RISE OF COMMERCIAL CULTURE 57 



with berries by an association of growers at Cobden. It 

 held about a ton of ice in each end. I went ahead to De- 

 troit to make sure of a market, and the car was loaded by 

 the growers. With this half charge of ice it might have 

 gone through in fair condition, but for the misfortune that 

 some wise railroad man took out the plugs from the ice 

 boxes in the roof to give the berries *a chance for a little 

 air,' and left them out. Of course, the ice w^as melted in 

 a day and the bulk of the cargo was ruined. 



" This discouraged community efforts in this line at that 

 time. I, however, began experimenting w^ith our own 

 berries by building a cooling box in our packing shed at 

 Anna, Illinois, and holding the berries in it for twenty-four 

 hours to cool off, and then sending them by express. It 

 was found that those so cooled went into Chicago in better 

 condition than those freshly picked from the field, although 

 they were one day older. Repeated experiments seemed to 

 establish this fact. 



"This decided my plans. I went to Chicago and en- 

 gaged the best refrigerator car then made — the old 

 Tiffany patent, with a V-shaped ice box suspended from 

 the roof and running the full length of the car. The ut- 

 most capacity of this ice pan was 1| tons. I knew well 

 that this quantity could not both cool off a load of berries 

 and keep it cool for two or three days, so I built a cooling 

 house at Anna large enough to hold ten tons of strawber- 

 ries, and I cooled the load down for a day in that house, 

 then transferred it to the Tiffany car. The berries went 

 into the car at about fifty degrees F. The result was 

 a complete success from the start. No such solid, good- 

 keeping berries had ever been seen in Chicago. I enlarged 

 this cooling house at Anna, built one at Villa Ridge, and 

 another at Cobden. For several years we handled our 



