Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1883-02-19
THB NORTHERN PACIFIC.
PRESENT CONDITION OF CONSTITUTE
TTON ON THE NEW TRANS
CONTINENTAL LINE.
Reduction in Traffic Rates During the Four
Years-The Free Control of Railroads
by Their Owners.
lChicago Times. i


Pacific will be completed-a continuous
rail route across the continent to the Pa
cifc ocean. The building of this great
transcontinental line will develop an i'm
mense area of agricultural and grazing
lands. The business of the line to be de-
rived from the products of agriculture and
stock raising interests which the road is
the means of creating-will be impor-
family supplemented by the development
of the mineral wealth of the Rocky noun
tains, now to become available by means
of rail transportation.
During the past year there has teen an
unprecedented flow of new population into
the states and territories tributary to the
road. Careful estimates show an increase
of population of more than $4,000 in Ore
gon and Washington territory since the
census of 1880. In the ten mostimportant
towns along the Minnesota division there
has been an increase of 500 or $50 per
cent. Many thriving towns and numerous
settlement are rapidly springing up along
both the eastern and western divisions of
the road.
The fact that the Northern Pacific par
allels for long distances the great water
ways of the upper Northwest will, from
the outset, measurably influence its man
agement in the public interest of cheap
transportation. But those rivers have
never been adequate to the settlement even
of the immediate regions traversed by
them. West of the Rocky mountains the
country widely on both sides of the Column
bia is unproductive, and the river itself is
continuous route of transportation only
by the aid of portages. Navigation on the
upper Missouri and Yellowstone is impeded
by their shallow and variable channels.
The railroad alone can make these coun-
tries habitable by prosperous commun-
ties, and fill them with the industries of
production and commerce. The direction
of the great water-courses of the country
fails to be CONFIDENT with the convenient
and established routes of commerce and
travel. While population has moved in
land farther and farther in its course of oc-
cupying the continent, our markets have
still remained in the narrow belt bordering
the Atlantic from Baltimore to Boston.
Within this belt are the great sea ports
from which the exports of the United
States, except cotton, are chiefly shipped
to foreign lands.
Free railroads controlled only by the
laws of trade have everywhere created the
internal commerce of the country in all its
vast magnitude. The principle that pro-
duct mast compete aUith product n, the mar
kets of the a0orld regulates transportation
rates from the remote interiors to the At
lantic seaboard. The productions of the
distant northwest must be able to compete
with similar products wherever grown.
The exigency of the farmer, first on the
Mississippi. then on the Missouri, and then
at points still farther remote, has to be
met. It is thus apparent that transporta-
ton charges cannot be uniform for
all distances. On the contrary, aside from
the fact that the long haul in
bulk is relatively the least bur-
densome, tonnage rates per mile must be
in inverse ratio to distance, otherwise
their excessive cost would soon reach a
limit at which freight could not be moved.
If the average rate now in force on the
Chicago 81 Northwestern and the Chicago,
Milwaukee & st. Paul, about one and one
half cents per ton per mile, were made the
uniform rate on grain to New York, no
wheat could be shipped from Minnesota
and Dakota.The cost of the haul to the sea-
board from central Dakota on ton, or thir-
ty-three and one-third bushels, of wheat
would, at the rate given, be $50, which
would be but 50 less than the value of
ton of No. red wheat in the New York
market to-day. Dakota wheat, worth $3.50
per bushel in New York, could not be
shipped at one and oneh half
cents per ton per mile to the
seabord, because it would not bear the haul
alone, not including terminal and elevator
charges and shrinkage losses. Uniform rates
thus discriminate against producing coun-
try in proportion to it's distance from mar
ket. The same and similar classes of facts
prove the impracticabihty of reg ulating
rates by cost and risk of service. The i'm
perative requirements of trade laws and
the competition of rival inss struggling
for the business, are the dominating fac
tors in transportation charges.
All transportation is burden on COM
merce. We're rates uniform farms coEd
not be made in Minnesota and Dakota.
Were there no charge for transportation,
the Ohio or Indiana farmer could not raise
a bushel of wheat in competition with the
grain of Dakota. But, aside from the de-
mands of trade laws, there is equity in diff
ferential rates between local and through
traffic. 1t is fair that business termina-
ting at points within the line should bear
the largest proportion of the burden of
transportation. For example, the North
ere Pacific was built across an uninhabited
almost unknown wilderness. Beyond few
frontier trading posts, every dollar of value
and all the possibilities of great future
wealth are the direct creation of the rail-
road. 1t is not inequitable that the bust
ness interests which owe their growth and
continuing prosperity to the railroad
should be taxed with the larger pro-
portion of the burden of
transportation necessary to the
maintenance Of the line and profit on
the capital invested in its construction.
But, as has been shown, rates must favor
the bulky export products of those coun-
tries,-grain and live stock,-else produc-
ton is impracticable.
1.-THE experience of all railroads is that
reduction in rates comes gradually but
surely from increased traffic and produc-
ton. Comparing series of years, the
average annual reduction in freight charg-
es on all the railroads in the United States
exceeds in amount the sum of the direct
and indirect taxes paid by the American
people for national, state, city and town
ship revenues. TIE Sartng IN tronsporta-
linn, cb0rOes b ,,c,icfiot in 5.,fss sj,,ce 1oe5