The Imperial press., 1905-08-12
To Secure Freight Rates

these things at Imperial must stand by and see their product rot because the charge (entirely without reference to cost) for transportation from Imperial to Los Angeles is so great as to prohibit their profitable shipment, ought to be lesson to the growers and the would like-to- be consumers at the same time in the necessity of the common owner ship of the lines of transportation so that the producer of goods i'll the country, who are also the consumers of factory products of the cities, and the consumers of the products of the country, who are largely the producers in these factories, could exchange their products without the necessity of giving up their product more than enough to cover the cost of transportation (which is known to be small part of what the rate is.) but strangely enough it is not.
 The country producers seem to be content with denouncing a corporation for making such eXoTbitant charges or cursing himself for not owning farm within an hours drive from the busi- ness center of some city with the natural facilities and producing power of farm in Imperial Valley. And the city worker, who finds his wages so small as to prohibit him from buying the farmers produce at the price asked for them, is obliged to go without and spendS his time figuring up what great fortunes she farmer is making on his produce at the prices named upon them in the retail market, and how he, in some future time by some mysterious hOcus-pOcus, is going to come i'll posses slon of three acres of ground on which he will grow canteloupes enough to make million dollars. Or if the CantelOupes will not do he will, besides raising them, heep couple of COWS, a horse, several hundred chickens, raise all his own feed grow plenty of potatoes and have alfalfa hay enough to sell to keep the family clothed, and cucumbers at dollar and seventy-tive sents per dozen, he IS going to sell enough of them in one year to purchase controll of the Southern Pacific, to say nothing about the broilers he would have to sell and the pumpkins he could raise. Then there are roasting ears his wife and oldest boy could make 8 fortune on, besides on the same three acres in a single year.
 And thus the time Is dWindled away, they are becoming old before their time by hard work and constant denial of recreation. Their One-time queen of beauty, who really was not made to work, only to preside over their hearts is rapidly fading. And the little ones? Those little angels, while you were dreaming they have come to be doys and girls and instead of their securing an education and fitting them for the enjoyment of life, they go to the factory or farm to toll and grind their angelic lives into dust from which the blood stained money of today is coined.
 When shall the time come and what must be done to show you that workers the world over and in every walk of fife get just enough for their work to enable them to live and reproduce their kind, that it is not by some other workers somewhere else that you are being robbed, but that you and the other workers everywhere are alike being robbed, not by each other but by someone else.
 How long will 1t take you to find out who that someone else is and having found out how long will it take you to see how he does the robber act SO that you may do the things necessary to prevent his continuation of the process. If you think that common ownership | and administration oi the industries are i not effective or proper remedies, use some of the time you idle away in pointing out how your fellow workers ought to become rich, and tell us what the effective or proper way would be- 1 The Socialist holds that the only way l to get rates for transportation of your rato .l,