On potatoes the freight rate per barrel containing about two and a half bushels is $1.05 from Florida, 65 cents from South Carolina, 45 cents from North Carolina, 30 cents from Virginia, and from this 12 cents per bushel the rate scales down to five or six cents per bushel from nearby regions. The freight rate on tomatoes from Florida is 25 cents per package of six baskets, from Texas 15 cents for twelve quarts, from Mississippi 76 cents per 100 pounds, and from the nearby farms eight cents per bushel of twenty-eight quarts. The freight rate on cantaloups to New York ranges from less than a cent for a melon from the Carolinas to about two and a half cents for that from California. Oranges from Florida to New York pay the railroads from four to nine cents a dozen, and those from California six to twelve cents a dozen, as they may be large or small. A three-pound can of tomatoes from Maryland pays the railroad about one-half cent per can. The freight rates to New York on foodstuffs have been selected as typical of the transportation charges applying on such commodities in the main channels of traffic from the West to the East; and, in so far as fruits and vegetables are concerned, from the South to the East. The transportation charge per consumer's unit on these foodstuffs is a trifle less to Philadelphia and adjacent Delaware and New Jersey; another fraction lower to the great Pittsburg district, and still lower to the cities of the West and South that are nearer the places of production. As prices of food products fluctuate within a fairly wide range and freight rates also fluctuate, though within but a very narrow range, the rates and prices specified in the foregoing, as well as in the succeeding paragraphs of this chapter, cannot be considered as of specific application at any given time in the future. They were exact at the time they were collated and will very closely approximate accuracy at any period. As New York may be considered representative of the places to which edible products of the West and South are consigned, so also may St. Louis be considered a typical center of reception of the manufactured products of the East. The information given in the immediately following paragraphs was obtained from merchants and manufacturers of that city.