135 



selves the maximum efficiency, and they are no doubt endeavoring to give 

 you the best service. 



Delegate: We have been charged refrigerator car rates for six 

 months and there hasn't been any ice in them, and we pay the same 

 charge as when there were no refrigerator cars. 



Dr. Pennington: You are so close to the Interstate Commerce 

 Commission I believe you will have to go to them about that. All our 

 shipping questions have their problems. They are hard knots to unravel 

 and the railroads as well have their tangles. These are knotty knots 

 and which side of the fence are we going to be on? Maybe we are all 

 wrong in this matter, but let us do the very best we can. We honestly 

 think this work we are doing in the matter of investigation should be 

 carried out along this line as to methods of doing it, then take that 

 information to work out a system for production and distribution, to 

 give the very best thought on the subject that we are able to give. That 

 is what the Agricultural Department must do now to help us in this 

 food problem. What to do with that information is right up to you. 

 We are doing the very best we can and the very best we know how, to get 

 the best results. 



Mr. Yearsley: We have it on the authority of H. B. Fullerton, 

 also on the authority of Professor King of the University, that there exists 

 a systematic destruction in throwing away produce, on the railroads on 

 the way to the big cities. . I would like to know to what extent that has 

 been and what the government has done towards investigating it. 



Dr. Pennington: So far as the work comes under our supervision 

 and so far as we are concerned, we have never made any nor do we make 

 any investigations. I don't know anything for or against that question. 



Delegate: Assuming a poultryman in Texas wishes to provide for 

 his shipment to the eastern states, would that probably be by co-opera- 

 tion with the railroads? 



Dr. Pennington: Do you mean what we are doing with regard to a 

 shipper in Texas? 



Delegate: Yes. 



Dr. Pennington: We have gone down into the storage districts. 

 Sometimes we have put our inspectors into packing houses to work with 

 the packer to show him how to kill his poultry, to load his car and get 

 his stuff out. We have a department connected with that where practical 

 men who are looking after this phase of the work are engaged in the pro- 

 ducing sections all the time. Just now this "field station" is down in 

 Missouri. It has been in Kansas, Iowa and Tennessee, going from one 

 packing house to another, answering questions and demonstrating the 



