It has not been difficult to secure such information as applies in the main to the transportation charge borne by a manufactured article from the place of making to the final market, or on foodstuff from the place of growth to the place of sale to the consumer. Data as to the amount of transportation charge carried by the various kinds of raw material entering into a manufactured product has not in many cases been so easy of ascertainment. A principal reason has been that the manufacturers in numbers of instances do not know what it is themselves. Many kinds of material are bought at a price which includes delivery at the factory, the freight rate not coming under the cognizance of the purchaser. The different materials used in a product may have come from such diverse sources, and paid such varying rates of freight, that the ascertainment of the total freight charge in any given unit of manufacture would be too difficult to be worth while. In numerous other cases the freight charge is confessedly so small an item that no attempt is made to apportion it as an item of expenditure per unit of product, the total simply being grouped in the aggregate of expense.
The statement that the transportation charge borne by the material entering into an ordinary pair of men's shoes averages one and a quarter cents is the result of a definite calculation made by one of the largest shoe manufacturers of the country. A leading woolen manufacturer estimates that the price of wool at Boston will average perhaps 30 cents a pound "in the grease," including a transportation charge that will average one cent a pound. The loss in cleaning and scouring is about forty-five per cent., and the price of a pound of scoured wool will average about 63 cents at the mill. Of this about two cents is chargeable to transportation. One hundred pounds of wool will make about seventy pounds of straight woolen cloth, on which the transportation charge has therefore been a fraction less than three cents a pound. On cloth that is mixed with cotton the transportation charge is less. The rates on woolen goods from any of the New England mills are so low that a yard of cloth which will sell from $1.50 upwards in any of the western markets will not have paid the railroads more than five cents from the sheep's back in Colorado to Massachusetts and back again to the Mississippi River.
The following information as to the extent of the transportation charge borne by divers materials of various industries has been obtained in each instance from an authority in that industry.
The transportation charge on raw cotton to the mills in Massachusetts will average from one-half to two-thirds of a cent a pound, not exceeding one cent per pound even from plantations so remote as those of Texas. Cotton loses from fifteen to twenty per cent. in the cleaning, one hundred pounds of cotton making from eighty to eighty-five pounds of cotton goods. As ordinary calico will run about six yards to the pound and sell for about five cents, the cotton that has paid a freight rate of from 50 cents to $1 is woven into $24 worth of calico.
The transportation charge on a pair of rubber overshoes, including the rubber from South America, the cotton stock, and the shipment to the western markets, averages about two and one-half per cent. of the cost of those markets. That is, a pair of rubber overshoes retailing for 75 cents will have paid for transportation, all told, less than one and nine-tenths cents.
In no one of these examples, which, perhaps, are typical of the entire clothing industries in so far as the use of leather, wool and cotton are concerned, is the transportation charge an appreciable factor in the price either of the material to the manufacturer or of the finished article to the consumer.
A barrel of flour made in Minneapolis and transported to Boston is sold at the time of this writing by the milling company to a dealer of that city, or any other place in New England, for $6. Of that $6 accrues to the transportation agencies, for carrying the wheat of which that flour was made from the Western farm to the Minneapolis mill, and for carrying the flour from the mill to Boston, an amount that averages 85 cents. The proportion of the transportation charge to price at different markets varies with the freight rate. At New York the milling company would sell that barrel for $5.95, which would include a total transportation charge of 80 cents; at Philadelphia the selling price would be $5.90, the transportation charge 75 cents; at Buffalo or Pittsburg the selling price $5.80, and the total transportation charge 65 cents; at Atlanta the price $6.20, the transportation charge $1.05; at New Orleans the price $6.10, the transportation charge 95 cents.
Typical rates on leaf tobacco, averaging in value $13 per 100 pounds from plantation to warehouse in Virginia and the Carolinas, are from 15 cents to 21 cents per 100 pounds; on the smoking tobacco into which this leaf is converted, and which sells at $48 per 100 pounds, from Richmond, Virginia, to New York City 30 cents, to Chicago 59 cents, to Kansas City $1.16. Rates from the plantation to the warehouse on the leaf tobacco of the Kentucky and Tennessee region, which also brings an average of $13 per 100 pounds, are from 5 cents for short to 20 cents for longer distances. The plug tobacco into which this leaf is converted is sold at $28 per 100 pounds, being distributed on such rates as these: St. Louis to Louisville, 25½ cents; to New York City, 58½ cents; to Kansas City, 35 cents; to Seattle, $2.20. Manufactured tobacco in all cases is sold at a price which includes delivery from the factory to the place of consignment, wherever it may be, in the United Stales.
The freight rate on cane sugar from the "central" in the Louisiana district to the final refinery ranges from 5 to 10 cents per 100 pounds, the refinery paying from $3.50 to $4.50 for the sugar. Sugar that is sold by the refining company at 4½ to 5½ cents a pound retails at 6 cents, the dealer making little or no profit. As a town of five to ten thousand people at the average per capita consumption of seventy-five pounds a year will consume a carload of sugar in about a week, the jobbing of sugar is greatly decentralized. Contrasting with this retail price of $6 per hundred pounds typical distributive rates are, from New York to Chicago 25 cents, to St. Paul 30 cents, to Kansas City 42 cents; from New Orleans to Chicago 25 cents, to Atlanta 24 cents, to Kansas City 34 cents.
The freight charge on sugar beets raised in Colorado and Utah from the farm to the refinery is always paid by the sugar company. It averages from 30 to 40 cents per ton, or for a distance of fifty miles is as much as 50 cents. A ton of beets contains about three hundred pounds of sugar, which, allowing for an average loss during extraction, would produce two hundred and forty pounds of refined sugar. This is sent from the factories to the principal places of storage—Kansas City, Omaha and St. Louis. The aggregate freight charge from the farm to St. Louis on these two hundred and forty pounds is about $1.70, and the aggregate revenue to the refinery at five cents a pound, $12.