Condon globe. (Condon, Gilliam Co., Or.) 189?-1919, 1905-06-22
Railroads and Progress.

In Ms behtimOny DelOf6 bno h5nhN
committee on interstate commerce at
Washington, on May 4, Prof. Hugo K.
Meyer, Of Chicago university, an ex
pert on railroad management, made
this statement:
"Let us look at what might have
happened II we had needed the protestt
Of the farmers Of New York and Ohio
and Pennsylyania lin the seventies
when grain from the West began pour.
ing 10 the Atlantic seaboard) and acted
upon the doctrine which the Interstate
Commeace commission has enunciated
time and again, that no man may be
deprived Of the advantages accruing q
him by virtue Of his geographical posi-
tion. We could not have west Of the
Mississippi population 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 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 rail-
ways. And II we had not seen the
years when we could build 10000 and
IL, 900 miles of railway in q year, we
should not have today east OF the
Mississippi q 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 il there had been no mar
ket for its product.
"We could not have in New Eng
land 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 manufac-
turing industries Of the most diversified
kinds, because those industries 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 agricul-
tural value east of the Mississippi river
that ran up into hundreds of millions
Of dollars, ii meant incidentally the
building up Of great manufacturing in
dustries that added to the value Of this
land by thousands Of millions of dol
lars. And, gentlemen, those things
were not ioreseen in the seventies. The
statesmen and the publicmen of this
country did not see what part the agri-
cultural development of the West waa
going 10 play in the industrial develop
ment OF the East. And you may read
the decisions of the Interstate Com
merce commission from the first to the
last, and what is one Of the greatest
characteristics OF those decisions2 The
continued 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 il
decreasing in value, or that some man
who has -four mill with production
Of so barrels a day is being crowded
out. 1t never can see that the destruc-
tion or impairment OF farm values in
this place means the building up OF
farm values in that place, and that
that shifting of values is a necessary
incident to the industrial and manu-
featuring development of this country.
And if we shall give TO the Interstate
Commerce commission power to regr-
late rates, we shall no longer have our
rates regulated on the statesmanlike
basis on which they have been regu-
lated in the past by railway men, who
really have been great statesmen, who
really have been great builders OF en-
pires, who have had an imagination
that rivals the Imagination of the
greatest poet and of the greatest in
ventor, and who have operated with 9
courage and daring that rivals the
courage and daring of the greatest mil
tary general. But we shall have ouI
rates regulated by a body of civil ser.
wants, bureaucrats, whose besetting sin
the world over is that they never can
grasp situation in large way and
with the grasp of the statesman; that
they never can see the fact that they
are confronted with a small evil; ex-
cept by the creation of evils and abuses
which are infinitely greater than the