The RURAL. NEW-YORKER 
133 
l 
The Trials of a Pioneer 
I am not going into all the trials which 
occurred to Parker Earle, hut it is fitting 
to chronicle a few of those^ he encoun¬ 
tered in his attempt to make a refriger¬ 
ator car. Parker Earle died but recently 
at a ripe age. 
I remember .T. II. Hale telling an audi¬ 
ence how he met the old gentleman in 
the grounds of the Panama-Pacific Ex¬ 
position. He was walking through the 
wonderful exhibits, admiring the displays 
of fruits, but there was none who chron¬ 
icled his arrival, and few were present 
who knew him, or that if it had not been 
for the energy of Parker Earle or some 
other enthusiast there would have been 
no fruit exhibit at San Francisco. “Some 
day, when Ke is dead,” said Hale, “Cali¬ 
fornia will put up a monument to Parker 
Earle. Half of the fresh fruits and veg¬ 
etables which are moved by rail originate 
west of the Mississippi River and their 
successful movement is dependent upon 
the use of the refrigerator car.” Like most 
enthusiasts in agriculture, Parker Earle 
did not make a great financial success 
for himself; he worked for others. Born 
in New England, he moved west to Mich¬ 
igan, and at the close of the Civil War 
was an enthusiastic strawberry grower 
at Cobden, Ill. In 1S66 he had increased 
his acreage to such an extent that he 
could supply more than the local mar¬ 
ket. A few years previous, in the early 
years of the Civil War, the Michigan 
Central Railroad started to ship fresh 
meat from Chicago to New York and 
Boston in ordinary box cars, in the ends 
of which they had built platforms three 
feet from the car floor, and by means of 
swinging doors made ice boxes, or bins, 
each capable of> holding 2,000 or 3,000 
lbs. of ice. These were hardly refriger¬ 
ator cars, but they were one of the be¬ 
ginnings of them. They were attached to 
passenger trains as far as Suspension 
Bridge, N. Y., and then by means of fast 
freight they were landed in New York 
in about three days’ time after leaving 
Chicago, at a cost of two cents per pound 
for freight. It must be remembered that 
up to this time meat was moved long dis¬ 
tances only in the Winter months, that 
the bulk of the cattle were slaughtered 
on arrival at the point where they were 
to be consumed. There was no meat 
trade as we now know it, but the han¬ 
dlers of live cattle were a powerful set 
of men, and they paid little attention to 
the shipment of beef. The live cattle men 
were the meat barons in thfose days. And 
so slowly do good things move that these 
men were able to live and die before the 
shipment of meat made any permanent 
impression on the movement of live cat¬ 
tle, for, over 20 years later, the number 
of stock cars on American railroads, viz., 
1885, was 43,900, and in 1890 it was 54,- 
900 but this was high-water mark, for in 
1895 the decline had set in, and there 
were but 46,150, which dropped to 38,150 
in 1900, but this was a period of almost 
40 years. 
This Michigan Central_experiment was 
preceded by fine in 1857. Mr. W. W. 
Chandler, later head of the 'Star Union 
line of refrigerator cars, double-lined 30 
box cars for the Pennsylvania Railroad, 
and filled up the space between the walls 
with sawdust. These are said to be the 
first refrigerator cars. The commodity 
was loaded into the car and then the 
ice was placed on the car floor > in the 
space between the doors, holes being left 
in the floor to let the water escape. 
These were called “ice boxes on wheels,” 
and were used for hauling dairy products. 
Later ice boxes were placed in the 
ends of the cars, and "several men began 
to manifest an interest in the project. 
Parker Earle was one of them. In 1866 
he built 12 big refrigerator chests for 
shipping strawberries by express. These 
were simTar to those now in use in the 
movement of strawberries from Florida. 
They were sent by express and held 200 
quarts of strawberries and 100 lbs. of 
ice. The express was costly. If ice was 
secured by the express agent and placed 
in the boxes when needed, the berries ar¬ 
rived in good condition, but if this was 
neglected they did not. and this hap¬ 
pened so often that the scheme was aban¬ 
doned for a time. The idea was correct, 
but there was no way of working it out. 
Parker Earle shipped strawberries in 
these boxes to all of the important East¬ 
ern cities. 
In 1868, D. W. Davis of Detroit got 
out a refrigerator car which he had been 
working on since 1865, and a successful 
shipment, of beef in this car. for he had 
but one, in September 1869. from Chicago 
to Boston,, is perhaps rightly regarded as 
the beginning of the dressed-beef industry 
in America. But rarker Earle was on 
hand with the packers, for in 1868 we 
find that he had the Davis car brought to 
Oobden, Ill., and loaded with strawber¬ 
ries. 
In this car a very important experi¬ 
ment was tried, and, like most experi¬ 
ments, it cost a lot of money. When I 
hear of people planting new‘varieties of 
fruit without knowing anything about 
them, I know it is an experiment and it 
will have to be paid for, just as this one 
was paid for. In this car, ice and salt 
were used to cool the car. the mixture 
being held in vertical cylinders 15 in. in 
diameter, one in each corner of the car. 
The result was that the berries near the 
ice were frozen, and those in the center 
of the car were not well cooled, so the 
shipper lost money. 
