46 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



Brandeis of Boston said that the railroads of this country 

 wasted $300,000,000 a year. I don't doubt but you could 

 prove that they wasted a great deal more than that in another 

 sense, for the railroads, with their agricultural experts, have 

 been building up, down along their lines, farmers' districts for 

 horticulture, for agriculture, and then allowed wasteful dumping 

 into the big centers. All the traffic managers seemed to care 

 about on some of these railroads was to get the material 

 on to the cars, get the stuff into the big centers and get the 

 freight for it. The railroads in the end suffer for it, because the 

 farmers are more or less discouraged in some portions of the 

 country, and will not produce in the same way another year. 

 Because of the fact that the railroads have not mapped the 

 traflSc of this country, or have not combined to take care of 

 the markets in a scientific way, they have no doubt wasted 

 millions and millions of dollars. I said to a railroad man the 

 other day, "One of the best arguments for government owner- 

 ship that could be made against you men would be the handling 

 of the products of last year." 



Question. How would you standardize the milk for Boston? 



Mr. McCarthy. I am not going into that problem. New 

 York gives you, in some ways, an example of what could be 

 done, but your situation is a difficult and peculiar one. There 

 is one sure thing I can say, that organization in this district 

 would be a far better thing for you than to be in your present 

 unorganized condition. Your only salvation in this district is 

 to work for standardization and then work to reduce your cost 

 of production by collective action. You can standardize 

 almost any kind of produce. I have seen in Holland the 

 standardization of almost every kind of vegetable possible. 

 In nearly all Holland, now, the ordinary vegetables that come 

 in are in some degree standardized. They are sold by lots at 

 auction and the buyers must sit up in a big stand and look at 

 the lot and then bid upon the lot, and the sample must corre- 

 spond to the entire lot. You would be surprised to see how well 

 you can standardize all sorts of difiicult things. There is hardly 

 anything that you can't work out with some kind of standard. 



Mr. A. H. Wheat. You spoke of goods being sold in 

 Holland at auction; what class of people buy them at auction? 



