The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-03-14
California's Great Grievance. From the Harper,s WeeklY.l


 [From the Harper's Weeltlyl
 The shibboleth that acts as watch word in bringing all the people together is the phrase, Charge all that the traf- fc will bear" It is an expression that is variously credited to MT. Huntington, the original MT. Crocker, and to various subordinate officials of the company. It | is taken to indicate the consistent un- varying policy of the Southern Pacific corporation in respect to it's charges for transportation. But the air is full of stories illustrative of this same policy. It does not matter whether they are all true. Of those that can be proved two or three may be told here. On one of the days whei the Sand Lots move ment was strong the late MT Charles Crocker met wealthy merchant down town, and said to him that he hoped the people of San Francisco would all low him to live among them, but the talk of the Sand-Lotters suggested that they would not. The merchant replied that if MT. Crocker would do as he ad- vised, he, MT. Crocker, would be the most popular man in town. His ad- vice was that Crocker should write to the chamber of commerce, asking that a committee be appointed to meet him and confer upon the question what the Southern Pacific would do to meet the approval of the community. Mir. Crock CT listened for an hour, and then said: q will do nothing of the sort. I will get all I can out of the road, and when railroading plays out I shall be such rich man that I wOn't naTRp p
 The same merchant who reports this once had an enormous shipment to make to the east. He was informed by an officer of the Southern Pacific that it had "got him in the door and was going to squeeze him." It proposed that he pay such a rate as 1t pleased, higher one than he had ever paid before. He hired steamship and sent his goods around the Horn sooner than pay 1t, and the next the company made rate of slightly more than half what it had asked him during the previous year.
 A hop-ralser who shipped hls har- vest each year called for empty cars on one occasion, and the local freight agent asked him if he knew what rate he was going to pay. "The same as before, suppose" said the rancher. "Oh, mo-" said the agent. Hops have gone up, have they not?" The crop had failed in Germany and was a poor one in New York, so that the commodity had risen in value from fifteen or twenty cents to nearly a dollar a pound. In the previous year the hop-men had lost heavily. Therefore the rancher asked, What has the price got to do with lr tr l, . ! the agent, "I will have to raise your rate from two cents to four cents a pound. Those are my orders, and I think you are getting off very easily"
 The shipper sent his hops by teams to the nearest waterway and by boat to | San Francisco, and paid only two cents | a pound for that mode of transporting | them. Then the railway agent came | again to him and said: why did you | not tell me what you were going to do? | I would have got rate of cent a pound for you"
 It is because of such relations between | the people and the railroad that the | public believes the story that one great | ranch-owner has sworn that, until an- other railroad is built, he will not raise upon his land a single pound of any thing for market except what can walk to the place of sale upon its own legs. So he raises mules, horses, hogs, and | sheep, and drives them to the coast | or the nearest station of the Santa Fe route
 "The transcontinental business of the Southern Pacific does not pay at the rates the company has been forced to make" said still another merchant. They have been forced to make up for their transcontinental losses by exoes- sively heavy local rates in California. That is why we see that, as in the case of wheat, they cannot carry 1t at all on the transcontinental route, yet they charge a rate of four dollars a ton for ! 2O0-mile haul to the seaboard, though he same commodity has been hauled at | l profit for two dollars ton over twelve hundred miles between St. Louis and he Atlantic"