TWENTY-FOURTH ANNUAL FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



21 



Second— If the fruit-growers of California decide to establish an independent car line 

 and perfect an organization for that purpose, will the Southern Pacific haul their cars 

 and on what terms and conditions? 



Third — Will the Southern Pacific supply a proper and sufficient equipment of ven- 

 tilator cars? 



Fourth — If the company has not a sufficient equipment of ventilator cars to meet the 

 wants of the growers, will it build or convert cars for that purpose? 



Fifth— If so, how soon will the company undertake to furnish the cars required? 



Sixth— What is the Southern Pacific willing to do in the direction of inaugurating an 

 expedited ventilator train service through Ogden or more easterly points? 



Seventh — Will the company haul and give the same service and time to ventilator 

 cars that has been given to refrigerator cars? 



By answering these questions so that we may be able to present the facts in writing 

 to tbe convention, you will confer a great favor on the fruit-growers of California. 

 Very respectfully, 



E. D. STEPHENS, 



Chairman. 



The Railroad's Reply. 



Sax Francisco, May 20, 1899. 

 Mr. R. D. Stephens, Chairman of Committee on Transportation, Fruit-Growers 1 Associa- 

 tion, Sacramento, Cal.: 



Dear Sir : Answering your letter of the 18th instant, handed me by you in person, 

 with oral explanations pertaining thereto, I beg to remind you that it has always been 

 the desire of this company that the fruit of California producers reach Eastern markets 

 at the least practicable cost, and it cannot be charged that this company was party to 

 the introduction or development of the refrigerator plan of transportation, except in so 

 far as we yielded to the representations and experience of the shippers and growers, 

 accepting, as a matter of course, their verdict in favor of the refrigerator system. 



For several years the fruit was moved in ventilated fruit-cars, built by the carriers 

 especially for the traffic and furnished without expense to those who desired to load 

 them. Shippers- were not satisfied with the ventilated car, whether run on regular 

 freight trains or in special fast fruit trains, and insisted that only under refrigeration 

 could California's fruit be successfully placed in Eastern markets. Still, there were 

 some who, in convention and in person, expressed themselves as certain that the 

 transportation in ventilated cars could be made successful, and. in express compliance 

 with these representations, this company added to its ventilator equipment seven 

 hundred double-walled, paper-lined, ventilated fruit-cars, which embodied all the 

 valuable points in construction and ventilating appliances developed by experience. 

 These cars were, as always before, placed at shippers' disposal without charge, but the 

 issue proved that the business for which they were built, in expectation of handling it, 

 moved instead in refrigerators. 



For this company it was a costly experiment, made in sincere effort to meet the 

 views of the fruit-growers under promise in convention that the cars would be used. 

 Our ventilator' equipment so provided has consequently since been converted into box- 

 cars, and there is no changed condition with respect to transportation in ventilated 

 cars that would warrant the carriers in restoring at great expense the equipment which 

 has failed to stand the test of experience and been discarded by the growers and 

 shippers. 



The present refrigerator system of transportation is one developed by the demands 

 of the shippers. It began in 1888 with a call for refrigerators operated by a line that 

 would undertake to handle the fruit through from point of shipment to destination 

 under ice, and the initial refrigerator line in the traffic, started at the instance of 

 growers upon the same general plan as at present in vogue, except that the charges for 

 refrigeration at that time were from $60 to $120 per car higher than now. Owing to 

 adverse reasons, financial or commercial, but with which this company was in no wise 

 concerned, one refrigerator company after another dropped out of the traffic, this com- 

 pany from year to year aiming to furnish the refrigerator car, the utility of which was 

 proved by its general use on the part of growers. Last year three lines of refrigerator 

 cars were provided, but out of some 4,700 cars of fruit shipped all but a hundred or so 



