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. 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.