“What is that?” they asked.
“Try to collect,” said the railroad manager.
In this case, on appeal to New York, the bill was reduced to $24, a slice of $40 off the icing bill, which was to Mr. Mead a trial bill in more senses than one.
Ellis and Company of Chicago received a car of tomatoes from Gibson, Tenn., 522 miles away, and another from New Orleans, 923 miles distant. The first was a Trust car with $74 icing charge; the other was an Illinois Central car with $15 icing charge. That is, the Trust charge was 5 times as great as the railroad charge, though the railroad car came 400 miles further, nearly double the distance in fact that the Trust car covered.
Grapes have been shipped from the New York grape field to Boston in Vanderbilt refrigerator cars without any icing charge, while shipments in Trust cars between the same points in the same month paid $22 for ice. The Michigan Central has given notice that it has withdrawn from the Armour contract and will handle Michigan fruit products in its own cars supplying ice at cost which it says is $2.50 per ton. So the man who can ship over the Michigan Central will get a rate of $15 to $25 a car to Boston, while the man who has to use the Pere Marquette will pay $45 a car for ice.[[283]] Two Boston men recently (1905) had occasion to order each a carload of peaches from Michigan points some 20 miles apart. One car came from Coloma over the Pere Marquette with Armour charges of $45, while the other car came from Eau Claire over the Michigan Central with the same freight rate, but only $13.13 for icing,—$5.63 for the original icing, $5 for re-icing at Collingwood, and $2.50 for re-icing at West Seneca. A year ago, before the Armour contract with the Michigan Central expired, the icing charge on both railroads was $55 to Boston; now the Armour charge has come down to $45, but the Armour charge for ice in the case just stated was $9 a ton while the Vanderbilt railroads charged only $2.50 a ton, which last the Interstate Commission in a recent case has held to be a just and reasonable charge.[[284]] There are no icing charges on dairy products. The ice is paid for by the car company and the railroad. It takes as much ice for dairy products as for fruit, but the Trust is carrying its own goods in this field mostly and not the goods of other shippers, and so it has not felt the need of changing the original arrangement in respect to ice.
The railroads have also bound themselves by secret contract to furnish by wire “such information as may be requested by the car-line’s representatives.” This enables the Trust to know what every other shipper is doing all over the country on the lines of the car-line-contract roads. The Armours thus have means of knowing immediately of the shipments made by competitors and the destination of the same, so that they can tell exactly what to do to capture or destroy the competitive business. If a car of apples is loaded by a competitor and billed for Worcester, the Trust knows of it in time to run in a car of apples ahead of the competitor’s and sell out the market from under him. At Buffalo, while the Trust was fighting to control the local fruit market, it forestalled, they say, every shipment that was made to its competitors.
The Armour lines have another advantage, through the arrangement of the freight tariffs, and the friendly inspection methods, or non-inspection methods, which enable them to ship dairy products, fruits, vegetables, etc., at much lower rates than others. Packing-house products, i. e., hams, bacon, lard, etc., go from Chicago to New York in carloads at 30 cents a hundred; fresh meats, 45 cents; eggs, 65 cents; poultry, 75 cents; butter, 75 cents, etc. The Armours have a practical monopoly on packing-house products and the fresh-meat business, as they own all the slaughter houses of any importance, with 2 or 3 exceptions in the country. So the bulk of their own goods go at 30 and 45 cents which are regarded by railroad men as very low rates for goods transported in refrigerator cars. On the other hand rates upon dairy products are very much higher, and most shippers have to pay those rates. According to all rules of classification packing-house products should pay higher rates than fruit; but, in order to help out the infant beef industry, a commodity tariff is arranged of which this is a sample:[[285]]
| Distance. | Fruit third class. | Beef (commodity rate). | Difference. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cents. | Cents. | Percent. | ||
| Chicago to Duluth | 478 | 44 | 28½ | 54 |
| Kansas City to Duluth | 699 | 53 | 40 | 33 |
| Omaha to Duluth | 504 | 45 | 35 | 28 |
| Sioux City to Duluth | 432 | 45 | 35 | 28 |
| Cedar Rapids to Duluth | 409 | 44 | 28½ | 54 |
President Ripley of the Santa Fe declares that the rates on beef products between Kansas City and Chicago are so low that every carload is carried at a loss to the roads. Here are his figures:
Dressed meats: Actual cost per car, $82.19; revenue, $42.19; deficit, per car, $40.