New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1873-09-11
RAILROAD OPPRESSION.
THE SITUATION IN IOWA.

| POINTS WITHIN TTIE sTATE-rAXES EvADKD BY
| THE RoADs-THR LAW WANTED BY THE FARM
ERs-IowA ROADS MANAGED TO FOSTER CHI
| CAGo TRADE
| lFRoM SPECIAL coRREsro-pEsr OF THE rRIBUsr.1
DIS MONIES, Iowa, Aug. 29.-The Grange was not
organized IN this State for the purpose of fighting
railroads or middlemen; nothing in its constitution,
as / understand II, requires its members to favor
Legislative restraints upon railroad companies or TO
enter into cooperative buying selling associations
! But when the railroads and middlemen undertook
to fix the price of corn and wheat and hogs in this
State, and to say whether the farmer should make
any profit on them not when they Disseminated
in favor of communities and individuals and
against Others, building up this place and running
I that, it the most natural thing in the world
that the farmers who were poweress as individuals
should combine for the purpose of correcting these
abuses. And the lower the price Of corn has been,
of course the more determined have the farmers
become to force the railroads to give them fair and
/ equal rates. ami the mlddemen. through whom they
buy and sell. to be content with reasonable profits
find that the complaints against the railroads
differ in kind in every Western State that visit
From its geographical positaon Iowa cannot expect
to receive as much per bushe for its crop as Illinois
or Indiana. Grain produced in this State has to be
transported an average distance Of at least 200
miles before it is the Eastern market that
raised in the western counties of Illinois, and that
transportation, of course, costs something II,
therefore, the expense of making a crop great
here as in the States further east and the farmers
made no profit there, Iowa gram could not be
moved from the farms where it grew. But the fact
is that than enough be saved in the cost of
| the production of bushel Of corn or wheat or a
pound of beef pork 20 pay for its carriage to the
Mississippi River. do not say that enough can be
saved to pay the rates that have sometimes been
charged within the past year, but If you take the
/ through rates between competing points in this
! State and Kew-York or Boston, the proper
! ton of that amount which the railroads IN
| this State get is not much the
difference in cost between raising a in this
State and in Illinois. A gentleman who for years
has studied the Agricultural possibilities of this
State, told me- to-day that when he first came here
the average cost Of raising a bushel of corn the
prairie farms not more than ten cents, and that
no man ought now 10 farm in such a way as to make
| his corn cost more than Is cents bushel. Hi
nois farmers, you may remember, demonstrated TO
me that it would not pay to sell corn for % cents
bushel at their nearest railway station
MrDDLEMEN FAVORED BY THE ROADS
The complaints against the railroads as have
! said, are not the same in any two States have
visited and for the purpose Of learning just what
the Iowa farmers complain of, visited, yesterday,
several gentlemen who have been very prominent
| in the Farmers Movement, and l shall let them
state their case substantially in their own words.
! 1.-The railroads of this State" said of them,
discriminate unjustly against the farmers in the
transportation of crops that is give other men adj
vantages which they deny to the farmers. Let me
explain Here is a wheat OF corn buyer who makes
living by purchasing grain of the farmers and ship
ping it to Chicago. OF course he makes profit by
| -.rfof .vf aot N.lrx AZ
! if they ship their own grain directly TO Chicago
! they might save the profit that this middleman
makes They engage a lot of cars, load
them, and send them forward, but they
| find when they have paid the freight and
! the other expenses which the middieman must
necessarily also incur they don't have as much
left for their grain as he offered them. Now how
is that expainedf The railroad company gives the
grain trader drawback on the grain be ships.
which il refuses TO the farmers, and in some In
stances at least, these traders in partnership
with railway officials. l thought, when the idea of
cooperative shipments arst proposed, that these
favors were given solely account of the amount
of business that these men brought TO the railroads
I supposed that the deductions were simply those
| that would be naturally made to wholesale trade.
/ and in speeches to the farmers told them But
we have learned differently, for when our farmers
have combined and offered freight in large quanti-
ties to the railroad companies they have refused to
! give us the advantages which they give TO the
favorites.'
SPECIAL RATES AGAINST THE FARMERS.
! "Eow much do these drawbacks amount to I"
asked.
I'VE don't know that was the reply. The terms
! of these contracts are secret Bat we know that
| they must be considerable, or these men who have
| them could not make so much money. You see
I 49, 81
The company comes in and says; You shall sell
vour corn TO a certain man and for a certain price
which we viii fix That's one thing complain
of and we will not long submit TO it. But have MT
told You all. In certain the roads have fixed
the rates of freight very high, and then men have
appeared among the farmers offering TO buy our pro
duce at prices just shade higher than what it would
net us to ship it ourselves but at rates much below
what il ought to bring We have often suspected
that those men the agents of the railroad COM
pauies or of the railroad managers Il our suspicious
were correct you see what outrage upon the
farmers il was The railroad people knowing orr
necessities and that many Of us are obliged TO sell,
even at a loss for the purpose of obtaining money
first arbitrarily x the price OF our produce and then
force us TO sell 10 them.
'Norare these determinations confined to ship
ments east They discriminate in favor of certain
men in bringing freight westward, and in that way
force us TO trade with those Take salt for
instance and let an association Of farmers and a
local trader purchase the same amount at the same
priee in Chicago. When that salt is in Iowa the
local trader if there strong competition, VIII re-
tail If 10 the farmers cheaper than what their own
cost them with the freight added. Now there must
be some cat in that meal or SALT II may be that in
some eases the Wholesale dealer may give the Iowa
trader drawback but in Others we know that he
is favored with special rates by the railroads which