20 BULLETIN 191, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, 
The manager of the bureau, in a statement issued February 14, 
1914, comparing results in California with results in the territory of 
the Intermountain Demurrage Bureau, where the same roads oper- 
ate, distinctly disclaims this and' insists that to the rate alone are 
due the results of greater car efficiency. 
CONCLUSION. 
If, in times of acute car shortage, the shipper who needs cars and 
is unable to get them could actually see all the other car users at all 
the other stations in his immediate section who are taking from two 
to seven days to load and unload cars, when it could and should be 
done in as many hours, no doubt there would be a speedy reformation 
among car users and a radical revision of some of the demurrage 
regulations now in effect. If his vision could be enlarged so as to 
take in the entire country the effect would be magical. Most, if not 
all, of the difficulties experienced in connection with car supply and 
car detention and the demurrage remedies proposed to alleviate the 
evils of car shortage have arisen from a lack of breadth of vision on 
the part of shippers, railroad officials, and legislators. 
No car user has any moral right to detain a car one moment longer 
than is necessary to load or to unload it. Unfortunately the propor- 
tion of shippers who take this viaw.^f the situation, when they them- 
selves are the detainers, is very small. Every shipper holds this view 
when it is some one else that is detaining the car. Car users who 
detain cars through carelessness, indifference, or ignorance of the 
meaning of "car shortage" and " congested terminals" are few. The 
people responsible for car detention are that vast body of highly 
intelligent business men who find it more profitable to use cars for 
storage purposes than to provide other storage facilities. Other rea- 
sons for car detention by this class of shippers are comparatively 
insignificant. 
It is not good business to use for storage, space which costs 50 cents 
per cubic foot to construct, when better storage space can be had for 
one-third that cost or less, and especially when the higher priced 
space can earn so much more as a freight car than as mere storage. 
Storage space does not need costly trucks, steel underframes, auto- 
matic couplers, and air-brake equipment. Shippers must realize that, 
from one point of view, they and not the railroads are the owners of 
the cars of the country. So long as they insist on using them as 
storage warehouses they must be prepared to pay the cost without 
complaint. Moral suasion has so far failed to induce them to con- 
struct their own storage warehouses when they could get apparently 
cheaper storage in freight cars. The next step in remedying car 
shortage should be to limit more closely the free time allowed and 
