The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1898-07-10
A Balm for Discomfort.

discomfort has it's use as q factor
In humanity's progress, however I'M
comfortable and disturbing it may be
to those who love their ease. Some
times 1T gets mischievous, but that is
when it rests on conditions that are
either wholly imaginative or where a
small basis Of fact is greatly exag-
gerated. Then, in public affairs, it is
the fuel that furnishes the flames Of
riots and revolts or the legislation that
destroys or confiscates. 1t is apt to
become morbid and degenerate into
chronic pessimism. Ground enough
there is for discomfort, room enough
for remedial action, but he who looks
only at the evil in his surroundings,
and takes no note of correctives that
constantly attend, makes no COMPARE
son with past conditions by which
only he can see If there is progress,
puts discomfort to worse than useless
ends
Discomfort finds no more fertile field
for seed sowing than in the relations
or the public to those corporations en-
gagged In transportation. Just cause in
times past 1t has had; just cause there
may be now, but whatever there is it
furnishes no ground for the fierce de-
nunciations in which the professional
corporation batter INDUCES himself on
the stump and in the press. Were half
what he says true and did half the
public believe the half of that, there
would be revolution among even our
proverbially easy-going, much endur-
ing people. This calmness is due to
the common sense that persists in
locking at all sides of case, consid-
ers the pros and cons, sees things not
only as they are but as they were. In
such view 1t is seen that, If rates Of
transport are, still too high, there
has been and is still going on a steady
reduction DUE. not to legislation or
commissioners orders, but to forces
that the railways themselves have to
bend to, and, seeing this, one is as
suTed that whatever there is Of pres
ent unreasonableness in them will be
relentlessly forced out in due time
The Milwaukee Sentinel is featuring
Nisconsin's semi by re-
printing local items from the Sentinel
Of fifty years ago. One reproduced
item told Of the arrival of a train of
ten "Hoosier" teams from Mineral
Point, each loaded with 1000 pounds
CT lead, for the carriage of which
-four shillinss" a hundred was paid.
The distance is about $50 miles. Mer-
chandise freighted back paid the same
rates. Wisconsin then was free from
the grasp Of these most 1apacious cor
porat1ons. The team and the teamster
were supreme. The price paid for. that
service was at the rate of 2-3 cents
a ton per mile. We do not know what the
railway now charges for freight be-
tween those points, but we venture the
statement that it is not one-fifth that
charged by the teams, although the
cost of equipment for rendering the
service is vastly greater. Fifteen
years ago the person desiring to reach
Deadwood paid $25 for the privilege Of
riding in an open stage over the 200
| miles intervening between Pierre and
Deadwood. He can reach it now over
the same distance, in a comfortable
coach, at a cost not to exceed SO. In
1854 it cost 81 cents to send 100 pounds
Of wheat by rail from Chicago to New
York. In ten years the cost had fallen
TO Is cents. Twenty years later still
the cost had gone down to IL cents. 1t
is ever less now.
While we would not advise content
meEt with even present conditions one
1inGs in these comparisons Of progress.
made within a period that makes its
rapidity striking. that which makes the
rant of the biatherskite ridiculous and
the indignation Of his uniformed dup.
ritiful. Meanwhile the just man holds
his judgment level between these two,
the corporation and lis assailants, Civ
ing credit where due, making allow
ances where needed, confident in the
supremacy OF economic law, which COR
rorations cannot evade nor dema-
goSues overrule.