98 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
ling in its relation to good carrying qual¬ 
ity, yet the commercial grower recog¬ 
nizes that there are times and conditions 
when it is practically impossible to handle 
our fruit with sufficient care to expect it 
to arrive sound. Under these conditions 
the shippers have resorted to shipping 
their fruit in refrigerator cars under ice. 
Experiments made by the Department of 
Agriculture have shown that the difficul¬ 
ty with this method of shipping produce 
lies in the slowness of cooling the fruit 
under ice. They have demonstrated that 
if the produce can be cooled quickly after 
harvesting that the chances of its arrival 
in a sound condition are far greater. The 
California shippers, through the Citrus 
Protective League of California have ob¬ 
tained from the Interstate Commerce 
Commission a very satisfactory rate for 
shipping precooled fruit. It has been nec¬ 
essary for them to spend a great deal of 
money in railroad hearings, and carrying 
the case through the courts, even to the 
Supreme Court of the United States. The 
outcome of these local proceedings has 
been that the courts have decided that pre- 
cooling, and the initial icing of cars are 
not a part of transportation, and there¬ 
fore the shippers themselves are entitled 
to perform these services. For the use 
of the car in precooling, in case the ship¬ 
per desire to use the car for that purpose, 
and for the wear and tear on the car in 
initially icing it, and for hauling the ice 
over the country, which ice the shipper 
has purchased and put into the bunkers of 
the car at his own expense; for all of 
these services the railroads were entitled 
to a charge of $7.50 per car. With the 
enforcement of this rate there went into 
effect however, the right on the part oi 
the railroads to increase the minimurr 
load of the car. 
Soon after taking up the work as man¬ 
ager of this league, I addressed a letter 
to the Interstate Commerce Commissior 
at Washington, asking if the rate of $7.50 
would apply equally to Florida. I was 
informed that this rate would not sc 
apply, or at least not until there hac 
been a hearing upon the conditions that 
exist here to determine whether these 
conditions were similar to those in Cali¬ 
fornia on which this rate was based. 
The matter was then taken up with dif¬ 
ferent railroad officials to determine what 
the attitude of these officials would be 
toward giving us the right to precool out 
fruit and to ship it out without paying the 
full icing charges which had been de¬ 
manded by the railroads here on precooled 
fruit that left the state with ice in the 
bunkers. A conference was finally held 
in Norfolk on the 6th of April, which was 
attended by representatives from the Coast 
Line railroad, the Seaboard railroad, the 
Armour Car lines, and the Florida Grow¬ 
ers’ and Shippers’ League. At this con¬ 
ference the league asked for a rate which 
would cover a refrigerator car initially 
iced, the icing being done by the carrier 
or the private car line. Basing their de¬ 
cision upon the rulings of the courts, the 
railroads did not see their way clear to 
granting such a request, but they were 
willing to give us for all practical pur¬ 
poses the California rate in its entirety. 
The basis of this new rate will be as fol¬ 
lows : The shipper may precool his fruit 
and load it into the cars with as much 
or as little ice in the bunkers as he de- 
