Factor Among the Gold-bearing Trees of California,” Sunset 26 (March 1911): 263Google Scholar. The tenor of Woehlke's article accurately caught the anti-rural bias of these early twentieth century California growers. Fugitives from Eastern banks, corporation board rooms, and law courts, many in their ranks saw themselves as suburban businessmen, not as farmers.

50 Coit, J. Eliot, Citrus Fruits: An Account of the Citrus Fruit Industry with Special Reference to California Requirements and Practices and Similar Conditions (New York, 1920), 10–11Google Scholar. Coit's impressionistic conclusions concerning the ideology and origins of California citrus growers match those of other eyewitnesses, such as lawyer-turned-journalist Carey McWilliams, and Robert Glass Cleland, a noted California historian. See the reprint of Carey McWilliams’ book, Southern California: An Island on the Land (Salt Lake City, Utah, 1979)Google Scholar, and Cleland, Robert Glass, California in Our Time, 1900–1940 (New York, 1947), p. 162Google Scholar.

51 See LeLong, B. M, A Treatise on Citrus in California (Sacramento, Calif., 1888)Google Scholar.

52 As one example, see Pacific Fruit World, April 8, 1905, PFP, box 30, UCLA.

53 “Report on Keeping and Shipping Qualities of Citrus Fruits,” by G. Harold Powell, before Farmers' Citrus Institute, Riverside, California, 7–8 April 1905, BPI, USDA, NA.

54 During the winters of 1905, 1906, 1907, and 1908 Powell lived in Riverside with his family. Each year, Powell's fame and influence grew as his mutually advantageous relationship with the fruit men of California solidified. Powell, in turn, garnered support for the Department of Agriculture as a result of the “money values” his methods were bringing to the industry.

55 “[T]he most encouraging part of the work is that a large number of the packing house men are applying the results of the work as rapidly as they are given out…. We have been handling large quantities of fruit again this winter and have the same splendid support from the growers, shippers and transportation companies. We're sending a cara day to New York some of the fruit in each having been handled in various ways. The investigation will show that a large proportion of the losses in transit are due to the handling of the fruit before it is shipped. The encouraging part of the work is that the various interests put into operation the results as fast as they are demonstrated. Some of the large shippers have practically eliminated the losses from decay this year.” Powell to Galloway, 19 March 1906, Riverside, Calif, RPI, USDA, NA. Also, Powell to Bailey, 10 March 1906, Bailey Papers, CUA. By 1908, fully 90 percent of packing houses in the state had been remodeled along the lines provided by Powell; Powell to Galloway, 24 Feb. 1908, BPI, USDA, NA.

56 G. Harold Powell, “Field Investigations in Pomology,” USDA, Bureau of Plant Industry, 7 June 1907; PFP, #230, box 30, UCLA.

57 Ibid. By the time Powell became leader of the California Fruit Growers Exchange in 1912, his full recommendations for reorganization had been put into effect. See Powell, Cooperation in Agriculture, chaps. 2, 4, 7, 8, & 9. What is more, Powell's status, in the eyes of the major grower interests of the State, led to the first of a number of tantalizing offers he was to receive to leave government service for private industry. In 1907, E. A. Chase tendered an offer to sign with the National Orange Company. Powell discussed this with B. T. Galloway but decided to remain with the government. Powell to Galloway, 8 May 1907, BPI, USDA, NA. In the 1910 Yearbook of Agriculture, Powell insisted that: “It is a fundamental necessity that the members be held together by a contract or a provision in the by-laws which give the association the exclusive right to pick, pack, haul, grade, mark, and sell the fruit of its members … or to supervise or regulate these operations under rules made by the association” (398).

58 See John Henry Reed's address to the Pathological Institute, “Secure Best Results from Scientific Investigations,” reprinted in The Los Angeles Times, (3/19/08). Powell's definitive report on the decay problem of oranges appeared as “The Decay of Oranges While in Transit from California,” Bulletin #123, USDA, BPI (Washington, D.C., 1908)Google Scholar, which identified blue mold as the pathogen responsible for infecting oranges damaged through rough handling and clipper-cuts.

59 Memorandum to the Board of Directors of the California Fruit Growers Exchange, 1912, by Woodford, B. A., Woodford Collection, Riverside Municipal Museum, 6Google Scholar.

60 Chandler, Scale and Scope.

61 Meyer, History of the California Fruit Growers Exchange, “Conclusion,” 293–300; Powell, Annual Reports, 1921–22.

62 Meyer, History of the California Fruit Growers Exchange, 258.

63 Ibid., 264. “Such a large organization naturally gives opportunity for big talent to develop, and the work is now old enough to have men trained in its employ who have come up through many departments. It also affords opportunity for ambitious youths who wish to learn the business. Almost every occupation in connection with the Exchange has its objective promotion. Throughout all its operations a spirit of democracy pervades, and a feeling of permanency exists.” Holman, “Keeping Faith with the Consumer,” 535.

