Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1905-05-29
Railroads and Progress.


In his testimony before the Senate
Committee on Interstate Commerce at
Washington on May 4th, Prof. Hugo e.
Meyer of Chicago University, an ex-
pert On railroad management, made
this statement:
LET us look at what might have
happened if we had needed the pro-
tests Of the farmers Of New York and
Ohio and Pennsylvania Gin the seven
ties when grain from the west began
pouring to the Atlantic seaboard) and
acted upon the doctrine which the In
terState Commerce Commission has
enunciated time and again, that no
man may be deprived of the advant-
ages accruing to him by virtue of his
geographical position. We could not
have west of the Mississippi a popula-
ten of millions of people who are
prosperous and are great consumers.
We never should have seen the years
when we built 10000 and $4,000 miles
ne farmers west Of the Mississippi Riv-
er who could have used the land that
would have been opened up by the
building of those railways. And if we
had not seen the years when we could
build 10000 and $4,000 miles of rail
way year, we should not have to-day
east of the Mississippi steel and iron
producing center which is at once the
marvel and the despair of Europe, be-
cause we could not have built up a
been no market for it's product.
Eve could not have in New England
q great boot and shoe industry; we
could not have In New England great
cotton milling industry; we could not
have spread throughout New York and
Pennsylvania and Ohio manufacturing
industries Of the most diversified kinds,
because those industries would have no
market among the farmers west of the
Mississippi River.
"And while the progress Of this coun-
try, while the development of the agri-
cultural west Of this country, did mean
the impairment of the agricultural
value east of the Mississippi River that
ran up into hundreds Of millions of
dollars, it meant incidentally the
building up of great manufacturing in
dustries that added to the value of
this land by thousands Of millions of
dollars. And, gentlemen, those things
were not foreseen in the seventies. The
30 nd tbA Of
country did not see what part the agri-
cultural development of the West was
geing to play in the industrial develop
ment of the East. And you may read
the decisions of the Interstate Com
merce Commission from the first to the
last, and what is one Of the greatest
characteristics of those decisions? The
continued inability to see the question
in this large way.
1.-THE Interstate Commerce Commits
that the farm land Of some farmer is
decreasing in value, or that some man
who has a -four mill with a production
Of so barrels a day is being crowded
out. 1t never can see that the destruc-
ton or impairment of farm values in
this place means the building up OF
farm values in that place, and that
that shifting of values is a necessary
incident to re industrial and manu-
featuring development of this country
And if we shall give to the Interstate
| Commerce Commission power to regu
late rates, we all no longer have oul
rates regulated on the statesmanlike
basis on which they have been regu
| lated in the past by the railway men,
who really have been great statesmen
who really have been great builders OF
empires, who have had an imagination
| that rivals the magma ton of the great
! est poet and of the greatest inventor
! and who have operated with a courage
and daring that rivals the courage anG
daring the greatest military general
But we shall have our rates regulated
| by a body Of civil servants, bureau
Gratis, whose besetting sin the WORLD
over is that they never can grasp a sit
uation in a large way and with the
grasp of the statesman; that they new
err ca see the fact that they are con
fronted with a small evil; that that evil
is relatively small, and that it cannot
be corrected except by the creation OF
evils and abuses which are infinitely
greater than the one that is to be cor
rected."
Advance of Rural knowledge.