Morning appeal. [volume] (Carson City, Nev.) 1877-1906, 1879-08-14
DETERMINATIONS.


Eastern States, that many business men have
been ruined In order to make up losses sus-
tanned by cheap freighting over long routes,
to cope with competing lines, local freights
have been so enormously and oppressively
advanced as to drive numbers either to aban-
don business altogether or to change their
location. The worst feature, however, is the
special rates given to large monopohsts, who
are heavy shippers, which robs the man of
limited means of the profits of his manufac-
lures, while favoring the heavy capitalist
There should be legislation of some kind to
stop this everlasting arbitrary business in
railroad management; some check upon dis
elimination, whereby railroad corporations
should be held responsible, and the gross im
positions on certain classes and sections
by these souless and grasping companies be
held in restraint. The great evil in the East
is competition. The Baltimore and Ohio,
Pennsylvania Central, the Erie and few
others run on nearly parallel lines. Freight
shipped from either Philadelphia, New York
or Baltimore and other points on the seaboard
can reach Chicago, st. Louis or San Francisco
in about the same time by either of the great
trunk lines, and thus they are brought into
direct conflict in coming to these distant
points and freights are carried at losing rates.
But between any of these termini there Is
an immense settled country filed with pro-
ducers of every kind who are compelled to
ship over the nearest roads, and have not the
advantage of choice. These men are COM
PEELED to pay, over their local roads and the
main lines, heavily advanced rates to cover
the losses sustained on the long routes, Thus
the miller of, say Rochester, is compelled to
pay more freight on a barrel of -four carried
to New York than is the miller in Chicago,
over a thousand miles more road and by so
much as grain is cheaper in Illinois or Kansas
than in New York or Pennsylvania, by so
much can the Rochester flour be undersOld,
and the commission merchant at the large
shipping points fattens upon the ruin of pro-
ducers brought about in just such way.
This bad system is creating intense feeling
in the Middle and New England States as
well as in New York and Pennsylvania,
as it is fattening the far West at their expense
But the evil works at both ends of the line,
and the West suffers as greatly in the shipment
of manufactures from the East Not very
many years ago the writer was engaged in
business requiring very heavy shipments, a
large proportion being carried to the Western
and Northwestern States, and we paid less
from Philadelp hia to Chicago by forty cents
than to interior towns within two or three |
hundred miles, and yet all along the main
line were a number of mills producing the
same goods which they could not ship at
double the rates we paid over the long dis
lance. We had the advantage of three lines
to choose from they could only use the one
and they were compelled to pay accordingly,
and we could go into competition with them
at their own doors. Now just such men as
these built the local roads and sustained
them, but the roads in turn showed them no
favors, simply because they could not help
themselves and now there is a climax reached
which is likely to produce some change in
this runious system. Business men and the
at large are opening their eyes to
evils which these should be servants of the
people have been heaping upon them, and we
shall probably live to witness little overturn-
live to see race of legislators who are not
held by corporations.