Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1899-04-27
NEWS OF The
RAILROADS
A Local Man Talks About
Feed-in- Transit Rate.
EXPL AIMS IT IN DETAIL
Northern Pacific Preparing For the
Srring--Great Northern I'M
pr0vements--NOtes
EXPLAINS IT IN DETAIL

The f~eeding-in- transit arrangement,
which various roads west of the Missouri
river have decided to abolish, is attract
ing much attention among railroad men
and stockmen. A prominent local rall-
road official stated to an Inter Mountain
reporter this morning that the old ar
rangement, under the feeding in transit
privilege, was that unde the feeding IN
transit privilege, live stock stock from
the western anges could be stopped OH
at any point in Kansas and Nebraska,
providing the Missouri river rate was
paid to the feeding point, and when the
stock were ready for market, they were
billed to South Omaha or Kansas City,
at $10.0 90 per car; or if they were for
warded from the feeding point to Chicago,
they were billed out of the feeding point
to Chicago at the unpaid difference be-
tween the amount of the through rate
from the original point of shipment and
that collected at the feeding point, plus
$1,000 per car. In other words, for the
privilege of feeding at interior points in
Kansas and Nebraska, a penalty of $1,000
per car was assessed. OF course II eX-
cess caused by fattening, was charged
for from the feeding point to the market
at the local rate.
The reason the railroad companies de-
cided to cancel the arrangement was
as follows: In the first place, the
billing or rather the expense bills were
being manipulated; the intent of the feed
ing in transit arrangement was that the
identity of he stock should not be chang
ed. There We're several scalperS in kan-
sas and Nebraska who bought up the eX-
pense bills; went around the country, and
disposed of them to different parties
which of course was a violation Oh the
agreement. but as it was a hard matter
for the transport lines, in fact impossible
to preserve the identity of the cattle ship
ped into the feeding points or the point
where the billing was taken INTO account
by the agent, it gave these scalperS a Dig
ADVANTAGE and was certainly working a
hardship on the railroad companies. An
other thing that was practlced and that
was hard to overcome, was the fact that
cattle were sometimes driven from the
main line point to a branch line point and
the railroad companies were requested to
apply the feeding in transit rate; IN 9TH
err words, transfer the billing from a main
line point to a branch line point. Rall-
road companies were also often asked to
throw the billing back say fifty or sixty
miles and sometimes a hundred miles,
west of where the cattle were ~unloaded,
! forcing them to render a double haul
without any extra compensation; the
I stock yards people at Kansas City and
Omaha say that stockers as we'll as feed
ers should come to their markets and be
disposed of there and shipped back into
the interior and fattened on corn raised
aling the corn belt. SO that so long as
the feeding in transit arrangement does
not prevail ait the present time, the rail-
road companies do not have to contend
with what they have had to contend with
in the past, and as far as has been heard,
the stock men in Montana are not at all
displeased with the cancellation of the
arrangement.
Montana is not as much interested in
this feeding in transit arrangement as
the territories south of us; for the reason
that most of the stock out of Montana
have been handled by the Northern Pa