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OFFICIAL REPORT OF THE! PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



Commission before it is settled. If the railroads do not pay it the Harbor Com- 

 missioners must increase the tolls on perishables to cover it, as the Harbor needs the 

 rentals. If it were taxed, in tolls on the perishables, it would be about 3 cents per ton, 

 which I, for one, would rather pay than lose the market. It would amount, for me, to 

 about 15 cents a year. I think it good business anyway to pay $7,200 a year to have the 

 railroad deliver the stuff rather than to pay $80,000 a year to have draymen bump it 

 over cobblestones. But I am in favor of making the railroads pay it, and I think they 

 will. It is the one unsettled point between the railroads and the committee. Both are 

 taking their chances. It is my understanding that the Southern Pacific Company now 

 strongly favors the Free Market and is willing to take its chance on having to pay rent 

 for track room, and that an alliance, said by their enemies to be unholy, exists between 

 the producers of perishables, the wholesale merchants of San Francisco, and the 

 Southern Pacific Company to bring it about. 



The next interest to be dealt with was the commission merchants. They did not 

 want a free chance to sell produce on State property if they were going to be watched. 

 They would rather pay rent and be allowed to deal with widows and others in their 

 own way. They have always opposed the movement all they could, but their opposi- 

 tion has never amounted to anything. In fact, it has helped rather than hindered. It 

 is fair, however, to state their grounds of opposition. These were: 



1. Adams wanted to be superintendent of the market. This w T as mortifying to me, 

 for I had thought myself of Harbor Commissioner caliber at least, but I consoled 

 myself with reflecting that whoever tried to serve the public must expect to endure 

 mortification. 



2. That Adams was in the employ of the "railroad." There was nothing mortify- 

 ing about that, for the railroad is said to be good pay, which is more than can be said 

 of ray employers of record, the mass convention of producers. No other grounds of 

 opposition were ever set up by the commission merchants. 



But the trouble was this didn't seem to prove much. There was no allegation that 

 I should not make a good superintendent if I wanted to get up at two o'clock every 

 morning and go down to the wharf for the sake of a petty office, or that the railroad 

 was not contributing to a worthy object if it was paying me to help the producers get 

 what they said they wanted. It was, therefore, unnecessary to deny either of these 

 things, and as the commission merchants rested their case there their argument gave no 

 trouble. Their actual fighting consisted in getting one or two trade journals to inti- 

 mate or allege the above-mentioned things about me, and to send one or two of their 

 number to the proprietor of a journal for which I sometimes write, to induce him to 

 fire me on those grounds. One man, not a commission merchant, was silly enough to 

 write a letter warning the newspaper man against me. He wrote from this city and is 

 probably here to-day. These things contributed somewhat to the joy of the newspaper 

 office, but otherwise it did not count. The commission men monkeyed in a feeble way 

 with one or two members of the Legislature, who told us they might have to go out 

 doors when Free Market matters were up, as they might lose a vote or two next time 

 if they voted for us, and they did not want to vote against us. They went out all 

 right. They or somebody else got a lawyer to appear before legislative committees 

 against us. He said his aunt, or grandmother, or somebody had an interest in some 

 river land, and he appeared for her. Maybe he did, but nobody believed it. The fresh 

 fruit commission merchants are rather a trifling lot and their opposition harms nobody. 



The draying interests were against the Free Market, and include some influential 

 men who doubtless exerted their pull against us, but I never knew of it. 



The interests which have really thus far prevented the execution of the law are 

 represented by Messrs. Goodall, Perkins & Co. To that concern and no other influence 

 j~ due i lie fact that the shippers of perishables by rail are denied equal privileges on the 

 waterfront with shippers by water. The reason is, that they do not wish to remove 

 their repair shops and coal yard; and thus far they have succeeded in making the 

 shippers by rail pay $80,000 a year in order that they may save the cost of moving and 

 doubtless paying a higher rental. There are many places which will accommodate 

 them ; there is no place except the State blocks which they occupy where there can be 

 ;i Free Market for the shippers of perishable products by rail. 



The bill introduced in the Legislature of 1897 had no promotion, or next to none. It 



