The Beef Trust is one of the largest shippers in the world. Its packing-house shipments from Chicago are said to amount to some three thousand million pounds (3,000,000,000 lbs.) a year. Its shipments from Kansas City, Omaha, St. Joe, St. Louis, etc., are also enormous. There is also a vast traffic in poultry, eggs, dairy products, fruit, and vegetables, that is controlled by the Trust. Is it any wonder that a railroad president or manager should refrain from action that might lose him his share of this huge business? It would make a sad hole in his receipts. Dividends would be emaciated and might vanish or appear with a minus sign. His stock would sink in Wall Street. Angry directors, bankers, investors, and stockholders would assail him and attack his management. And as a result of defying the Trust he would put himself out of office and his road perhaps in the hands of a receiver. Footnote 274: C. B. Hutchins was the inventor of an improved refrigerator car. He built five cars in 1886, and in 1890 he had the California Fruit Transportation Company operating $200,000 worth of cars. In two years, 1890 and 1891, the profits amounted to $250,000 or more than the total investment, and the company thought they had something better than a gold mine. But the Beef Trust undermined them by railroad favoritism and compelled them to sell out to the Swifts. While the California Fruit Transportation Company was fighting for its life with the Armour lines, it presented the Southern Pacific Railway Company with $100,000 of its stock on condition of receiving an exclusive contract. The contract was made, but the Armour cars continued to go. An influence was at work stronger than the exclusive contract and the power of the California Fruit Transportation Company. Footnote 275: Evidence, pp. 101, 133, 134, 146, etc. For example the manager of the “Missouri River Despatch” operating 250 refrigerator cars testified that the Erie paid 12½ percent commissions on the freight rates in addition to the mileage. And the manager of the Santa Fe car-line said the B. & O. paid them 12½ percent commissions on dairy products in addition to the ¾ cent mileage, etc. etc. Footnote 276: Evidence, pp. 54–55, Armour Cars. Footnote 277: National Congress Railway Commissioners, above cited. Footnote 278: _Ibid._ Footnote 279: I. C. C. Rep. 1904, p. 14. Aug. 1, 1904 the Armour lines made an exclusive contract with the Pere Marquette Railroad, the fruit carrier of Michigan. Before that the railroad iced carloads of fruit free of charge. On the date named icing charges went into effect as follows: $25 to Chicago, Detroit, Grand Rapids, and other Michigan points. $30 to Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and other points in Ohio and Indiana. $35 to Buffalo, Bloomington, and various other points in New York, Illinois, and Wisconsin.