FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
37 
fruit necessary in some localities. With 
proper equipment washing and polishing 
is an easy process, and has become the 
rule in the best packing houses of the 
state. The best trade demand washed 
’ fruit. 
With the introduction of more compli¬ 
cated packing house machinery, which has 
come largely from California, there has 
come also an inclination to copy the Cali¬ 
fornia package. Let us hope that while 
we are ever ready to adopt every new idea 
that is good we may still retain enough of 
the good old fashioned Florida package 
that our fruit may be recognized as dis¬ 
tinctively Florida’s own—the best fruit 
in the world. 
J. C. Chase, Jacksonville, Fla. 
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : 
Mr. David H. Scott commissioned me 
to prepare a paper upon the methods of 
packing and shipping citrus fruits—hand¬ 
ling the shipping end. This gives me the 
opportunity of submitting the results of 
investigations carried on this season in 
shipping and distributing grapefruit in 
carloads under a freight system that is 
more or less of a “lemon.” 
When we talk of furnishing grapefruit 
to the unsupplied who have not acquired 
the grapefruit habit, few realize the ex¬ 
pense per grapefruit in freight alone in 
getting it to the market. No fruit is grown 
or shipped where freight charges per unit 
or individual fruit are a greater factor 
than Florida grapefruit. 
A careful check of over four hundred 
(400) carloads of grapefruit distributed 
amongst ninety-six (96) cities in the 
United States and Canada located in 
thirty-five (35) states exclusive of 
Canada, showed average freight charges 
from loading points to destination of 
86.35 cents per box. Representative car¬ 
loads from different districts average 
fifty-six (56) grapefruit per box per car¬ 
load. On this basis, which is a fair one, 
the freight cost alone averaged slightly in 
excess of one and a half cents (ij4c) per 
grapefruit per carload. Freight expense 
per grapefruit per box of each size stan¬ 
dard pack as follows: 
28—038; 36—023; 46—019; 
54—016; 64—014; 80—on. 
Florida perishable products to supply 
the markets of the country move through 
certain gate-ways, and freight charges are 
regulated to the markets based upon these 
gate-ways. To understand how the popu¬ 
lation of the country is distributed the 
states can be divided into groups as fol¬ 
lows : 
FLORIDA GATEWAYS. 
Group 1. Population 18,776,055. All 
states south of the Ohio and Potomac 
Rivers and east of the Mississippi River. 
Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, 
Mississippi, North Carolina, South Caro¬ 
lina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia. 
This group, which comprises the South¬ 
ern States, is not a large user of grape¬ 
fruit, owing to the preponderance of the 
black population, and perhaps never will 
be; yet the freight charges per box are 
less into this territory than into any other 
section of the country. 
POTOMAC YARDS. 
Group 2. Population 33,163,986. All 
states north of the Potomac River. Con- 
