Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 18.pdf/710

 THE ORANGE ROUTING CASE sand are tributary, on account of their loca tion, to the Santa Fd system, and a like area, for the same reason, to the Southern Pacific system. The remainder are served by both jointly. This geographical condi tion has always operated, both before 1900 and since, to divide the orange traffic about equally between the two systems, the varia tion being only a few hundred cars every year in favor of the Santa Fe". As may be supposed, the same rate has on this account always been charged by both systems for citrus fruit, and no rate-cutting war has ever been indulged in. Such a contest would not in any material degree change the natural division of the business imposed by physical conditions. Only once, in a respect incidental to our main theme, which we are shortly to notice, have these roads been betrayed, against their judgment and with disastrous consequences, into competition. But in any true sense, competition between them there is none, and has not been, and in the nature of things cannot be. The cars required for this traffic are spe cially constructed for ventilation and refrig eration, are heavy, expensive, and useless to the railroads except during the orange season. Consequently they are owned, not by the railroads, but by various private car companies, such as, at the beginning of 1900. the Continental Fruit Express, the Fruit Growers' Express, the Santa Fe" Re frigerator Line, and the Overland Fruit Despatch, and by them leased to the rail roads. Their compensation consists of mileage, paid by the railroad, initial and connecting respectively, and of charges for refrigeration, paid by the shipper. The usual mileage, paid by the railroad to the car company, is three-quarters of a cent or a cent. The car line's charge to the shipper for refrigerating the fruit, per car load, to Kansas City is $60, to Chicago is $75, to New York $90. The railroad rate to shippers from California to the East is, as we have said, a through rate, and is and has always been $1.25 per hundred pounds,

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amounting for the minimum carload of twenty-six thousand pounds to $325. The total transportation charge to New York is therefore about $415 per car. The stan dard weight of a box of oranges is seventytwo pounds, and a minimum carload con tains therefore about three hundred and sixty boxes. Statistics concerning the cost of production and prices are extremely un reliable; but it is perhaps safe to conclude, with the Interstate Commerce Commission, that the bare cost of production, including investment cost, cultivation, irrigation, fer tilizing, picking, sorting, packing, boxing, hauling, and loading, is about $1.10 per box, or $397.10 per carload. The transportation charges above mentioned bring the cost of a carload in New York to about $812. Prices vary greatly, of course, with the quality of the fruit and the condition of the market. In 1902-3, which was a bad year, the average price in New York was perhaps about $2.20 per box, or about $795 per car load. Evidently the orange grower might better have let his fruit rot on the ground. In good years, like the present of 1905-6, the grower makes a handsome profit; but he must charge against it such losses in other years as those we have just indicated. Naturally any possible means for the reduc tion of expenses will be seized with avidity by the whole orange growing community; and naturally a feeling prevails that the railroads, which collect their stated income in good years and bad alike, whether the shipper loses or gains, are preying upon their customers and taking an unfair advantage of their helplessness. Fruit growers do not always market their fruit personally and independently. A con siderable number do, amounting perhaps to a narrow majority; the rest operate through the fruit " Exchanges." In each of the com munities of production, the growers who favor this plan form an "Association," hav ing its own packing house and shipping facilities. The members of the association deliver their fruit to the local packing house