COLD STORAGE AND FOOD SPECULATION 61 



and other outlying points. The facilities for han- 

 dling supplies are grossly inadequate. The dealers 

 manipulate what there are, and the individual grower 

 is in a position where he must sell his fruit or let it 

 waste on the farm." 



Speaking on another occasion of the cold-storage 

 facilities of New York, Commissioner Dillon said: 



"Our cold-storage faciHties are equally inade- 

 quate. Such as we have are controlled by the 

 speculators in foods. Neither the producer nor the 

 consumer has access to them, with the result that 

 in times like these the speculator is in a position 

 to exact any price that his greed may dictate for 

 the food products that he controls through his mo- 

 nopoly of cold-storage facilities. 



"At least $7,000,000 a year can be saved in the 

 wholesale handling of live poultry in New York 

 City, $10,000,000 on eggs, and a similar amount on 

 dressed poultiy. Ten milHon dollars can be saved 

 on the distribution of butter, and besides these sav- 

 ings in the necessaiy cost of the physical handling 

 of these products at the present time, an efficient 

 system of marketing would save the people mitold 

 millions in the speculative prices that thej^ are now 

 pajdng. In the one item of milk alone, $15,000,000 

 can be saved to the people in the distribution of it." 



In its search for reasons for the high price of milk 

 and the sky-rocketing advance in eggs, the Wicks 

 legislative committee of New York State brought 

 out two facts : one, that the New York Central Rail- 

 road paid $25,000 a 3^ear to the estate of Westcott, 



