Ee mm TER 
278 ECONOMIC ESSAYS IN HONOR OF JOHN BATES CLARK 
een — rr 
he industry. Market conditions were carefully studied, packing 
and grading were vastly improved, and the consumption of raisins 
was greatly increased by better salesmanship and extensive 
advertising. 
In 1912, California produced seventy-five thousand tons of 
raisins. (Year Book, Department of Agriculture, 1925, p. 282.) 
The cooperative association handled 33 per cent of the crop and 
orowers received, on an average 3.6 cents per pound. The costs of 
advertising for this year are not available but in 1914, $120,803, 
or 1.9 per cent of the gross sales, was spent for that purpose. 
Bulletin No. 1302, Department of Agriculture, p. 170.) 
From 1912 on, there was an almost vertical rise in the volume 
of raisin production in California and by 1920 it had reached 
200,000 tons—an increase of 167 per cent. (Year Book, 1925 
p. 282. 
Despite the increase in production the association did not see 
fit to lower prices, but forced them still higher; and in 1920 
growers received an average price of 12.7 cents per pound, which 
was the maximum price in the history of the California raisin 
industry,—an increase over 1912 of 307 per cent. Bulletin 1302 
p. 70.) 
The high price stimulated the planting of raisin grapes at home 
and abroad. In California alone the increase in 1920 amounted 
0 25 per cent of the total former acreage and in this year the 
mportation of raisins was equal to the combined importation of 
the four years immediately preceding. (California Crops, 1921.) 
As in the case of coffee, the situation was partially saved by a 
purely adventitious circumstance—the demand for raisins due to 
srohibition. Despite this help, however, about one-third of the 
rop was unmarketed at the end of the season and the association 
was face to face with that Old Man of the Sea—an unmarketed 
surplus. In order to get this surplus out of the way of the new 
crop the price committee of the association set the price on July 
31, 1921, at thirty-three and one-third per cent below the July. 
price of 1920, and a year later it fixed the price for the carry- 
over (which amounted to about 35,000 tons) at from thirty per 
ent to thirty-six per cent under the price of July 31, 1921. How- 
ever, despite this situation, the committee fixed the price for the 
1922 crop at one-half a cent a pound above that of 1921. Owing 
to the high price, the domestic market was unable to absorb I