Railroads and Refrigerator Cars: An Episode in the Career of William H. Miner

Charles E. Russell (1860-1941)

One of my favorite things about my job here at the Alice is that I never quite know where my research will take me. The collection is so wide-ranging, and William and Alice’s interests so broad, that anything could happen. Thus it was that I recently found myself reading a book called The Greatest Trust in the World by Charles Edward Russell. Though not as well known today as figures like Upton Sinclair and Ida Tarbell, Russell was also a muckraking journalist, and the book grew out of a series of articles he had written for Everybody’s Magazine in 1905. Though most Americans didn’t realize it, there was an entity that wielded enormous power over their daily lives—and it would ultimately cause the downfall of the California Fruit Transportation Company, William H. Miner’s employer for most of the 1890s.

This entity was the Beef Trust—an organization so powerful, according to Russell, that it had “impoverished or ruined farmers and stockmen, destroyed millions of investments, caused banks to break and men to commit suicide, precipitated strikes, and annihilated industries.” In some places, the trust had so much power that citizens, “even in the privacy of their offices or homes,” dared not speak a word against it. Most Americans thought of companies like Standard Oil as “the ultimate of monopolistic achievement,” but the Beef Trust was “far more vast and powerful.”

A refrigerator car from the 1870s. Ice was used in all cars until
mechanical refrigeration was introduced in the 1950s.

The origins of the Beef Trust (always capitalized by Russell) could be traced back to the invention of the refrigerator railcar in 1874, which transformed how and what people ate—and the biggest effect was on the meatpacking industry, centered in Chicago. Each packing house had its own refrigerator cars, and many railroads maintained their own cars, which could be used by packers at no charge. As Russell explained it, “The railroads were under obligation as common carriers to deliver in good condition the goods that they handled. The refrigerator car was merely an appliance to insure delivery in good condition.”

The Armour packing plant in Chicago, ca. 1910

Inevitably, the meatpacking companies consolidated into four main firms: Armour, Swift, Hammond, and Morris. The “big four” were then able to persuade the railroads (Russell doesn’t explain exactly how) to compensate them for using their own refrigerator cars for shipping. In the end, the railroads agreed to pay 3/4 of a cent for every mile hauled. That didn’t sound like much, but it added up to about $7.50 per car for every trip between Chicago and New York. This made it very difficult for companies that didn't own their own refrigerator cars to compete, and allowed the Beef Trust to control the prices of cattle and dressed beef.

By around 1900, the Beef Trust owned about 80% of all the refrigerator cars in the United States, and were transporting all manner of perishable goods, not just meat. Rival firms that did have their own cars “found that the cars of the bigger and more aggressive packers were favored by the railroads, handled more rapidly, sent back with less delay; that the car of the big house was in fact a club to beat the smaller firm to death; and they gradually got out on the best terms they could obtain. Thus the refrigerator car formed the Beef Trust.”

Shipping fruit was serious business, and
all communication had to be in code.

So where do William Miner and the California Fruit Transportation Company come in? CFT was a subsidiary of the Hutchins Refrigerator Car Company, a pioneer in the industry. Around 1886, Carlton B. Hutchins of Detroit developed an improved refrigerator car that used wool scraps from the garment industry for insulation. Hutchins went into partnership with F. A. Thomas, a Chicago fruit and produce dealer, and in 1888 they transported their first cars of fruit from California to Chicago. This was a risky business—Thomas had to purchase the fruit outright from the growers, who were skeptical of the refrigerator cars’ ability to keep the fruit from rotting. But it worked, and the California Fruit Transportation Company was born.

At first, the owners had every reason to think that “they had something better than a gold-mine. They voted themselves good salaries as officers...they voted themselves fat dividends as stockholders therein, and nothing seemed as easy as making money.” It was during this flush period, in 1890, that William H. Miner was hired as a mechanical superintendent for the company. His work at CFT would have shown the importance of improved draft gears to cushion wooden railcars shipping delicate cargo, and soon after being hired, he filed a patent for what would become known as the Miner tandem spring draft rigging.

Earl Fruit Company employees, ca. 1910

But thanks to the Beef Trust, these good times were not destined to last. In stepped one Edwin Tobias Earl, owner of the Earl Fruit Company, who supplied close to 80% of the fruit shipped by CFT. Earl requested a commission of $10 per car of fruit shipped—which California Fruit refused to agree to. So Earl went to Armour and rented cars from them instead, and “when the California fruit season reopened the CFT suddenly found that wherever it went the Earl Fruit Company was there also, making war and using a familiar and effective weapon; that is to say, it was offering rebates and getting the fruit.” CFT made an arrangement with the Southern Pacific Railway to haul their cars exclusively, but somehow this “exclusive” arrangement did not preclude Earl Fruit Company from shipping in Armour cars.

California Fruit attempted to find a new market by shipping fruit overseas to Liverpool, but this venture failed, and the company lost more money. To satisfy bank loans, they were forced to transfer 500 of their railcars over to Swift. “A period of febrile existence followed for the California Fruit Transportation Company. It became involved in a business tragedy, features of which were a bank failure, a resulting suicide; and made an end in the transfer to Swift of all the remaining California Fruit Transportation Company’s cars.”

Russell does not give the dates of these events, so it is not clear if they happened while William Miner was still working for CFT, which he did until 1897. But certainly the company’s troubles would have provided him with additional motivation to make a success of selling his draft gear, and eventually go into business for himself. We can speculate, too, as to whether this experience of the power of large conglomerates influenced Miner’s lifelong determination to keep his business in his own hands and personally control all its aspects. Russell wrote in 1905, “To all intents and purposes Swift is Armour, and the California Fruit Transportation is Swift, and the Fruit-Growers’ Express is the California Fruit Transportation, and the Beef Trust is one and all of these together.” But such a thing could never be said of W. H. Miner, Inc.

Sources:

Charles Edward Russell, The Greatest Trust in the World (New York: The Ridgway-Thayer Company, 1905)

L. D. H. Weld, “Private Freight Cars and American Railways,” Studies in History, Economics and Public Law 31, no. 1 (1908).