The Great Fruit Marketing Matchmaker
With their main exchange dissolved, White Bluffs fruit growers find themselves suddenly popular—and indecisive—as three rival marketing companies compete for their allegiance.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Heart whole and fancy free since the recent passing of the Wenatchee Valley Fruit Exchange, about half of the growers at White Bluffs have been enjoying for the past week all the thrills of a debutante at her coming out party. Shall we cast our lot with the Northwest Fruit Exchange, the C. M. Kopp Company, or the Perham Fruit Company? Three meetings in one week have not clarified the atmosphere. On Monday night, growers rejected the C. M. Kopp Company proposition due to a 10 percent commission charge and skepticism about tonnage goals. By Thursday night, a committee was formed to consider forming a local cooperative and building a community-owned warehouse. The Spokesman was advised Friday that the C. M. Kopp Company intends to operate in White Bluffs and Hanford regardless, with a field man arriving next week to organize.
“Shall we cast our lot with the dignified and well known Northwest Fruit Exchange; shall we yield to that strong and dashing young suitor, the C. M. Kopp Company or will it be our neighbor, the Perham Fruit Company? Oh, Gosh! We WISH we could decide!”
Agricultural consolidation and the struggle for local cooperative independence defined the early years of the Columbia Basin. Today, the tension between massive corporate distributors and smaller, locally-owned supply chains remains a vital part of the economic identity of Washington's fruit-growing regions.
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