[266]. The 1 cent rate applies to 15 to 25 percent of the total mileage of the cars and the ¾ cent rate to the remaining mileage. (Bureau of Commerce Rep. on Beef Industry, March, 1905, p. 273.)
[267]. Evidence in I. C. C. Hearings on private car-lines, April 28, 1904, p. 8. The Beef Trust report of the Bureau of Commerce, 1905, presents some conflicting evidence and sums up the case with a conservative estimate which places the average daily run of all the cars owned by Armour and his associates and used in the beef business at 90 to 100 miles. In the same report, however, the refrigerator cars of the National Car-Line Company, and of the Provision Dealers’ Dispatch are reported as running 300 miles a day, and the cars of Swift and Company are estimated to make 373 miles a day in Iowa. (“Report of Commissioner of Corporations on the Beef Industry.” March 3, 1905, pp. 274–281.)
[268]. I. C. C. Rep. 1903, p. 23.
[269]. National Congress of Railway Commissioners, 1892, statement of the Committee on Private Cars, p. 52 et seq. The Lackawanna Line Stock Express Co., for example, netted 50 percent a year, or $343 per car. See also 4 I. C. C. Decis. 630.
[270]. I. C. C. Rep. 1903, p. 24. Sometimes the payment for a refrigerator car is much more than $1 a day. James J. Hill says: “If we take another railway company’s car, we pay 20 cents a day for it for the time we have had it, and we are in a hurry to get it back; and we load the other man’s car back if we have anything to put in it. That is always understood. But they do not want anything put in their cars. They say: ‘Hurry it back; get it around quickly, and pay us, in place of 20 cents a day, three-fourths of a cent a mile.’ They used to ask a cent a mile, but I think that has been abandoned.”
“Senator Newlands. How much does that amount to a day, say at the rate of a cent a mile?
“Mr. Hill. If they got a cent a mile and we hurried that car through to the coast, we would take it about 300 miles a day, so that they would get about $3 a day for the car.
“Senator Newlands. So that in the one case you pay 20 cents?
“Mr. Hill. And in the other we pay $3.
“Senator Newlands. And the private car-lines you pay $3.