New Ulm review. (New Ulm, Brown County, Minn.) 1892-1961, 1903-07-08
COUNTY BOARD OF HEAlFHRAIES NOT SATISFACTORY
Roads Stop Work on Lumber and
. Coal Tariffs.
Maintain They Will Interfere With
Interstate Rates.
Matter May Have to Be Taken to
Courts For Settlement.

There has been hitch over the
establishment of the new freight rates
upon coal and lumber in Minnesota
and it is not improbable that the state
railroad and warehouse commission
will be compelled to resort to the
courts to secure the enforcement Of the
reductions ordered recently. Traffic
officials have suspended the checking
OF the reductions, and it is given out
that an appeal to the executive officers
of the road is under consideration.
Whether the checking of the rates
will be resumed again Or not is prob
lematical. Traffic officers have found
that the lumber rate reductions cannot
be made without disturbing hundreds
of rates quoted from Minnesota inter-
ior points to outside points, on which
the commissions order applies only
to the Minnesota portion of the rate.
The commission has no jurisdiction
outside of the state, and yet to obey
its orders will have the same effect on
hundreds of rates outside of MinnesO-
ia as though they were under Mime
sota's jurisdiction.
Traffic men state that the problem of
adjusting coal rates and equalizing
them to tariffs in force on other lines
and outside of the state is capable of
a solution, but not until large num-
Der of rates the commission has no
power to touch have been affected.
With lumber, however, the question is
quite different, since the lumber traffic
in Minnesota and into Minnesota and
out again over connecting lines and
the traffic originating in Minnesota
and destined to outside points is a
very much larger portion of the entire
freight movement.
Lumber tariffs cover several thous-
and different points, all of which take
their own rates. These points are
many of them in competition with lines
not operating in Minnesota. To lower
the Minnesota portion of the rate and
allow the portions from Minnesota
boundaries to destination to remain
the same, railroad men say, would
produce endless discrimination. To
equalize the reductions with the COM
petitive rates of outside lines is in
itself large question.
The check of the lumber rates has
progressed to point where these prob
lens, all of which were outlined as
objections to further action by traffic
men, are clearly defined. 1t is now
considered probable that the entire
question of rate reductions will be
submitted to the executive officers for
consider alton, after which decision
to let the matter 60 into the courts is
expected by many well-informed Off
Gals.
It is stated on excellent authority
that an effort to secure a compromise
with the railroad commission will
probably be made. There is hope
full feeling among many officials and
it is believed that when the exact situ-
alton is laid before the commission
notifications of it's order sufficient to
overcome many of the greatest diff
culties in equalizing the rates with
rates outside Minnesota will be
allowed.
Traffic officers of the coast lines and
of several Chicago-St. Paul lines,
heavily interested in the lumber move
ment, were in conference Friday with
Commissioner Staples and other men,
bers.