Camas Prairie chronicle. [volume] (Cottonwood, Idaho) 1901-1917, 1905-05-26
Railroads and Progress.

In his testimony before the Senate
lcommittee on Interstate Commerce at
washington on May 4th, Prof. Hugo r.
Never of Chicago University, an ex-
merit on railroad management, made
this statement;
oLet us look at what might have
lbappened if we had needed the pro-
TESTS of the farmers Of New York and
Ohio and Pennsylvania lin 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 advan-
tages accruing to him by virtue of his
geographical position. We could not
have west of the Mississippi a popu-
Ilation of millions of people who are
PROSPEROUS and are great consumers.
We never should have seen the years
when we built 10000 and 10000 miles
of railroad 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 10000 miles
of railway year, we should not have
today east of the Mississippi a steel
and iron producing center which is at
once the marvel and the despair of
Europe, because we could not have
built up a steel and iron industry If
there had been no market for its pro-
duct.
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 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 agri-
cultural West of this country, did
mean the impairment of the agricul-
tural value East of the Mississippi
river that ran up into hundreds of
millions of dollars, it meant inciden-
tally the building up of great manu-
featuring industries that added to the
value of this land by thousands of mil
lions of dollars. And, gentlemen,
those things we're not forseen 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 Commits
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 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 flour mill with a production 8
Of 90 barrels day is being crowded r
out 1t never can see that the de- I
or impairment of farm val
les in this place means the building !
up OF farm values in that place. and
that that shifting of values is a neces- !
5ary incident to the industrial and !
manufacturing development of this
country. And if we shall give to the :
interstate Commerce. Commission the !
power to regulate rates, we shall no :,
onger nave our rates regulated on the :
basis on which thew !,
AVE been regulated in the past nv
'allway men, who really have been T
great statesmen, who really have been =
great builders Of empires, who have !,
lad an imagination that rivals the :,
imagination Of the greatest poet and =
d the greatest inventor. and who =
rave operated with a courage and =
larlng that rivals the courage and =
larlng of the greatest military gen :
raj. But we shall have our rates =
egulated by body of civil servants :.
whose besetting sin the :
world over is that they never can :
'fasp situation in large way and :
yltn the grasp Of the statesman: that
ney never can see the fact that thew
re confronted with small evil; ex-
ept by the creation of evils and Z
buses which are infinitely, greater G
nan tne one that is to be corrected " g
H.