Free press., 1905-05-27
RAILROADS AND PROGRESS.

In his testimony before the senate
committee on interstate commerce at
Washington on May 4, Prof. Hugo R.
Meyer of the Chicago university, an
expert on railroad management, made
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 70's,
when grain from the west began pour
ing 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 ad-
vantages accruing to him by virtue
of his geographical position. We could
not have west of the Mississippi a
population of millions of people who
are prosperous and are great con-
sumers. 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
railways. And if we had not seen the
years when we could build 5000 and
$4,000 miles of railway a year, we
should not have to-day east of the
Mississippi a steel and iron produc-
ing center, which is at once the mar
vel and the despair of Europe, because
we could not have built up steel and
iron industry if there had been no
market sits product.
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-
versified kinds, because those indus
tries 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 ag-
ricultural value east of the Mississippi
river, that ran up into hundreds of
millions of dollars, it meant incident
ally the building up of great manu-
featuring industries that added to the
value of this land by thousands OF
millions Of dollars. And, gentlemen,
those things were not foreseen in the
'70's. The statesmen and the public
men of this country did not see what
part the agricultural development of
the west was going to play in the in
dustrial 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 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 farm
er is decreasing in value, or that some
man who has a -four mill with a pro-
duction of fifty barrels a day is be
ing crowded out. 1t never can see
that the destruction 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 indus
trial and manufacturing development Of
this country. And If we shall give
to the interstate commerce commits
sion power to regulate rates. we shall
no longer have ouR1arates regulated
on the statesmanIike 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 dar
| ing that rivals the courage and daF
| ing Of the greatest military general
But we shall have rates regulated
by a body Of civil servants, bureau
Gratis, whose besetting sin the world
over is that they never can grasp a
| situation in a large way and with the
/ grasp Of the statesman: that they
never can see the fact that they are
confronted with a 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
J that is to be corrected.