CAR-LOT SHIPMENTS OF FRUITS AND VEGETABLES. 3 
A different form of postal card was sent to the agents of boat lines. 
Upon these forms unload reports were secured which also stated the 
points of loading, with the quantity of each commodity forwarded 
from each point. The quantity was usually expressed in packages 
or pounds and was reduced in this Bureau to equivalent carloads. 
There were received during 1916 reports of the shipment of 634,175 
| carloads, originating or billed at 8,798 railroad stations and steam- 
2 boat wharves. 
The purpose of this bulletin is to present in tabulated form the 
information which has thus been gathered. It is designed to give 
shipping information only. It does not purport to give all the points 
or areas of production or to represent their relative importance. For 
example, Baltimore, Md., is reported as having shipped 237 carloads 
of sweet potatoes and 2,170 carloads of white potatoes. It is known, 
however, that but few of these are grown in the immediate vicinity of 
that city. A large number are hauled in from Anne Arundel County 
in trucks, wagons, and small boats. These are sold to dealers, who 
ship them out to other points. For a similar reason the importance 
as a producing area of that part of New Jersey near Philadelphia is 
not fairly represented by the figures showing the shipments from the 
stations within that territory. Since Philadelphia consumes large 
quantities of fruits and vegetables, the importance of the adjacent 
producing areas is not indicated even by the shipments from that 
city. Similar conditions exist around many other cities and towns. 
Canneries and drying plants located in producing sections also 
increase the difficulty of gauging the total production of a section 
by the shipments reported. 
The methods by which most railroads keep their records make it 
impracticable to distinguish between cars actually loaded at a given 
_ point and cars reshipped from that point; therefore, if our reports 
' were complete the total carload shipments would exceed the surplus 
production of those States which contain numerous storage and dis- 
tributing points from which large quantities of fruits and vegetables 
_ are reshipped. The shipments from a number of seaports include 
many cars which were imported. While there are a few commodi- 
ties, such as bananas, which are not grown in this country, there are 
many others, such as oranges, lemons, and onions, which are of 
_ both foreign and domestic origin. As to the latter, it is impossible 
_ to determine how many are of domestic origin and therefore already 
_ covered by reports from the stations where grown. ,There is much 
duplication of this sort in this bulletin, and the reader must not 
_ assume, that all the shipments credited to large cities and to certain 
important railroad junctions were of crops actually grown at those 
points. 
