The Donaldsonville chief. [volume] (Donaldsonville, La.) 1871-current, 1905-06-10
Railroads and propresa

ssst49oaGs and PROGRESS.
e. 80 testimony before the Senate
nonllnlttee on Interstate Commerce at
= ssasiihston on May 4th, Prof. Hugo r.
.s-eser, OF Chicago University. an ex-
R .k On railroad management made
ms statenent:- -
Let as look at what might have
t laapeaed i we had needed the pro-
essss OF the farmers of New York and
o4lio# ana Pennsylvania (in the seven
80 Wslen Grain from the west began
pou1lag 10 the Atlantic seaboard) and
aceea ur0n the doctrine which the
interstate Commerce Commission has
enunelated time and again, that no
.1aa may &c deprived of the adyan-
ages aeerulng to him by virtue Of his
geographical position. We could not
naYe west Of the Mississippi a. popula-
ZION OF millions OF people who are
prosperous and are great consumers.
we never should have seen the years
when we built 10000 and ~ ooo miles
u railway, for there would have been
40 farmers west OF the Mississippi
1sIVer VINO could have used the land
saat would have been opened up by the
Oullaing of those railways. And if we
aad mol seen the years when we could
oulld 10000 and 1900 miles OF rail-
way a year, we should not have to-
aay east Of the Mississippi a steel and
iron producing ceLter which is al
once TIE marvel and the despair of Eu-
rope, because we could not have built
Up steel and iron Industry if there
mad been no market for its product.
we could not have In New England
9 gTeat boot and shoe Industry; we
could not have III New England a
great cotton milling Industry; we
could not have spread throughout New
York and Pennsylvania AMI Ohio man
ufaeturing industries of thu most di-
yersifed kinds, because those indus
tries would have no market among the
farmers west Of the Mississippi River.
And while the progress of this coun-
Ery, while the development Of the ag-
ricultural West OF this country, did
mean the impairment Of the agri-
cultural Ealue east Of the Mississippi
River that ran up into hundreds Of
millions Of dollars, it meant incident
ally the building up Of great manuf1c-
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
lsties Of those decisions? The con-
sinued inability 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 some man
who has a flour mill with a produc-
ton Of SO barrels a day is being crowd
ed out. It never can see that the
destruction or impairment Of farm
values in this place meaAs the build
ing up of farm values in that place,
and that that shifting Of values is
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
s the greatest inventor, and who have
anerated with 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 besetting sin the world over is
that they never can grasp situation
a. q large way. and with the grasp OF
the statesman: that they never can
sea the fact that they are confronted
with d small evil; that that evil is
relatively small, and that 1t cannot pc
corrected except by the creation OF
evils and abuses which are Infinitely
greater than the one that is to &c
corrected.