Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1905-05-18
GOVERNMENT RATE MAKING
WHY SHOULD SYSTEM THAT HAS
BUILT UP AMERICAN INDUS
.4 TRIES BE ABANDONED?
INTERSTATE COMMERCE REGu.
LATloN wouLDsN NOT BENEFIT
THE NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS.

|3sS' 80 -
Chicago, May 1s.-Professor Hugo
r. Meyer, assistant professor of
political economy in the university of
Chicago and one of the most eminent
of the students of economic conditions
abroad, today declared that had the
Interstate commission been in exist
ence in the early seventies, it would
have dealt fatal blow to the wheat
growers of the northwest.
Professor Meyer has just returned
from Washington, where he appeared
before the senate committee on inter
state commerce. He gave the sena-
tors the benefit of his twelve years of
investigation of the economic condi-
tions in Germany, Russia, England,
Austria hungary and Australia. "
Had the interstate commerce been
in existence in the seventies when
Minnesota and Dakota wheat was in
competition with the wheat of New
York, Ohio and their neighboring
states, the farmers of the northwest
would have been dealt a blow from
which they never would have recov.
cred" said Professor Meyer. "
Fortunately, however, when the
people of Ohio, New York and the
other eastern states which produced
grain went to congress with the claim
that the markets of the American
seaboard was theirs by natural right,
and that nobody else should be al
lowed to get into it and demanded that
freight rates should be established
according to the length of the haul,
which would compel the farmers of
Minnesota and the Dakotas to pay
three, four or even five times as much
for the transportation of their grain
to get it to a port, congress did moth
Ing but listen. The idea of fixing
rates by law and not by commercial
conditions was not seriously consid-
cred then. If the interstate COM
MERGE commission had been in exist
euce then with the authority to fix
rates for which it is now clamoring,
and had acted as it has acted many
times since, it would have established
just such a scale Of rates as the
fasteners wanted and that, of course,
would have excluded the western
grain grower from the eastern and
European markets on which he must
depend. .... 49,.
"As it was, the railroads straight
ened the question in their own way
and continued to serve the interests
of the northwestern farmer, much to
the satisfaction of a majority of the
people. To-day the farmer of the
northwest is able to land his wheat ait
an Atlantic seaboard dock at a cost
SO reasonable that he can compete
upon a basis of equality with any one
in the world. -
I'm fact, he can send it to Germany.
for example, where the railroads are
owned by the government and freight
rates are consequently set at a point
that has restricted trade almost to its
annihilation in some places, and sell
with decided advantage over the Ger.
man wheat grower who is. perhaps
not one-tenth as far from the market
| early in the present investigation
a very interesting letter was received
from one of the large milling houses
OF Minneapolis. It was written in
REPUTATION of some of the statements
that had been made to the effect thai
western millers were in favor of put
ting the regulation of freight rates In
to the hands of the interstate com
merce commission. No evidence that
this refutation must be final could be
stronger than the simple statement
OF this miller. He wrote he could
send barrel of -four to Europe and
land it as cheaply as he could deliver
one by horse and wagon in his OWE
city.
Nobody has been Disseminated
against to give the wheat grower, the
grain dealer and the miller Of the
northwest this advantage over foreign
competitors. The whole commerce Of
the country has benefited, as 1t has