64 Meyer, History of the California Fruit Growers Exchange, 268. Meyer cites Exchange Board Minutes, 1 Sept. 1920.

65 The Exchange lemon shippers founded the Lemon By-Products Company in 1915, joined in 1922 by the Orange By-Products Company. See Heritage of Gold: The First 100 Years of Sunkist Growers, Inc., 1893–1993 (Van Nuys, Calif, 1993), 37–72Google Scholar, and the Annual Report, 1922.

66 See Powell's Annual Reports, 1914–1922. Copies are housed at the Sunkist Records Center, Ontario, Calif.

67 See Powell, G. Harold, “The Cost of Distributing the California Citrus Crop From the Producer to the Consumer,” The Western Fruit Jobber 1 (April 1915): 23–31Google Scholar, and “Revolving the Consumer's Dollar Backwards’, California Citrograph (Jan. 1916): 10–11. These reports presented the findings of Powell's two year empirical investigation of the costs of distributing citrus fruit from the grove to the consumer. The results allowed him to effectively deflect the criticism coming from dissident growers and packers who sought other remedies to the marketing woes of 1915 and 1916. See Collins, “The Biggest Marketing Exchange: California's Citrus Organization and Its Manager.”

68 Meyer, History of the California Fruit Growers Exchange, 172.

69 Powell, Annual Reports for 1915, 1916, 1917.

70 See the Annual Report, 1920.

71 Holman, “Keeping Faith with the Consumer,” 535; Collins, “Marketing California Citrus,” 198; and Meyer, History of the California Fruit Growers Exchange, 176.

72 Powell, Annual Report, 1914–1916.

73 Consult Powell, Holman, and Collins as cited earlier.

74 Heritage of Gold, 71 and Annual Report, 1921 and 1922.

75 Powell, Annual Report, 1920–22, Sunkist Records Center, Ontario, Calif.

76 Meyer, History of the California Fruit Growers Exchange, 172–183; Annual Reports, 1921–22.

77 Powell, Annual Report, 1916, 12.

78 Collins, “Marketing California Citrus,” 198. “The Exchange has gotten great prestige among the jobbers by its advertising campaign. Its standing is entirely different than before being regarded now as the leader in the citrus business. Recently a certain fruit jobber suddenly began buying Exchange fruit exclusively. As he had never bought any before we were interested to know what caused his change of heart. It developed that at a meeting with his salesmen he asked their opinion as to what could be done to increase orange sales. With one voice, they replied, ‘give us Sunkist as a talking point’.” “One Italian said to me recently, ‘Your advertising is no help, they all want Sunkist any way.’ I thanked him.” Don Francisco, “How ‘Sunkist’ Is Put Over,” California Citrograph (June 1916): 6.

79 Annual Reports, 1921-22; C. Daniel, Bitter Harvest, chap. 1 & 2.

80 See the memoirs of Houston, Eight Years with Wilson's Cabinet, for a first-hand view of the New Freedom legislative program as it applied to agriculture.

81 Sklar, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 328–332. George Farrand, General Counsel of the Exchange, declared in reflection of Powell's perspective on the FTC: “Much objection has been made to this inquisitorial power of the Commission, but it seems to me that if the Commission is to obtain any respect in the business world, it must necessarily be given power to get at the facts. The power to investigate without the power to compel disclosure would be worthless legislation.” “The Federal Trade Commission Act and the Clayton Bill,” Copy of Remarks of George E. Farrand to the Board of Directors of the California Fruit Growers Exchange (11 Nov. 1914), BPI, USDA, NA.

82 Powell, Annual Report, 1917; Powell, “Revolving the Consumer's Dollar Backwards,” California Citrograph (Jan. 1916): 10.

83 Meyer, History of the California Fruit Growers Exchange, 181.

84 Powell served from July 1917 to Feb. 1919 as Chief of the Perishable Foods Division, with sporadic visits to California on leave to attend to Exchange business. See Powell, “Policies and Plan of Operation—Perishables,” U.S. Food Administration (USFA) (April 1918); USFA, NA, RG 4, Suitland, Md. For an insider account of the Food Administration, see Mullendore, William Clinton, History of the United States Food Administration, 1917–1919 (Stanford, Calif, 1941)Google Scholar. Kennedy, David M., Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York, 1980) 117–126Google Scholar, offers insight into Hoover's approach to the complex problems of domestic food supply and support for the allies. For the best recent interpretive account of Hoover's farm policy, with a review of the Food Administration, see Hamilton, From New Day to New Deal, pp. 26, 30–31, 64.

85 Hamilton, From New Day to New Deal, “The Federal Farm Board,” 50. Hamilton's dissertation provides the fullest discussion of the FFB and its cooperative marketing policies. Norman's work also relied on FFB papers that are no longer extant, thus making it indispensable for the study of the agency.