River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1905-05-25
Railroads and Progress.

IN MS ISSJLuO4Iy USAOIc tuS ccAAeo
Committee on Interstate Commerce at
washington on May 4th, Prof Hugo r.
Meyer, OF Chicago University, an ex-
pert on railroad management, mada
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 Tin the seven
ties when grain from the west began
pouring to the Atlantic seaboard) and
acted upon the doctrine which the
Interstate 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 popula-
ton OF millions Of people who are
prosperous and are great consumers.
We never should have seen the years
when we built 10000 and $1,000 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 rail-
way year, we should not have to-
day east of the Mississippi steel and
iron producing center which is at
once the marvel and the despair OF Eu-
rope, because we could not have built
ip a steel and iron industry II there
had been no market for its product.
I'VE could not have in New England
O. great boot and shoe industry; we
could not have in New England
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 coun-
try. while the development Of the ag-
ricultural West of this country, did
mean the impairment of the agri-
cultural value east of the Mississippi
River that ran up into hundreds OF
millions Of dollars, it meant incident
ally the building up of great manufac-
turing Industries that added to the
value of this land by thousands of mil
lions Of dollars. And, gentlemen,
those things were not foreseen in the
seventies. The statesmen and the
public 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
isrics of those decisions? The con-
tinued inability to see the question in
this large way.
s'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 produc-
ton OF so barrels day is being crowd
ed out 1t never can see that the
destruction or impairment of farm
values in this place means the build
ing UP OF farm values in that place,
and that that shifting of values is a
necessary incident to the industrial
and manufacturing development of this
country. And il We shall give to the
Interstate Commerce Commission pow
er to regulate rates, we shall no long
ed have our rates regulated on the
statesmanlike basis on which they
have been regulated in the past by the
railway men, who really have been
great statesmen, who really have been
great builders of empires, who have
had an imagination that rivals the
imagination of the greatest poet and of
the greatest inventor, and 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, bureaucrats,
whose Desetting sin the world over is
that they never can grasp situation
in a large way, and with the grasp OF
the statesman; that they never can
see tho fact that they are confronted
with small evil; that that evil is
relatively small, and that it cannot be
corrected except by the creation OF
evils and abuses which are infinitely
greater than the one that is to be