That same year two Chicago produce 
men loaded two of the Michigan Central 
meat cars with Michigan grown Craw¬ 
ford peaches and started them for New 
Y’ork. These peaches were brought in 
Chicago and loaded there. The cars were 
opened when they reached Suspension 
Bridge, N. 1'., and the fruit was found 
to be spoiled. The fruit was hot when 
put in the car. The ice was all melted; 
there was no place to re-ice in transit. 
The loss was 81,000 a car. This is the 
first recorded movement of peaches under 
refrigeration, to my knowledge. 
Next year - , 1869. Parker Earle thought 
he would try again. He was a true fruit 
grower; hope springs eternal in a fruit 
grower’s breast. He is the most opti¬ 
mistic being on earth. He works as long 
as he has a dollar, and when his last dol¬ 
lar is gone, he uses his wife’s money and 
that of all of his friends, if he can get it 
from them, feeling in his bones that if lie 
can only keep on, the reward is* sure. It 
is an endurance test. The reward is for 
the one that endures, and Parker Earle 
was no quitter, so in 1869 he got a Mich¬ 
igan Central car, and this time persuaded 
some of his fellow fruit growers to join 
with him in loading it for Detroit. . Mr. 
Earle went ahead of the car to Detroit to 
sell it, and was on hand when it arrived. 
When the car was opened it was found 
that the ice was gone, and this time the 
blame went to another, for en route some 
enterprising railroad official had removed 
the plugs from the ice boxes to give the 
berries “a chance for a little air.” The 
venture was a total loss. Mr. Earle was 
not done. He decided to try another plan. 
He built a cooling shed at Anna, Ill., and 
put his berries into it for 24 hours before 
shipment, in order to cool them, and then 
shipped them to Chicago in the express 
boxes he built in 1866, and they got 
through in good condition. Later he en¬ 
larged this so that he could cool 10 tons 
at a time—a carload. I think it is won¬ 
derful the amount of work Parker Earle 
did. 
He proved that ice and salt were a 
dangerous mixture if in contact with the 
fruit. We know today that they are 
the best icing materials we can use if the 
cars are properly insulated and the ice 
bunkers built so that they may be used. 
He also proved that pre-cooled fruit 
would ship better than fruit not pre- 
cooled. In 1872 he procured the best re¬ 
frigerator car then obtainable, a Tiffany 
car, in which the ice was held in a V- 
shaped box in the roof of the car, which 
ran the entire length of the car. These 
ice boxes held but 3.000 lbs. of ice, but 
by pre-cooling the fruit he was able to put 
“more solid and better keeping strawber¬ 
ries” on the Chicago market than had 
ever been done before. His fruit, “ship¬ 
ped on ice,” was a success. He had been 
laughed at for six years before he suc¬ 
ceeded, and when success came it took 
several years more to make the truth 
known. 
This Tiffany car did not suit him ; it 
did not hold enough ice, so he proceeded 
to secure a car with bunkers which would 
hold four or five tons of ice, which was 
well insulated, in which the warm fruit 
could be cooled in the car, and could be 
shipped with safety on a two or three 
days’ journey, or longer. He was the 
pioneer of the shipment of fruit under re¬ 
frigeration. To this day we have made 
no advance on certain phases of the work 
done by Earle. The best minds agree 
with him as to the size of the ice bunk¬ 
ers, and we have not amended his speci¬ 
fications for insulation. 
For 50 years Parker Earle’s ideas have 
been tested and found to be correct. For 
50 years he lived, to see the number of 
refrigerator cars in service increase to 
100,000. He gave up growing strawber¬ 
ries in Illinois. He went into new terri¬ 
tory. He started the shipment of fresh 
tomatoes in carlots from the South. With 
his partners he moved the first shipment 
of cherries, peaches and citrus fruits from 
California under refrigeration, and his 
son, Prof. F. 8. Earle, personally accom¬ 
panied the first car. Today we move a 
million carloads of fresh fruits and vege¬ 
tables annually, the movement of which 
is made possible by the use of the refrig¬ 
erator car. It is doubtful if Parker Earle 
got anything out of his work in building 
refrigerator cars except the satisfaction 
that 50 years’ test proved him to be cor¬ 
rect—in vision, conception ami design, 
and some have said lie was not a success 
because he did not die a rich man. 
What do you think? 
New York. samuel eraser. 
Curing a Self-sucking Cow 
In the article on page 31, M. B. asked 
bow to cure a cow of sucking herself. I 
have cured several in this manner: I 
take a piece of baled hay wire about 8 in. 
long, file both ends sharp and smooth, and 
run through the membrane of cow’s nose, 
as you would a ring in the nose, then 
twist the wire together three or four 
times, but care should be taken not to 
twist it tight against the nose. Leave 
both ends standing straight out, so no 
matter which way the cow turns her head 
to try to suck herself, the sharp wire 
ends will prevent her doing so. as they 
will prick, and she soon will give up try¬ 
ing. g. w. c. 
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CHAPTER XIV 
ON MONOPOLY 
The Capital Stock Company 
often creates a monopoly to fix 
prices and to earn big profits. 
Should the Farm Cooperative 
Association follow this ex¬ 
ample ? If not, why not ? 
The explanation will be found 
in Chapter XIV of the new 
book 
“Organized Cooperation” 
By JOHN J. DILLON 
Price One Dollar 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
333 West 30th St., New York City 
Edmonds’ Poultry Account Book. 
Price $1. For sale by Tbe Rural New- 
Yorker, 333 W. 30th St„ New York 
