Butte County
Biographies
HENRY A. EAMES
CHICO ICE AND COLD STORAGE COMPANY
One who has been brought up on the average American farm will probably find it difficult to believe that salt pork can be eliminated as a staple article of diet or that home-cured hams and bacon can be kept as fresh and sweet in the spring as when they were first cured. Salt pork is an agricultural tradition and highly flavored hams and bacon have furnished odorous springtime feasts since the days of our great-grandfathers. It has appeared that they were a necessary part of farm life unless the farmer was extravagant enough to sell his hogs to the butcher and then buy them back at twice the price.
In Chico, Cal., they have overturned these ancient traditions and have gone far toward solving the problems of an all-year supply of fresh meat for the man who raises the meat. Like a good many other difficult problems, the solution has been found rather easy. Cold storage has been placed on a retail basis, and the automobile does the rest.
Several years ago a cold storage plant was erected in Chico, which is a prosperous agricultural town surrounded by thriving orchards and ranches. For some time the plant was used like other cold storage plants in smaller cities. Local butchers rented storage space in which to store their meats; commission merchants and enterprising grocers bought eggs and butter when they were cheap and stored them for high winter prices; fruit-packers put in boxes of dried fruits to safeguard them against weevils, and each spring the women of Chico outwitted the moth by storing their furs.
Physically the plant was the same as hundreds of others scattered throughout the country, and its field of opportunity was the same. But it happened that the men who owned and managed it were well acquainted with many of the farmers and knew their problems. They were soon struck by the fact that though practically nothing was deposited in the cold storage plant except the products of the farms and orchards, the farmers and orchardists were the only ones who did not make any use of the plant or gain any benefit from it.
The butchers were able to kill and store large quantities of meat; the grocers and commission-men bought eggs in the early summer at twenty-five cents a dozen and sold them in the winter at an advance of fifteen to thirty cents a dozen. Indirectly all the residents of Chico were benefited through the preservation of food supplies. But the farmer’s table was not benefited in any way.
H. A. Eames became superintendent of the plant, and after a good many discussions with the directors he started a campaign to gain farmer customers. Finely paved roads radiate from Chico in all directions, and as every farmer owns an automobile the plant was readily accessible to all who live within a radius of ten miles. Mr. Eames knew the joys and tribulations of hog-killing on the ranch, the selection of a cold day for the job, the haunting fear of a warm spell, the oversupply of backbones and spareribs, the eternal portion of salt pork that followed, and finally the hams and bacon that would always get rancid and sometimes wormy by spring, no matter how carefully they were cured or cared for. This as obviously the easiest approach to the farmer. He pointed out to them that they could store some of their fresh pork and beef with him instead of salting it down. He quoted a very low price for the service and agreed to give them access to their meat at any time, day or night. Someone must be on duty at a cold-storage plant at all hours, so the fulfillment of this promise did not mean the employment of any additional help.
A few farmers tried it rather dubiously. The freshly killed meat was brought to town, cooled and stored in one of the vaults. As meat was needed on the ranch, the farmers came to the cold-storage plant for it, just as they would have gone to the butcher shop with the important exception that they were getting their own fresh meat and the only expense was the small charge for storage. The scheme grew quite popular with those who tried it, but as more and more customers came it was threatened with failure because of its own success. The cold-storage business had been built up on a wholesale basis.
Many successful plants have not more than twenty or thirty customers, and of these a half dozen may furnish the bulk of the business. They store and withdraw in large quantities. Other cold-storage men, with the dislike the wholesaler has for the petty details of retain business, had predicted that the care of these comparatively small quantities of meat would be more trouble than the business was worth. For a time it appeared that they were right. With only a few customers there was no trouble. Each customer was known and each one knew his own particular piece of meat. Then the customers grew in number and one day one of them took a large piece of pork belonging to someone else.
Boxes were provided after that, but as they grew numerous there was confusion in shifting them about and some unpalatable mixtures resulted from breakages, for with the advert of the boxes the farmers began storing many things. The solution was ready at hand for the plan of the safety-deposit boxes was adopted outright. One of the large rooms was given over entirely to the farmer-customers. On both sides of the room tiers of drawers were arranged, with additional tiers down in middle. Each of the two hundred drawers could be opened and emptied without disturbing any of the others, and each one was locked, the farmer alone holding the key. Each drawer held about one hundred pounds of meat and rented for one cent a day, or three dollars and sixty-five cents a year.
