Shoshone journal. [volume] (Shoshone, Idaho) 1884-1931, 1905-05-26
RAILROADS AND PROGRESS.

In his testimony before the senate
committee on interstate commerce at
Washington on May 4, Prof. Hugo R.
Meyer of the Chicago university, an
expert 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 lin the 70's,
when grain from the west began pour
ing 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 ad-
vantages accruing to him by virtue
of his geographical position. We could
not have west of the Mississippi .
population of millions Of people who
are prosperous and are great con-
sumers. We never should have seen
the years when we built 10000 and
10000 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
1900 miles of railway a year, we
should not have to-day east of the
Mississippi steel and iron produc-
ing center, which is at once the mar
vel and the despair OF Europe, because
rra aN,rIl h,,f1 or
iron industry If there had been no
market for its product.
We could not have in New England
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 man.
ufacturing industries of the most d.
versified kinds, because those indus
tries would have no market among
the farmers 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 ag-
ricultural value east of the Mississippi
river, that ran up into hundreds of
millions of dollars, it meant incident
ally the building up of great manu-
industries that added to the
value of this land by thousands of
millions Of dollars. And, gentlemen,
hose things were not foreseen in the
70's. The statesmen and the public
men of this country did not see what
part the agricultural development of
he west was going to play in the in
iustrial development of the east. And
you may read the decisions of the
Interstate commerce commission from
he first to the last, and what is one
# the greatest characteristics of those
decisions? The continued inability to
lee the question in this large way.
The interstate commerce commits
ion never can see anything more
han that the farm land of some farm
r is decreasing in value, or that some
nan who has for mill with a pro-
uction of fifty barrels a day is be-
ng crowded o1t< 1t never can see
hat the destruction or impairment of
arm valuesdn this place means the
uilding up of farm values in that
lace, and that that shifting of values
; a necessary incident to the indus
ial and manufacturing development Of
MS country. And il we shall give
, the interstate commerce commits
ION power to regulate rates, we shall
o longer have our rates regulated
q the statesmanlike basis on which
ley have been regulated in the past
y the railway men, who really have
cen great statesmen, who really have
cen great builders of empires, who
ave had an Imagination that rivals
lie Imagination of the greatest poet
Id of the greatest inventor, and who
i've operated with courage and dar-
e that rivals the courage and dar-
g of the greatest military general
ut we shall have our rates regulated
: a body of civil servants, bureau
ats, whose besetting sin the world
Ter is that they never can grasp a
tuation in large way and with the
asp OF the statesman; that they
'ver can see the fact that they are
nfronted with a small evil; that
at evil is relatively small, and that
cannot be corrected except by the
cation of evils and abuses which
e infinitely greater than the one
at is TO be corrected"
Watershed.