The Carload Mandate: How Shipping Costs Stifled Kennewick’s Early Farmers

C. R. Delepine, who has been making a specialty of market gardening, has shipped this spring more than seven tons of rhubarb from his two acres. At the beginning of the season the price was satisfactory, ranging as high as seven cents a pound, but at the present time he is experiencing difficulty in marketing at profitable figures.

"I have proved one thing to my satisfaction," said Mr. Delepine, "and that is, that no matter how fine the quality of your product you must have quantity before you can successfully compete in the markets. This year I obtained good prices for my rhubarb and spinach in competition with that from other districts until the season became more advanced and Walla Walla began shipping in carload lots.

"In quality my rhubarb and spinach will outsell the Walla Walla product when placed side by side, but the difference in transportation charges between local express shipments and carload lots is too great a handicap to be overcome even with superior quality.

"The market gardening in Walla Walla is done almost exclusively by Japanese, Chinese and Italians, but given sufficient quantity, and the Kennewick white man can successfully compete with this cheap foreign labor, but we can’t do it until we do have the quantity. We can never put our early vegetable business on a paying basis until we can ship our rhubarb, our spinach, our early cabbage and our asparagus in mixed carloads."