"You make your own
cars and we will haul them, provided you will ask us to incur only the
ordinary risks of transportation." Armour accepted the challenge--it was
the only thing to do. He made one car, and then twenty.

Fresh beef was shipped from Chicago to New York, and arrived in perfect
order. To ship live cattle long distances, he knew was unwise. And he
then declared that Omaha, Kansas City, Saint Paul and various other
cities of the West would yet have great slaughter-houses, where
livestock could be received after a very short haul. The product could
then be passed along in refrigerator-cars, and the expense of ice would
not be so much as to unload and feed the stock. But better than all, the
product would be more wholesome.

Armour began to manufacture refrigerator-cars. He offered to sell these
to railroad-companies. A few railroads bought cars, and after a few
months proposed to sell them back to Armour--the expense and work of
operating them required too much care and attention. Shippers would not
ship unless it was guaranteed that the car would be re-iced, and that it
would arrive at its destination within a certain time.

In the Fall, fresh peaches were being shipped across the lake to Chicago
from Michigan. If the peaches were one night on the way they arrived in
good order.

This gave Armour an idea--he sent a couple of refrigerator-cars around
to Saint Joseph, loaded them with fresh peaches, and shipped them to
Boston. He sent a man with the cars who personally attended to icing the
cars, just as we used to travel in the caboose to look after the
livestock. The peaches reached Boston, cool and fresh, and were sold in
an hour at a good profit. At once there was a demand for
refrigerator-cars from Michigan: the new way opened the markets of
America to the producer of fruits and vegetables. There was a clamorous
demand for refrigerator-cars.

The reason a railroad can not afford to have its own refrigerator-cars
is because the fruit or berry season in any one place is short. For
instance, six weeks covers the grape period of the Lake Erie grape-belt;
one month is about the limit on Michigan peaches; strawberries from
Southern Illinois are gone in two or three weeks.

Therefore, to handle the cars advantageously, the railroads find it much
better to rent them, or simply to haul them on a mileage. The business
is a specialty in itself, and requires most astute generalship to make
it pay. Cars have to