6 
The Southern Pacific Railroad’ Company, owning nearly 5,000 
miles of lines, own all railroads going out of California, south 
and eastward, also nearly all the internal lines of that state. It, 
therefore, has a monopoly of the fruit traffic. In addition to this, 
the company controls the whole ice supply of California. This is 
all natural ice, obtained from the Sierra Nevada mountains. The 
company’s line going east to Ogden crosses these mountains and 
at certain points they have great storehouses, where the winter 
ice is gathered and kept for summer use. All the ice for the 
supply of the refrigerator cars is obtained from this source, the 
Southern Pacific making a large profit out of the sale of it, as, 
strange to say, this class of car is owned by a separate company 
or corporation, which pays the other one a certain sum for the 
haulage of them. All fruit, therefore, sent east out of California 
had to pass over the Southern Pacific Company’s lines, and as 
they were making a profit out of the supply of ice to the refriger- 
ator car-owners it was not to be expected that they would go very 
far out of their way in the direction of assisting in the introduc- 
tion of an innovation which would dispense with the use of ice. 
The refrigerator companies had also a large amount of capital 
invested in their cars. As long as the fruit-growers in California 
could stand the refrigerator rates, and send on their produce, no 
very great amount of attention was likely to be given by them to 
an invention or discovery like that of Dr. Perkins. On the other 
hand, fruit-growers, while recognising the great benefits which 
would accrue to them by the introduction of Dr. Perkins’ system 
for preservation and transportation of their produce, were quite 
powerless, no other railway but the Southern Pacific being avail- 
able. Their recognition of the efficiency of the Perkins process, 
even when it was in an earlier stage, and the fruit preserved only 
in a stationary chamber, may be inferred from a resolution passed 
at the Fruit-growers’ Convention in San Francisco in the early 
part of last year. The resolution was as follows :—Resolved— 
“That we have heard with great interest the system devised by 
Dr. Perkins for the transportation of fruits to secure its delivery 
without impairment of freshness, flavour, and appearance, and we 
hereby express our appreciation of the merits of the system, and 
this Convention earnestly requests the several railroad companies 
to examine it, and to adjust their service cars to facilitate the 
experiment, believing that the system may prove an efficient 
means of securing a better market for our fruit.” 
I may also state that, subsequent to interviewing Dr. Perkins, 
when visiting a number of great orchards, each varying from 
250 to 1,640 acres in extent in California, I questioned the 
managers and proprietors with respect to their opinion of the 
merits of the Perkins process, and in every case it was favorably 
spoken of and referred to as the coming system for fruit trans- 
portation and preservation. Mr. A. T. Hatch, the largest fruit- 
grower in the world, owning nearly 5,000 acres of orchards, 