The room had not been fitted up more than a few months before every drawer was taken. Once a farmer found how easily he could keep himself supplied with fresh meat and vegetables out of season, he became a volunteer salesman for the cold-storage plant. A second and larger room was fitted up for the use of the farmer-customers. This room was fitted up especially for them and was designed to meet their needs. Its entrance is directly from the street, but through a cooling-room which is fitted up with a chopping-block and a complete set of butcher’s tools. This new room contains five hundred forty compartments or drawers, nearly all of which are rented. These compartments are not all of the same size, for once they became accustomed to cold-storage the farmers find a variety of uses for it and a single box is often inadequate.
In the new room there are four hundred seventy boxes or drawers which are three feet long and approximately one foot square. Profiting by earlier experience, the construction has been carefully designed to provide for ventilation, and the boxes are made of well-seasoned wood, dipped in melted paraffin to provide against damp and decay. Mr. Eames thought he could find customers to fill these boxes inside of two years, but they were all taken inside of four months, and were it not for the present war conditions the plant would now be doubled in storage space. In July, 1918, there were nearly one thousand customers.
In addition to the smaller drawers, there are seventy larger compartments, in which an entire beef may be stored. The rate for the drawers is one cent a day, and for the larger compartments, five cents a day. There are also thirteen small rooms conveniently fitted up for the storage of meat and vegetables, as well as whole carcasses of beef or pork.
The management of the Chico plant are enthusiastic about their venture, not only as a reliable and increasing revenues-producer, but as a means of teaching the producer the uses of cold storage. Of course they have met with a good many minor but irritating difficulties in building up the business.
Many did not understand that though cold-storage will preserve food it will not accomplish miracles. It will not restore a piece of tainted meat or make an egg any fresher than it was when put in storage. On a few occasions they have had to refuse to accept meat which was brought to them, for a piece of tainted meat in a cold-storage vault spreads as much mischief as in the salt-pork barrel. On their printed rate-cards they tell the farmer: “The meat is to be cut up in the size that the family requires for each day, ready to be put in the pan to be cooked, wrapped in two thicknesses of paraffin or thick butchers’ paper, with a string around each piece. Write on the outside what each piece is.” Many have failed to understand the necessity for using this kind of paper for wrapping and have brought in meat wrapped in old newspapers and even tissue paper. This would soon get soggy and color or taint the meat. The plant made arrangements to purchase paraffin paper in large quantities and to furnish it to customers at cost.
But the farmer has been no more backward than others about learning the possibilities and limitations of cold-storage, and most of the troubles of educating him are things of the past so far as Chico is concerned. Having found that cold-storage will preserve their meat, the farmers have naturally used it for many other things. In the summer many of them bring in loads of green corn, beans, peas, and other vegetables, which may be kept perfectly fresh for several months. Grapes packed in redwood sawdust will keep perfectly for a long time, and now the grapes are stored for winter-holiday feasts. When there is an oversupply of butter it is also stored for winter use. The charge for the service is small.
The Chico plant has pointed the way for a nation-wide use of cold-storage by the farmer, a development which may be expected in the next few years. Cold-storage itself is an infant industry, for very few plants are more than twenty years old, and most of them have been built very recently. With new uses for cold-storage being found each year, the average plant has had to pay more attention to finding means of caring for its old trade than to looking for new customers. Potatoes, onions, dried fruits, nuts and many other articles are now placed in cold-storage for the first time. A number of plants are beginning to establish relations with the producer and are pointing out to him that cold-storage is a public utility which can be used by the consumer and the producer as well as by the middleman, who in the past has been the only customer. Every plant can do what the Chico plant has done to take care of farmer-customers.
The Chico Ice and Cold Company manufactures ice, which is retailed and wholesaled throughout Northern California. When the plant was erected it had a daily capacity of ten tons, which has been increased to thirty tons. The Union Ice Company intends making this a shipping-point for the northern part of the state. During the summer season twenty men are employed.
Transcribed
by Joyce Rugeroni.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 874-877, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2008 Joyce Rugeroni.
Golden Nugget Library's
Butte County Biographies