FIFTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 23 



The ag-gregate seemed to indicate a crop of large volume, 

 equal in size to any previously produced, and notwithstanding 

 that in the past two or three years large numbers of trees had 

 been ruined by the severe winter weather, the effects of the 

 scale, this loss had evidently been made up for by younger 

 orchards reaching bearing age. 



Owing to the failure of the Delaware peach crop no refrig- 

 erator cars were easily available with shelving suitable for 

 our form of fruit package — the one-half bushel stave basket, 

 Avhich is similar in form to those used by the Delaware orchard 

 men. The peaches from further south are shipped mostly in 

 crates or carriers which require no shelving, so that the only 

 refrigerator cars available were these cars, and the car owners 

 refused to do any shelving, simply offering the car for the 

 same rental as they received the season before. The officials 

 of the railroad company finally proposed that they would 

 shelve the cars themselves and increase the rental price per 

 trip to $20.00 per car, which plan was carried out; also a full 

 supply of ventilated house cars, well equipped with shelving, 

 was provided, so that the peach shippers were well supplied 

 with cars to move- their fruit. While the increased price of 

 the refrigerator car service cut so much out of the returns to 

 the grower, which he could ill afford to spare, as later fruit 

 sales emphasized, still at that we are informed that the rail- 

 road company lost hundreds of dollars in their contract with 

 the refrigerator car people, and in shelving cars not used, 

 owing to the shrinkage in the volume of the crop from the 

 estimates made by the growers, due largely to unfavorable 

 weather conditions which caused severe losses in the orchards. 



I believe that on the part of the committee, as well as the 

 shippers, there is the feeling that the handling of the trans- 

 portation part of the shipping business w-as very well cared for 

 by the railroad company. However, the transportation com- 

 pany cannot be charged with a desire to do business at a loss, 

 and so some growers are guessing what the next shipping 

 season will have in store for us, for conditions, especially if 

 the refrigerator cars are for various reasons hard to get. 

 These questions of car service as well as train service (so 

 dependent upon labor) are of vital importance to the fruit- 



