After the Fruit Agents Left, White Bluffs Growers Went Back to the Soil
Two weeks of jostling among marketing agencies ended with sixteen growers pledging stock in a community warehouse—and ten signing contracts with Perham Fruit Company.
After a rather exciting two weeks with various marketing agencies, all is calm and peaceful again with the growers in the White Bluffs district. B. A. Perham of the Perham Fruit Company has gone back to Yakima; J. E. Nestor of the Northwestern Fruit Exchange has returned to his home in Seattle; although two more representatives of the C. M. Kopp Company were in the field again last Friday and Saturday, a permanent man has not yet been stationed here, but it is said he will come when the fruit is ready to move; Tom Griner has hooked up with Hughie Robinson and “Bill” Schroeder, who was attracted over here by all the noise, left Monday morning for Seattle after spending a few days with us, satisfied that all was well with the Bowen Co. customers.
Sixteen growers at White Bluffs signed pledges for stock in a community warehouse, although they have not decided yet whether to build a new house or to take over the Wenatchee Valley Fruit Exchange warehouse. There is a divided sentiment on this question. Of these sixteen growers, ten of them with an approximate tonnage of 20,000 boxes, signed contracts with the Perham Fruit Company after the meeting Monday night.
““Sixteen growers at White Bluffs signed pledges for stock in a community warehouse, although they have not decided yet whether to build a new house or to take over the Wenatchee Valley Fruit Exchange warehouse.””
The episode captures a perennial farm-country question: whether growers should sell through outside packers or own the warehouse and marketing together. The same argument over cooperatives, middlemen and local control still shapes agricultural communities. Here it played out in White Bluffs, a town later erased from the map.
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