Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1880-04-26

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railroad properties, consolidation of railway
interects, and acquisitions by railway owners
of rights adverse to the common good, is the
more perfect application to her trade of the
developing railway policy which denies to
centers of traffic like st. Paul their natural
advantages of position. That policy would
shut st. Paul out from the low rates and
conveniences of river navigation, deny to it
the great benefits it might otherwise have
from the northern lake route, require the
Northern Pacific and st. Paul & Manitoba
companies to discriminate against ST. Paul
in favor of the long railway haul to the south
bend of Lake Michigan, and compel the
people and railroads west and southwest of
our city to go with their produce and orders
over the long Chicago routes instead of over
the direct and shorter lines to st. Paul.
Our merchants are by this time undoubt-
eddy familiar with the workings of this pol
icy, though they have not yet felt its per-
feet application; and they do not need to be
informed that the major interests of the
Chicago, Milwaukee & st. Paul company
and of the Chicago & Northwestern COM
pany are antagonistic to the best interests of
st. Paul. 1t is no satisfaction to know that
they are alike antagonistic to the shipping
interests of Duluth and to the commercial
and manufacturing industries of Minneap-
olisand every other city or town that would
prosper under free system of competitive
transportation traffic. Nor is it any salts
faction to know that the so-called great
trunk line combination is applying
its similar policy to all the seacoast,
interior and Western cities. Least of
all is there any relief in the outlook
for the future. The two Lake Michigan
corporations, with bases of operations in our
city, have nearly surrounded it and have
about cut off every line of escape from their
environment. They own part of the roads
built for and by st. Paul, and are extend
ing other roads into and through all the
country which would naturally have to mar
ket at st. Paul, and these latter are pointing
to such invasions of the Northern Pacific
territory as will tend to make the northern
transcontinental highway tributary to them
and its eastern lines merely local roads.
To counteract this tendency of their plans
the Northern Pacific company is being
forced to immediate preparations for extern
sion of its Lake Superior line along the
south shore to the mining region of northern
Michigan-w the design, probably, of ul-
| timately gaining seashore and eastern
rail connections by way of Sault ste Marie.
If ST. Paul was prepared to join with
the Northern Pacific company in this new
eastward movement or to take advantage Of
it for obtaining an independent outlet to the
East, its whole route from st. Paul to the
Michigan line would be contested by the two
Chicago and Milwaukee companies, and
when it reached Michigan it would fnd the
vantage points of the Northern Peninsular
in possession of the Chicago d Northwestern
company. 1t may be said that the Chicago
company and the Milwaukee company are
antagonized to each other in their contest for
territory, but so far as st. Paul is concern
ed they are alike hostile to tin the sense
and manner in which they would be hostile
to Chicago in favor of st. Paul if (the conrse
of trade being westward instead of east
ward) st. Paul was their terminus and Indi
ana, Michigan and Illinois the field of con-
! test.
The railway policy of the country, as now
developing, is of such recent origin th't all
business men are familiar with its work
ings. Beginning in competition its end is
combination. At first its purposes were
simply the gaining of traffic; next was add
ed great schemes of speculation, by which
the producing and mercantile communities
were taxed for benefit of those having, for
the time, control of transportation, or ia
vored operators were assisted to fortunes by
determinations against their competitors;
and now the purposes are complicated with
operations more intimately connected with
Wall street quotations than with what the
public would understand by railway manage
ment. The final and seemingly near at hand
result will be that,as against the public-or as
so far as the people who furnish business for
the railroads are concerned-all the railroad
companies will be united under one man
agement, which will destroy competition
and build up or destroy trade and industrial
centers, business, agriculture and mauufac-
turing misunderstanding as, in the discre
ton of the supreme railway management,
railroad and stock interests will be best
served. Then, indeed, will there be railroad
kings, and this generation has had only a
foretaste of what their iron rule will be. It
may be imagined that it will be a rule of
robbers, protected by law and having the
makers and executors of law for their SER
wants.
it is possible for St. Paul and Minnesota
casion and opportunity for hurting antago-
nistic railway interests more than they can vet
hurt our interests will come and for this at
least the whole community of st. Paul should
be thoroughly united. On a former occa-
sion st. Paul merchants demonstrated their
strength and, if in the settlement of differ
ences which followed, some of the railway
companies received more than they gave, yet
the community has not lost all its rights and
powers.
One manifest and present tender of ad-
vantages, existing and prospective, is in the
northern lake route. Every carload of
freight sent or brought that way helps to
strengthen the only possible route of trans
portation from which competition can be e1-
pected with the Lake Michigan and so-called
Eastern Trunk lines. If there is ever q st.
Pail system of railroads, thoroughly allied
to the interests of st. Paul and its tributary
country, the bases of that SYSTEM will be in
direct connection with Lake Superior, the
north bend of Lake MICHIGAN and an eastern