108 



operating cold storage or refrigerating warehouses. In so far as storage 

 may affect the quality of food stuffs there is no difference between the large 

 public warehouse and the private ice box, except that in all probability 

 goods cannot be handled as successfully at the smaller plant. However, 

 the stock of goods held at the hotel or butcher shop for local consumption 

 is never so great as to influence the market, and for that reason the gen- 

 erally recognized necessity for the publication of storage holdings does not 

 obtain. Moreover, unless legislation presumes to label cold storage goods 

 all the way from the warehouse to the consumer's table, there is no neces- 

 sity in the case of the individual plant for the system of marking followed 

 by the warehouseman. Goods taken from storage are sent to the hotel 

 kitchen or to the home of the consumer without delay, and deterioration is 

 avoided, as might not be tbe case with the careless handling of goods 

 drawn from cold storage for distribution over a larger area. 



Recognizing a strong sentiment for cold storage regulation and the 

 fact that such legislation is already in force, not only in Western States 

 where no warehouses are in operation, but in the populous Eastern States 

 of Massachusetts, New York. Xew Jersey and Pennsylvania, it behooves 

 the industry to demand adequate protection by federal legislation, protec- 

 tion against unwise state legislation, protection against the loudly expressed 

 yet admittedly erroneous statement that the cold storage industry is em- 

 ployed to manipulate prices to the detriment of the consumer, protection 

 against the firmly established impression that goods deteriorate markedly 

 in storage, protection against the oft-repeated tale that food-poisoning 

 follows the ingestion of cold stored goods. Legislation that accomplishes 

 these facts will not operate to curb the development of the industry, but 

 rather to stabilize and encourage the use of refrigeration by the producer 

 and of cold stored foods by every consumer. 



With the passage of adequate cold storage legislation and the develop- 

 ment of a practice of labelling which declares the character of the goods 

 to the purchaser, tbe idea now held that cold storage is an artifice used by 

 the speculator to force higher prices and a practice which spoils food 

 instead of preserving it will no longer obtain. 



And when cold storage is no longer feared, our markets will be wi- 

 dened and the food supply enlarged by tbe thousands and hundreds of thou- 

 sands of tons of edible products which now rot on the ground for want of 

 facilities to preserve them to such a time that they can find a profitable 

 market. 



