While the price of bananas is subject to great fluctuation, a fair average at New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, Mobile and New Orleans, the ports of import, is $1.75 per 100 pounds. The average rail charge for carload lots from port to market is from 30 to 50 cents per 100 pounds. About one-third of the bananas consumed in this country are received at the North Atlantic ports, whence they are distributed throughout the Eastern and Middle States. The remaining two-thirds, which supply the South and West, are received at the Southern ports. Immediately upon receipt at New Orleans, for example, shipments are made to the North in train loads that they may be taken out of the warm climate before they spoil, and cars are re-consigned en route at the instance of the company which has very thoroughly organized the banana business, an allied company having about sixty agencies with men who devote their entire time to extending the sale of the fruit.
For hides that pay a freight rate from the packing houses at Chicago to New York of 30 cents per 100 pounds, the butcher receives, according to quality, from $6 or $7 to $11 or $12 per 100 pounds. The butchers remote from market have the freight rate deducted from the price paid them for hides, but it is a trifle, seldom exceeding five cents per 100 pounds. The hide loses from twenty-five to thirty-five per cent. in the process of tanning; the price of leather is fixed by measure and not by weight. The rate on tanned leather, however, between Chicago and Boston is 39 cents per 100 pounds.
The railroads make low rates on fertilizer to encourage its use by the farmers, it being, of course, to the interest of a railroad to encourage the production of larger crops that its traffic may be augmented. Fertilizer of different grades brings from $18 and $20 to $55 and $60 a ton. Typical rail rates from the places of manufacture are from Jersey City to Trenton, New Jersey, $1.10 per ton, and from Boston to Portland $1.20 per ton—both rates applying in carload lots. In the South, where fertilizer is extensively utilized, representative rates are from Atlanta to Thomasville $2.50, from Charleston to Columbia $2.00 per ton.
When allowance is made for the elimination of water from pulp and the shrinkage in its manufacture into paper, the average freight rate borne by the material entering into paper at the northern New England mill is about 13½ cents per 100 pounds. The manufacturers consider 17 cents per 100 pounds to be the average freight rate on the paper from the mill to places north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi Rivers. The aggregate freight charge borne on the average by the 100 pounds of paper which sells at the factory for $2.50 is therefore 30 cents.
As with all things else, the rates on the ores of the far western region have been adjusted under the necessity of the transportation agencies to so serve the mines that their products may be marketed. The rate upon the ore from the mine to the smelter, upon the metal from the smelter to the refinery, and upon the refined lead or refined copper from Chicago to the seaboard market, are all determined by this prime factor. The freight charges, for example, from the Coeur d'Alene district in northern Idaho on the ores from which the extraneous material has been roughly separated, to the Puget Sound refineries, reach a maximum of $6 per ton for a distance of four or five hundred miles, and the rate from Puget Sound to New York is $14.50, the average transportation charge, therefore, being about $20 per ton. The value of a ton of copper at 12 cents a pound is $240, and a ton of lead at four cents a pound is $80. Copper passes through manifold and expensive processes and its extensive consumption has followed the development of electricity. Lead does not require so many or so expensive workings, and it has long been a great staple of general use. The mine farther from a smelter naturally has to pay a higher rate of freight than a mine nearer to it, receiving, therefore, a lesser net price for its product, but the railroads are obliged to so adjust rates that practically every mine can reach a market.
The rate on refined petroleum between New York and Chicago is 27½ cents per 100 pounds, the average rate paid north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi Rivers being from eight to ten cents per 100 pounds. From Toledo to Atlanta the rate is 48 cents, from Whiting 46½ cents, from New Orleans 35 cents. The rate from Chicago to the Missouri River is 22 cents, to St. Louis 10 cents; while the rate from the Kansas field to St. Louis is 17 cents. One hundred pounds of refined oil contain approximately sixteen gallons which, at an average price of 12½ cents a gallon at the refinery, would aggregate $2. The price per gallon to the consumer is increased one cent with each increment of seven cents in the freight charge.
The principal biscuit company receives from $8 to $16 per 100 pounds for its crackers and cakes, averaging $10 per 100 pounds for its leading brand. From its New York plant to Boston the freight rates are 19 cents per 100 pounds, to Atlanta 62 cents. The rate from Chicago to Montgomery is 69 cents, to Houston 81 cents, to Denver 97 cents. From either New York or Chicago to the Pacific Coast the rate is $1.60. These rates apply to carload lots, all goods being sold delivered, the company absorbing the freight. The retail price is the same all over the United States as it is with shoes, cigars, soap, proprietary medicines and dozens of other familiar articles.
On cotton, the great staple product of the South, the freight rate structure has been in process of development even a longer time than that affecting the movement of grain from the West. From the plantation into Memphis, the largest inland cotton center of the United States, a typical rate is 30 cents per 100 pounds for one hundred and fifty miles. From Memphis to Boston the rate is 57½ cents, and from Memphis to the Gulf 30 cents per 100 pounds. From Augusta, Ga., a central market of the Eastern cotton growing district, the rate to Charleston and Savannah is 21 cents, to Brunswick 23 cents and to Norfolk 26 cents per 100 pounds. A bale of cotton contains five hundred pounds and is therefore worth, at 11 cents a pound, $55. The aggregate transportation charge on this bale from the plantation, one hundred and fifty miles from Memphis, to Boston, is $4.27.
Mainly because of the rapid shifting of the sources of supply, there has not yet been developed a stable structure of rates for the movement of lumber in all parts of the United States. By way of illustration, however, it may be said that a fair average rate on lumber into Memphis from the forests of Arkansas is six cents per 100 pounds, or $2.40 per 1,000 feet. Lumber going from Memphis to New Orleans for export will pay $4.80, or a total transportation charge from the forest of $7.20 per 1,000 feet. A fair average rate to the markets in Ohio and Indiana is $8 per 1,000 feet, a total transportation charge from the forest of $10.40. This is on the kind of lumber that in 1905 and 1906 sold at about $40. The rate on yellow pine from New Orleans to Chicago is 24 cents per 100 pounds.
There is an equalization of rates on the iron ore from the upper lakes in that the rates of the boat lines from the ore mines are the same to each of the Lake Erie ports. From thence to the furnaces they are adjusted under the policy of the railroads to make the transportation charge on the raw material required to make a ton of pig iron approximate the same amount at each of the competing furnaces of southern Ohio, Pittsburg, Wheeling, in the Mahoning and Shenango Valleys, and even as far as the Schuylkill Valley. How closely this equalization is effected is shown by the fact that the transportation charge on the ore, coke and limestone required to produce one ton of pig-iron is as follows in these respective districts: At the furnaces on the Monongahela River in the Pittsburg district, $5.82; at the furnaces of the Mahoning and Shenango Valleys, $5.57; at the furnaces of the Wheeling district, $5.78. These charges compare favorably with those at the furnaces on the Lake Shore in the Chicago district, which aggregate $5.63 per ton of pig-iron, but are higher than at the furnaces on the Lake Shore in the Cleveland district, where they aggregate but $4.72. The rates on coal, which gives return loads to the cars that take the ore south front the Lake Erie ports, are maintained at established differences between the coal fields of Ohio, Pittsburg and West Virginia. The rates in effect in the spring of 1908 were $1 per ton from southern Ohio, 90 cents from southeastern Ohio, $1 per ton from the Pittsburg field and $1.15 a ton from West Virginia.