The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1904-01-12
SPRINGER TO STOCKMEN
President of National Associa-
ton Delivers Annual Address.

Portland, Ore, Jan. 12-President
John W. Springer of the National Live
Stock association delivered his annual
address today, as follows:
While we have knocked off a good
many rough edges to make smoother the
pathway of the stockmen, there remains
still others vital to success, and it is
our business to see that these glaring
wrongs are righted and that speedily.
we cannot raise live stock without
adequate railway transportation, and
better service than the industry is now
receiving. Rates have been raised on
all live stock, and the average running
time Is less satisfactory than formerly,
while transportation to actual shippers
has been arbitrarily cut off, and this
industry especially selected for cruel
NIXON. The railway managers expect
you to go to market with your live
STOCK, care for them, which keeps the
management from hiring professional
shippers, and you are then advised by
the corporation that you can pay your
way back home or walk. At the prices
you have received for the year at the
big markets, you have not had money
enough left after paying your freight
(which, OF course, is flrst) and feed bills,
your mortgage and the 'intrust' to
either buy ticket home or to stay
where you had stranded.
All stock shippers should be returned
free, because they go back to feed and
breed other animals, thus preparing a
golden harvest for the great transporta-
ton lines, which it costs them nothing
to secure but decent treatment
Another thing, law should he
passed by congress compelling railways
to make at least twenty miles an hour
with i've stock shipments destined for
market. You have time freights fr.1lit
limited coffee specials from ocean to
ocean, and vet the live stock industry
in its various branches pays the rail-
ways more cash per annum than all of
the specials put together, and we get
any old time. and lay up hours at any
old blind siding, while these favored
orange trains and tea specials pass at
forty miles an hour. In my Judgment,
good plan to adopt by stockmen at
every shipping point is to load your
animals, and then turn the shipment
over to the railway management as
perlshabie freight, just like they do
fruit from California, or carloads of
chlckens- and tell them to deliver the
lot at the market in good order or suf-
fer the consequences. as they do with
other periSha BILE stuff If they refuse
10 maui YOUR stock, get out a man
uamuS. and see what effect thousands
of lawsuits would have on stock ship
pers' passes.
We must go cunning with our bal
iots) for the congressman in every one
OF our districts, and see if we cannot
have the interstate commerce bill so
NA1INGi4 l1idI IL VIII TO some
thing, and the commission be a tribunal
Uwhere we can have some of these in
terState questions settled and the de-
crees enforced the same as in a court
of justice.
I'VE are still knocking at the doors
of congress for a f1ve-year census of
livestock, to be taken and promptly
disseminated, so all the stosk raisers
and feeders may know just what pro-
portion has been put on feed, in order
as to the proper time to ship to mar
ket.
THE president has recently ap-
pointed a rublic land commission in
order that comprehensive reports may
be made as to the available public
lands remaining, their proper classifi-
cation. and the most equitable way
they could be handled by the officers
of the general land office for the chill
dren to follow US. No stockman in this
broad domain wants or expects the
government to give him anything, or to
run his business, but he does desire
that no special hindrances be thrown
in his way so that it is made impos-
Sible for him to make a livelihood in
the way his father did, and their faith
ers, for one hundred years of our ma
tional existence
There is a right way out of every
one of the difficulties which beset us
at the beginning of the Twentieth CEN
fury. 1t is your business and mine to
blaze the way for the right to prevail.
We do not belong to the bunch of do
nothings.
1--WE are still urging congress with all
our power to pass the GroSvenor anti
shoddy BILL which seeks to compel ev-
cry manufacturer to mark in plain let
ters and figures just what percentage
of every yard of cloth woven is wool,
cotton, hair, shoddy, etc. We do not
aim to cripple the manufacturers OF
cloth, but we insist upon behalf of all
cloth consumers of this land that The
selling tag shall plainly reveal to every
purchaser just what sort of a suit he is
buying in order that the outrageous
frauds against wooden goods may be
stopped.
Another bill live stockmen are
vitality interested in is that with refer
ence to forest reserve. Stocknen have
no objection to honest reserves, where
there are forests to protect or to fOs-
ter the growth thereof, but where mil
lions of acres are set apart by the Sec
rotary of the interior. when you could
not locate a tree with a Lick obserVa-
tory telescope, which is done only on
account of the fine manipulation of
some great land graft railroad syndi-
cate, who wish to unload their worth
less holdings on gullible government
this is the point where the American