18 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



The shipment of carload lots of green deciduous fruit to the Eastern 

 States during the year of 1888, was about nineteen hundred; of this num- 

 ber the Fruit Union, or in other words, the fruit growers, shipped them- 

 selves eight hundred and fifty, a gain of ninety carloads over the preced- 

 ing year. Had grapes carried well, and as all had a reason to believe 

 they would from previous years' experience, the Union would have started 

 one hundred cars more. 



The special train service furnished by the transportation companies was 

 excellent in every respect. In point of fact, the time made by the special 

 fruit trains was even better than the passenger train shipments, as these 

 trains were rarely behind time. 



This year's experience serves to show that shipment of fruit should not 

 be made in any other way, as delays are often occasioned upon other 

 trains, whereas the special fruit trains have but one object in view, that 

 is to get its load to its destination at the earliest moment possible. This 

 eight to ten days on the road by the old freight train service will not do 

 for this progressive age and increased demand for California fruit. 



As shipments increase further reductions will, no doubt, be made in 

 freight rates, when our shippers will be in better condition to compete with 

 our eastern fellow workers in years when, as in the one just closed, they 

 have full crops and can afford to sell their peaches and grapes at 1^ cents, 

 per pound, as they did largely the past year. To make our fruit industry 

 fairly prosperous we must now receive 5 cents per pound for the fruit in a 

 wholesale way. 



The transportation companies have been taxed to their utmost capacity 

 to provide suitable cars for the handling of our fruit crop in the past. 

 With the thousands of new acres which every year are sending in their 

 quota, the problem is one which the railroad companies only can solve by 

 the most untiring efforts in building new cars. 



As an illustration of how various portions of the State are coming into, 

 prominence as fruit-producing sections, one has but to glance at the table 

 of shipments showing receipt and distribution of the fruit shipped East for 

 the past season. Instead of a great majority coming from one or two points 

 we now have many places shipping, and the increase has not come from 

 the old established centers, such as Davisville, Natoma, San Jose, Vaca- 

 ville, etc., as, with the exception of Sacramento, they are behind the record 

 of 1887, and the increase in the number of cars sent from Sacramento is 

 largely due to an increase of small shipments made from all points there, 

 to be made up in carload lots. We notice on the list many new places as 

 coming into prominence as fruit-shipping points, such as Newcastle, Colfax, 

 Santa Rosa, Cordelia, and Mayhews. 



Boston and New York have this year taken, at unusually good prices, 

 all the fruit sent there. The Union alone has put one hundred and thirty- 

 three cars into these two cities, and others have, without doubt, shipped as 

 many more, say in all two hundred and seventy-five carloads, where two 

 years ago fifteen carloads at the best were dispatched to them. This pro- 

 portion of increase and consumption is certainly very gratifying to those 

 who argue on the negative side of over production. 



The total shipment of green fruit from the State during the past season 

 will exceed that of 1887 by about one hundred and twenty-five carloads. 

 Many more would have been shipped, as the fruit was here, but the cer- 

 tainty of a large crop of domestic fruit East, and our inadequate facilities 

 for handling, together with chances of failure as to condition, and the fact 

 that unless the fruit was fancy the price would be low, prevented a larger 

 increase of shipments. 



