PROCEEDINGS OF NINETEENTH FRUIT GROWERS' CONVENTION. 43 



discuss the expedited ventilated service without making comparisons 

 between the two systems, and really the question resolves itself into . a 

 choice between them. 



In instituting a comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of 

 the two systems we will note briefly — 



First — That for the transportation of some classes of fruits (the 

 earlier and more delicate varieties), the refrigerator system only is 

 available for through shipments. 



Second — That for extra long shipments, and for diversions, the advan- 

 tage lies with the refrigerator. 



To explain: With most varieties of fruit it is unsafe to risk a much 

 longer trip in a ventilator car than five days — the minimum limit of 

 the schedule to Chicago. The service provides but one train per day, 

 and a delay of a short time only — such delays as are unavoidable and 

 frequent in railroad work (from track and train accidents) — may compel 

 the holding of a car for twenty-four hours, i. e., until next expedited train 

 time — making the risk of billing beyond Chicago somewhat hazardous, 

 except for extra hardy fruit or during exceptionally favorable weather. 

 For the same reason, the inadvisability of trusting ordinary fruit in 

 ventilators beyond a certain time limit, will prompt the making of what 

 diversions seem necessary to be made in the territory west of Chicago. 

 Here a difficulty has been pointed out. I copy from a letter written not 

 long ago upon this subject by a fruit-shipper of long and extensive expe- 

 rience. He says, " Your ventilator is billed to Chicago, and you are watch- 

 ing that market for its arrival. To-day you receive information that the 

 Chicago fruit market is demoralized. Therefore, you must divert. The 

 car once off the Southern Pacific lines, the matter of diversion must be 

 taken up with the connecting line, and ten chances to one, when you 

 finally succeed in getting a report, it is to the effect that the train has 

 passed Council Bluffs and it is too late to accomplish a desirable diver- 

 sion, the markets surrounding Chicago being in sympathetic condition 

 on account of quotations sent out by brokers throughout the entire 

 territory. You will take, then, the Chicago price for ventilated fruit in 

 a broken market or run your chances of going further and faring better 

 or worse, with the continually increasing risk of deterioration in the 

 quality of your fruit in that ventilated car. Now had your fruit been 

 properly loaded in a refrigerator car you would have been fixed to stand 

 ordinary delays in transit, and you would also have been in shape to 

 have diverted your car wherever you might have caught it, and to have 

 sent it as far east or across country north or south as you might have 

 chosen." 



This, of course, is a hypothetical case, but shippers know how fre- 

 quently each of the mentioned suppositions will happen during a season. 



The great strike in 1893 demonstrated the advantage of refrigeration. 

 Suppose the delayed cars all along the line had been ventilators. It is 

 true that such a protracted delay to fruit in transit may not occur again 

 for many years, but the fact of the saving and selling of so large a pro- 

 portion of the long delayed fruit at that time, furnishes a very conclusive 

 argument in favor of refrigeration in cases of delay, whether great or 

 small. Trifling hitches in time occur frequently, and in the aggregate 

 would constitute a grave danger to fruit, were it not insured by refrig- 

 eration. 



