Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1905-05-30
GOVERNMENT RATE-MAkING.

GOVERNMENT RATE-MAklNe.
The West Would Suffer If Such a
Policy Should Be Adopted.
Chicago, May 3d. Government
ratemaking in the United States
would be an industrial misfortune for
the western farmer and manufacturer
and serious restriction of the whole
sale jobbing business of the great
western Cities" said Professor Hugo
R. Meyer of the university of Chicago,
today in discussing the result of gov
eminent railway ownership and regu-
lation abroad.
Professor Meyer is recognized as
the foremost authority on the subject
of the relation of railways to COM
merce and industry in this country.
He has taught economics at Harvard
and is now assistant professor of that
subject at THE university of Chicago.
He has just returned from Washington
where he for several days appeared
before the senate committee on inter-
state commerce.
Zone of the most important ques-
tions that must be considered in rela-
ton to the proposed Legislation to
grant governmental regulation of rates
to the interstate commerce commits
sion or any other body THAT congress
may see fit to create for that pur-
pose," said Professor Meyer, "is the
condemnation by the interstate COM
merce commission of two Of the great
est and most beneicient railway-rate
practices to be found in this country,
namely, the granting of extremely low
rates to grain and all kinds of agri-
cultural products which are designed
for export, and the granting low rates
to commodities brought into the in
terror on Through bills of landing as
against commodities shipped in the
first instance to an American port and
then re-shipped. This embraces
rather widely the general subject of
ddferentials. Let me cite first the
practice of discrimination in favor of
the export trade. 1t is very old one
and has been of enormous benefit to
American farmers. Often the rates
upon grain and all kinds of agricul-
tural products for export have been
only so per cent of the rates for the
movement of these same articles to
the Atlantic seaboard for consumption.
Thus the railroads have been able to
reduce their rates on agricultural
Commodities with greater rapidity than
they WOULD otherwise have been. 1t
would have been impossible to make
the reductions extend equally to do
mesttc trade, for those reductions
would not have increased consumption
upon the Atlantic seaboard and would
have decreased the net returns from
nanQulnS the business.
1.-THE low rates made upon our ex-
ports have enabled the American
farmer to compete with Europe, not
only with the farmer of England and
Russia but with the farmers IF west.
ern amid central Europe themselves.
But for this the American farmer
could not have displaced the western
Europe farmer to the extent to which
he has done it.
"The produce exchange made this
practice a subject of complaint before
the Interstate commerce commission
The Chambers Of. Commerce in Mime
sofa and Indiana, and number of
state oranges, passed resolutions p.o
testing against the decision of the
commission condemning the practice
of lower rates on grain for export.
This protest stated that the western
farmers were raising grain for the pur-
pose of making living, that they were
not philanthropists and that they did
not propose making the New York ele-
vatormen the benefciaries of their
labors. Luckily the decision of the
interstate commerce commission was
reversed by the supreme court, else
the value of western grain would have
been reduced a number of cents Der
bushel.
I'm another case which came he.
fore the commission there was IN
volved the question of the building no
Of the grain export trade from Phila,
delphda and Baltimore. It was necas-
sary to induce steamships to come to
those ports because they would not
come IN ballast and they could not get
cargoes comprising only these things
which were destined for those ports
under existing conditions. In or,ler to
bring ships to their wharves, it was
necessary to grant percentages to The
SteameSalfpS llpOn trade brought frrr,,