146 
SEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE 
London or Chicago, for 50 or 75 per cent, cheaper than they 
do now. Will they doit? Not a man. If you opened a 
subscription of stock to be paid in cash that would open a line 
on a highway on which nobody has the right of way, and on 
which everybody has the right of way, be your own transpor¬ 
tation companies, and ship to New York, England and the 
east for twenty-five cents, how many would you get to sub¬ 
scribe, and how much money would you raise ? and how many 
would pay if they agreed to ? I have been at the birth and 
death of a dozen Florida orange growers’ unions, and I re¬ 
joiced when they were born, and went into sackcloth and 
ashes when they died. Mr. President, your Chairman of 
Committee on Transportation hopes, of all things, that this 
society will not be brought into the disrepute of doing any¬ 
thing that can have no possible good ending.” 
Mr. Thomas Hind was in favor of any movement looking to 
the reduction of freight rates. He thought it unjust that the 
men to whom millions of acres of the best lands in Florida 
had been given as a bonus against possible loss in operating 
railroads in this new country, should refuse to reduce a rate 
^o palpably unjust. The rates were fixed by the Southern 
Traffic Association. He did not know how much influence 
the various roads included had with this Association. He 
would not stop with subordinates, but would carry the matter 
to the two or three men who controlled this Association. It 
was a nice state of affairs that we should come here and take 
up day after day in discussing the best modes of raising the 
finest fruit ever plucked, and go on making investments and 
spending years of toil simply to increase the wealth of the rail¬ 
roads which leave us but a third of what our product should 
yield us. It might not be possible to organize, there had been 
failures in that direction, but it was certain we could never 
succeed if we did not try. The only way to bring the roads 
to terms was to insist that the rates be reduced, and the only 
way to insist effectively was through organization. 
It had been suggested that we build ships of our own to 
carry our fruit. This should not be necessary. If it were 
not for our national shipping laws preventing ships carrying 
foreign flags engaging in coastwise commerce, we could 
charter all the vessels we needed. He was in favor of the 
repeal of these laws. The mere fact of their repeal would de¬ 
stroy the monopoly controlling coastwise traffic and would 
bring down the rates without the chartering of a single ship. 
Such a bill was now before congress and he urged upon the 
Society the passage of a solution favoring this bill. 
Mr. J. D. Crews thought it was time to start the ball rolling, 
that it should not be allowed to stop until relief was obtained 
