Orange County observer. [volume] (Hillsborough, N.C.) 1880-1918, 1905-06-01
railroad. ana Progress.

IN his testimony before the Senate
on Interstate Commerce at
washington on May 4, Professor Hugo
r. Meyer, Of Chicago University, an
expert on railroad management, made
this statement:
LET us look at what might have hap
pened IL we had needed the protests
Of the farmers OF New York ana Ohio
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 a enunciated
time and again, that no man may be
deprived of the advantages accruing to
him by virtue of his geographical po-
sition. We could not lave west of the
Mississippi a population of millions OF
people who are prosperous and are
great consumers. We never should
have seer the years 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, If we had not
seer the years. when we could build
10000 and $4,000 miles of railway a
year, we should not have to-day, east
of the Mississippi, a steel and iron
producing centre which is at once the
marvel and the despair OF Europe, be-
cause we could not have built up
-, to- :-1r&,.r ( fhnroS had
been no market for its product
I'VE could not have in New Eng
land a 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 diversi-
fed kinds, because those industries
would have no market among the farm
ers west of the Mississippi Rives.
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, it meant, Incl
dentally, the building up Of great man
ufacturing industries that added to
tine 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.
1.-The Interstate Commerce Commits
sion never can see anything more than
that the farm land of some farmer
is decreasing in value, or, that som
man, who has a -four mill with q pro
duction of fifty barrels a day, is being
crowded out. It never can see tina
the destruction OF impairment Of farm
values in this place means the building
up Of farm values in that place, an(
that that shifting Of values is a neceS
sary incident to the industrial and man
ufacturing development of this coun
try. And, if we shall, give to the Inter
state Commerce Commission power t.
regulate rates, we shall nc longer nav
our rates regulated Oh the statesman
like basis on which they have beel
regulated in the past ~ the railwa,
men, who really have oeen great states
men; who really have Eeen great build
ers Of empires; who have had an i'm
%agination that rivals the Imagination
Of the greatest poet and of the great
est inventor, and who have operate
with a courage and daring that rival
the courage and daring of the creates
military general. But we shall hav
our rates regulated by a body of civ
servants, bureaucrats, whose bese
ting sin the world over, is that the
can never grasp a situation in a larg
way and with the grasp of the states
man; that they never can see the fas
that they are confronted with a sma
evil; that that evil is relatively small
and that 1t cannot be corrected exceI
by the creation Of evils and abuse
which are infinitely greater than til
one that is to be corrected"