640 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



and a half for that. And for this reason: There are thousands anJ 

 thousands of claims on file in the leading freight claim offices. Yours is 

 only one of the mass. To get it up for attention and keep it there, re- 

 quires a personal visit with the man handling your claims — and often 

 several of them. Correspondence is all sorted away nicely in the files, 

 but don't get the right results, nor get them quickly. You haven't the 

 time to drop your other affairs and come to the city to look after the 

 matter yourself, neither has your receiver, or the traffic manager of 

 the various live stock exchanges thruout the country where not located 

 in Chicago and convenient to the claim department. Merely filing a claim 

 will not get results. It takes a great deal of the right kind of follow up 

 work. The work done by clerks in the offices of most commission men 

 is at the best only superficial, because it is to them strictly a side issue. 



The average shipper, I believe, is not familiar with the way in which 

 a railroad claim should be supported and filed. Many such claims that 

 I have seen in freight claim offices consist only of a hand-written letter, 

 stating an arbitrary sum sustained as loss with no statement as to how 

 the loss was arrived at, or any information to support the claim or enable 

 a railroad claim agent to start an efficient investigation. What is the 

 result? The assistant in the freight claim department — the man who 

 does the actual work — passes it up to handle the other claims that can 

 be investigated more easily. The shipper who has done all that he 

 thought was necessary wonders why the claim is not paid. 



Again, you will find that the large number of claim assistants in a 

 freight claim office make the actual decisions on your claims. When- 

 ever an adverse decision is given, the claim must be taken up to his 

 superior. This can be done only by a personal visit for correspondence 

 never reaches the right man. It is here that the shipper, the commission 

 merchant, or his agent, not located in Chicago, often fails to accomplish 

 results. 



It is to overcome these evils, that the Corn Belt Meat Producers' 

 Association, together with the Farmers' Grain Dealers' Association of 

 Iowa, Indiana, North Dakota, and several other states, and the National 

 Swine Growers' Association, have established a railroad claim department 

 in Chicago to care for all of your railroad claim troubles. The leading 

 railroad claim offices are located there — in fact, six of them are only 

 three blocks away. It is in Chicago that the decisions on practically 

 all of your claims are made. You may ship to Sioux City, or to Omaha, 

 and yet if you are located on the Rock Island, the Chicago, Burlington & 

 Quincy, the Illinois Central, the Chicago & Northwestern, or the Chicago, 

 Milwaukee & St. Paul, and your shipment either starts or is delivered 

 upon any one of these roads, your claim can be decided in Chicago. We 

 are in constant personal touch with the men who handle your claims. 

 What information is necessary to make good on the claim, we obtain 

 where such is possible. We file the claim with the proper information 

 attached and in the manner that will secure the quickest action. Corre- 

 spondence is reduced to the very minimum and "red tape" is eliminated. 



We aim to give that attention which a matter involving real money 

 should receive. We can't always secure results, but we do believe we 



