DEHYDRATION OF FRUITS AND VEGETABLES. 11 



Senator Norris. What about the expense of the preparation of the 

 plant, the drying machinery, etc. ? 



The Chairman. Senator Norris, would you mind, before you pro- 

 ceed, allowing me to continue for a moment. I want him to illus- 

 trate the shipping in order to get the sequence. 



You were telling, Mr. Horst, about the expense of shipping to- 

 matoes to Havre, France. 



Mr. Horst. If you take this case of tomatoes, that would cost 

 you, say, $4 in New York, by the time you shipped that case to 

 Havre, at the present freight rates and at the present war-risk rates, 

 it will make your deliveries in Havre, roughly, $7 per case, while if 

 you take this product in the dried state you have got a correspond- 

 ingly less freight rate according to the difference in bulk, which, as 

 I say, is less than 5 per cent of the bulk. And by having a lower 

 cost in the first place, you have a lower war-risk insurance, and the 

 differences become greater the greater the distance that you move 

 your product and the greater freight rates that you have to contend 

 with. 



Just before I left California I saw a shipment of 50 pounds of 

 green sprouts from California to some point East, where the express 

 rate is 12 cents per pound. In order to ship these 50 pounds of green 

 sprouts to the East they had to ship a 100-pound cake of ice and 

 pay the expressage at the rate of 12 cents per hundred pounds on the 

 ice and the 50 pounds of sprouts, making 150 pounds at 12 cents a 

 pound, which made $18, to ship this 50 pounds of sprouts. The whole 

 50 pounds could have been dried and shipped as 3 pounds by parcel 

 post at a cost of 35 or 36 cents instead of $18 for expressage alone, 

 and not counting the cost of the sprouts and ice. So that the differ- 

 ences in cost for vegetables, no matter how you figure them, is in 

 favor of the dried product ; and, of course, when you start in figuring 

 the movement of fresh products by express the figures are stagger- 

 ing. When you take these sprouts and dry them in any place where 

 they happen to have been grown, you dry them fresh the same day 

 you pick them, and you have a product that is substantially equal 

 to the fresh product, and a product that you know positively is never 

 going to spoil, at least in a reasonable length of time. 



Senator Smith of Georgia.. Then, in shipping fresh vegetables 

 there is a substantial loss, despite the care used, in the vegetables that 

 are not kept fresh. 



Mr. Horst. It is estimated that of all of the vegetables grown in 

 the United States, potatoes included^ that there is about 40 or 50 per 

 cent of the product that never reaches the dinner table; those are 

 the losses between the farm and the consumer and by the consumer. 



Under the drying process there is no loss whatever. The entire 

 product; that is, the sound portion, the edible portion, of the entire 

 product is saved. 



The Chairman. You told me yesterday that something was saved 

 in the drying process that was lost even in the canning process. 



Mr. HoRST. In the drying process you save the tops in the gardens 

 and use them for feeding cattle, and the peelings of the product you 

 save in the drying process and use them for hog feed ; and you have 

 them at those evaporating plants in sufficient quantity to raise hogs 

 on the peelings and raise cattle on the tops. 



