The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1892-08-13
A COMMERCIAL CRIME.

| IF Congress or the Federal courts, one
or the other, does not speedily crush the
so-caIled traffic associations, the people
of tie entire west, including all their
manufacturing interests and the COM
nlerce of all their minor towns and
cities, will be subjected to and concen-
trated at few favored points. The de-
cisien of Chairman Walker, of the
Western Traffic association, published
in the EAGLES dispatches of yesterday
morning, is the most fragrant and high
handed ukase of usurped power ever
openly announced by the head OF cor
porate combine. This man Walker, in
his decision, practically says that the
country and towns west of the Mississippi
shall not enjoy any Of the natural
advantages which pertain to their loca-
ton, but that their products shall be
forced to Chicago or other eastern
centers, and that these eastern centers
shall have such rates as will enable them
to supply the said western markets with
out reference to distance. or to the fact
that If left to the exigencies of ordinary
trade and traffic rules the western points
would most certainly supply such mar
kets themselves. In other words, this
traffic association issues manifesto di-
recting that as hogs and cattle are higher
at Chicago than at the Missouri river,
that therefore Kansas hogs and cattle
must not only be carried TO Chicago at a
lower rate per ton per mile than to local
markets, but that the products, III
cured meats. of these hogs and cattle,
shall be shipped back from Chicago to
Denver and to the Pacific coast markets
at the same rates, in toto, accorded the
Missouri river and other Kansas points.
The reasons assigned by this astute tool
of robbing-r regime for such an out
rageous order, in his own words are
''that such a readjustment OF freight
crates is necessary to prevent the Mis-
"suri river packers from ultimately ab-
"sorbing all the business. In other
words this section of the country is to be
arbitrarily deprived of its natural adj
yantares in products and of location not
only, but crippled in all its commercial
interests and affairs and subjected to
''such rates as wili," in his own Ian
guage, ''secure to the various carriers a
lust amount of the traffic"
All this sy5timatized oppression and
legalized robbery comes, in the first IN
stance, from that interstate law iniquity,
and secondly from these freight COM
bines which naturally and logically fol-
lowed the enactment of that law, which
law we:have not failed to denounce since
lis first introduction into congress-
What, indeed, are the natural advan-
tages of location, superiority in produc-
tiveness and facilities for reaching mar
kets by shipment, all amount to In the
face of such rulings? 1t would be just
as equitable to make mandatory order
that constructively, or for the purpose of
ali Missouri river points should
be considered as Icing located east of
the Mississippi river, and that Wichita
must be considered as being locat-
ed on the east side Of the
Gulf of Mexico. With the same |
rate per ton per mile for the shipment of
hogs and cattle and grain to the Missouri
river accorded to Chicago and the other
eastern points, and the same rate per
ton per mile for reaching the Pacific and |
Gulf coast trades, Kansas and Nebraska |
towns would not only cure all their own
meats and grind up all their own wheat |
and corn, but find prompt and paying !
markets for everything i'll these lines
that they could produce. Wichita, To-
Gated as the city is with reference to cat |
tie, hogs, corn and wheat and to the |
Pacific and Gulf would slaughter ten to |
fifty head of live stock to where one is |
laughte red now, and would grind from |
ten to fifty barrels of flour to where one
is ground now. In short the same !
order issued in behalf of Wichita or of |
any other western trade center that has
been promulgated by this salaried tool
and head of that Western Traffic trust, !
Walker, would make such centers in a |
few years rivals of the greatest cities of
the land, whatever their acquired facili- |
ties and natural advantages.