The Kemper herald. (Scooba, Miss.) 1875-1908, 1905-05-25
Railroads and Progress.

| Committee OH Interstate Commerce at
| Washington on May 4, Professor Hugo
Il. Meyer. Of Chicago University, an
| expert OH railroad management, made
this statement:
"Lct us look Mt what might have hap
pened IL we had needed the protests
| Of the farmers Of New York and Ohio
and Pennsylvania lin the seventies
! when grain from the West began pour
Ing to the Atlantic seaboard) and acted
| upon the doctrine which the Interstate
| Commerce Commission has enunciateu
| time and again, that no man may be
| deprived of the advantages occruing to
him by virtue of his geographical po-
sition. We could not have west Of the
Mississippi a population 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 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, IL we had not
| seen the years when we could build
| 10000 and 10000 miles Of railway a
year, we should not have to-day, east
of tive Mississippi, q steel II iron
| producing centre which is at once the
marvel and the despair of Europe, be-
cause we could not have built UP q
| steel and iron industry IL there had
| been no market for its product.
"We could not have in New Eng
land q great boot and shoe industry;
we could not have in New England a
| great cotton milling industry; we could
| not have spread throughout New York
| and Pennsylvania and Ohio manufGc-
turing industries of the most diyersi-
fed kinds, because those industries
would have no market among the farm
CTS west of the Mississippi River.
"And, while the progress Of this
country, while the development of the
agricultural West Of this country, did
mean the impairment of the agricul'
tural value cast of the Mississippi
River that ran up into hundreds OF
millions Of dollars, it meant, Incl
| dentally, the building up of great man
| ufacturing industries that added to
the value of this land by thousands OF
millions of dollars. And, gentlemen,
these things were not foreseen in the
seventies. The statesmen and the pub
lie 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 Commission,
from the first to the last, and what is
one of the greatest characteristics OF
those decisions? The continued In
ability 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 a flour mill with a pro-
| duction of fifty barrels a day, Is being
| crowded out. 1t never can see that
| the destruction or impairment of farm
| values Ill ILLS pluSS AHCUIa NpS
up of farm values In that place, and
that that shifting of values is a neces-
sary incident to the industrial and man-
ufacturing development of this u
try. And, il we shall give to the Inter-
| state Commerce Commission power to
regulate rates, we shall no longer have
our rates regulated Cd the statesman
hike basis OH which they have been
regulated in the past ~ the railway
men, who really have ,een great states
men; who really have been great build
crs of empires; who have had an I'M
| agination that rivals the ina gination
| of the grcatest poet and Of the great
| est inventor, ard who have operated
with a 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, bu%reaucrats. whose beset-
ting sin the world over, is that they
can never grasp a situation in a large
way and with the grasp of the states
man; that they never can see the fact
that they are confronted with a small
evil; that that evil is relatively small,
and that 1t cannot be corrected except
by the creation of evils and abuses
which are infinitely greater than The
one that is to be corrected
The American Enperor 10 a man Of the