42 PROCEEDINGS OF NINETEENTH FRUIT GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



Offerings of fruit in ventilator cars for through shipment, however, 

 were found to be very small — much smaller than had been hoped and 

 expected — so small that trains could not be made up. Irregularity of 

 service was necessarily the result. 



The total shipments of deciduous fruits to Eastern mar- 

 kets to date, in round numbers _ 4,550. 



The total shipments of deciduous fruits in refrigerators. 4,385 = 96 per cent. 



The total shipments of deciduous fruits in ventilators... 165= 4 per cent. 



I have a letter from the manager of a very large shipping concern, in 

 which he bitterly complains that the expedited service was so irregular 

 that he could not depend upon it — that the notice given him of the 

 occasional trains was too short to be of use, and expressing regret and 

 disgust with the affair as managed during the season of '95. 



The railroad claims, apparently with truth, that it was not only will- 

 ing, but also anxious to make the service regular, but that the shippers 

 did not furnish a sufficient number of ventilator loads every day to 

 make it possible. 



If this statement be true, and I find no reason to doubt it, then the 

 onus of the comparative failure of the service falls upon the shippers 

 throughout the State. The conclusion is inevitable: They did not want 

 the expedited service bad enough to get it. But no one will gainsay the 

 assertion that a five-day ventilator service between Sacramento and 

 Chicago is an improvement on a seven-day or a nine-day service. 



What is there, then, in existing conditions of market and the fruit 

 trade, or inherent in the expedited ventilator plan, that has kept it from 

 reaching the plane of usefulness and success hoped for it by its origi- 

 nators? 



The shippers throughout the State certainly had no prejudice against 

 the service. If they did not use it, was it because they found it paid 

 them better to do otherwise? Was it because carloads of fruit per ven- 

 tilator, reported as arriving in first-class condition, sold upon arrival 

 for so much less than was received for similar varieties, arriving upon 

 the same day per refrigerator, that the saving in the non-use of refriger- 

 ation was more than offset — the refrigerated fruit netting more to the 

 grower? 



The statement in affirmation of this question has been frequently 

 made, with the additional information, that the buyers at the other end, 

 especially jobbers, who bought to reship, felt safer to pay the larger price 

 for the iced stock. 



If this condition of affairs has been any way nearly universal, then 

 until it can be clearly demonstrated that the buyer's conclusions are 

 unfounded and erroneous, a very serious limitation of the use and con- 

 sequent value of the service is apparent. But opinions upon this subject, 

 among shippers vary widely, I find, and there are those well qualified 

 to judge, who claim that much of the fruit that is shipped under refrig- 

 eration can, with proper ventilated service, be sent forward in the latter 

 manner with advantage to the producer. 



The aim of the projectors of the expedited ventilator service was and 

 is a very laudable one, in that they seek to bring about a reduction in 

 the cost of placing fruit upon the Eastern market, as compared with 

 the cost of refrigerated transportation. The great bulk of the work being 

 done at present according to the latter method, it seems impossible to 



