Aberdeen herald. [volume] (Aberdeen, Chehalis County, W.T.) 1886-1917, 1905-06-26
Railroads and prOQreSS.

committee on interstate commerce at
Washington on May 4th, Prof. Hugo
R. Meyer, of Chicago University, an
expert on railroad management, made
this statement:
LET us look at what might have
happened if we had needed the protest
Of the farmers Of New York and Ohio
and Pennsylvania Gin the seventies
when grain from the West began pour
ing into the Atlantic scaboard) and
acted upon the doctrine which the in
terstate commerce commission has
enunciated time and again, that no
man may be deprived of the advan-
tages accruing to him by virtue of ge-
ographical position. We could not
have west of the Mississippi popula-
ton of millions Of people who are
prosperous and are great consumers.
We never should have seen the years
when we built $1,000 and IL, 900 miles
Of railway, for there would have been
no farmers west Of the Mississippi riv-
or who could have used the land that
would have been opened up by the
building of these railways. And if
we had not seen the years when we
could build $1,000 and IL, 900 miles of
railway year, we should not have to
day east of the Mississippi steel and
iron producing center which is at once
the marvel and despair Of Europe, be.
cause we could not have built up a
steel and iron industry if there had
been no market for it's product.
"We could not have in New Englsnd
great boot and shoe industry; we
could not have in New England a
great milling industry; we could not
have spread throughout New York and
Pennsylvania and Ohio manufacturing
industries of the most diversified
kinds, because these industries would
have no market among the farmers
west Of the Mississippi river.
"And while the progress of this
country and the development of the
agricultural West of this country did
mean the impairment Of the agricul-
tural value east Of the Mississippi riv-
or that ran up into the hundreds Of
millions of dollars, it meant incident
ally the building up Of great manufac-
turing industries that added to the
value of this land by thousan is of mil
lions of dollars. And, gentlemen, those
things were not foreseen in the seven
ties. The statesmen and the public
men Of this country did not see what
part the agricultural development of
the West was going to play in the in
dustrial development of the East. And
you may read the decisions Of the in
tesrtate commerce commission from
the first to the last, and what is one of
the greatest Characterization Of these
decisionsP The continued inability to
see the question in this large way.
"The interstate commerce commits
sion never can see anything more than
that the farm land of some farmer is
decreasing in value, or that some man
who has -four mill with a production
Of so barrels a day is being crowded
out. 1t never can see that the de-
struction or impairment of farm val
ues in this place means the building
up Of farm values in that place, and
that shifting of values is a necessary
incident to the industrial and manu-
featuring development Of this country
And if we shall give to the interstate
commerce commission power to regu-
late rates, we shall no longer have our
rates regulated on the etatesmanlike
basis on which they have been regu-
lated in the past by railroad men, who
really have been great statesmen, who
really have been great builders Of en-
pire, who have had an Inauguration
that rivals the imagination of the
greatest poet and Of the greatest in
ventor, and who have operated with
courage and daring that rivals the
courage and daring of tho great mill
tary general. But we shall have our
rates regulated by body Of civil serv-
ants, bureaucrats. whose besetting sin
the world over is that they never can
grasp q situation in e. large way and
with the grasp of statesman; that
they never can sec the faoJ that they
are confronted with a small evil, ex-
oept by tbs creation Of evils and abuses
which are infinitely greater than the
one that is to be corrected"