The Monticellonian., 1905-05-25
Railroads and Progress.

hdlITOauS ana ETOSIeSS.
 In his testimony before the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce at Washington on May 4th. Prof. Hugo R. 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 enunciated time and again. that no man may be deprived of the advan- tages accruing to him by virtue of his geographical position. We could not have vest of the Mississippi a popula- ton of millions of people who are prosperous and are great consumers. Ne never should have seen the years when we built 10000 and r .000 miles of railway. for there would have been no farmers west of the Mississippi River 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 2.000 miles of rail- way a 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 Eu- rope. because We could not have built up a steel and iron industry If there had neen no market for it's product.
 We could not have in New England a great boot and shoe industry; we eoula not have in New England a great cotton milling industry; we could not have spread throughout New York and Pennsylvania ana Ohio man. ufacturing industries of the most di- versifed kinds. because those indus tries 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 az ricultural West of this country did mean the impairment of the agri- cultural value east of the Mississippi River that ran up into hundreds of millions of dollars, it meant incident ally the building up of great manufae- turing industries that added to the value of this land by thousands of mil lions of dollars. And, gentlemen, those things were not foreseen in the seventies. The statesmen and the public men of this country did not see what part the agricultural develop ment of the West was going to play in the industrial development of the East. And you may read the decisions of the Interstate Commerce Cemmis sion from the first to the last, and what is one of the greatest character istics of those decisions? The con- tinued inability to see the question in this large way.
 "The Interstate Commerce Commis- sion never can see anything more than that the farm land of some farmer is decreasing in value. or that some man who has a four mill with a produe- tion of 50 barrels day is being crowd ed out It never can see that the destruction or impairment of farm values in this place means the build ing up of farm values in that place. and that that shifting of values is necessary incident to the industrial and manufacturing development of this country. And if we shall give to the Interstate Commerce Commission DOW CT 10 regulate rates, we shall no long ed have our rates regulated on the statesmanlike basis on which they have Leen regulated 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 imagination of the greatest poet and of the greatest inventor. and who have operated with courage and daring that rivals the courage and daring of the greatest military general. But we shall have our rates regulated by a body of civil servants, bureaucrats,
 whose besetting sin the world over is
 that they never can grasp situation
 in large way, and with the grasp oi
 the statesman; that they never car
 see the fact that they are confronted
 with small evil; that that evil Is
 relatively small, and that it cannot be
 corrected except by the creation oi
 evils and abuses which are infinitely
 greater than the one that is 10 n corrected"