Alaska sentinel., 1905-08-24
Railroads and prOaress.

Railroads and Progress.
 | In his testimony before the senate committee On interstate commerce at Washington on May 4th, Prof. Hugo R. Meyer, of Chicago University, an expert on railroad management, made this statement:
 Let us look at what might have happened if we had needed the protest of the farmers of New York and Ohio and Pennsylvania Gin the seventies when grain from the West began pour ing into 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 advan- tages accruing to him by virtue of ge- ographical position. We could not have west of the Mississippi popula- tion of millions of people who are prosperous and are great consumers. We never should have seen the years when we built 10,0OO and 12,OO0 miles of railway, for there would have been no farmers west of the Mississippi riv- CT who could have used the land that would have been opened up by the building of these railways. And if we had not seen the years when we could build 10, ,000 and 12, 900 miles of railway year, we should not have to day east of the Mississippi steel and iron producing center which is at once the marvel and despair of Europe, be- cause we could not have built up steel and iron industry if there had been no market for its product.
 "We could not have in New Englsnd a great boot and shoe industry; we could not have in New England a great milling industry; we could not have spread throughout New York and Pennsylvania and Ohio manufacturing industries of the most diversified kinds, because these industries would have no market among the farmers west of the Mississippi river.
 "And while the progress of this country and the development of the agricultural West of this country did mean the impairment of the agricul- tural value east of the Mississippi riv- CT that ran up into the 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 thousanis of mil lions of dollars. And, gentlemen, those things were not foreseen in the seven- ties. 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 in- tesrtate commerce commission from the first to the last, and what is one of the greatest characteristics of these decisions? The continued ina ability to see the question in this large way.
 "The interstate commerce commis. sion never can see anything more than that the farm land of some farmer is decreasing in value, or that some man who has flour mill with production of 50 barrels day is being crowded out. It never can see that the de- struction or impairment of farm val ues in this place means the building up of farm values in that place, and that shifting of values is necessary incident to the industrial and manu- featuring development of this country. And if we shall give to the interstate commerce commission power to regu- late rates, we shall no longer have our rates regulated on the statesmanlike basis on which they have been regu- lated in the past by railroad men, who really have been great statesmen, who really have been great builders of em- pire, who have had an indignation that rivals the imagination of the greatest poet and of the greatest in- ventor, and who have operated with courage and daring that rivals the courage and daring of the great mili- tary general. But we shall have our rates regulated by body of civil serv- ants, bureaucrats, whose besetting sin the world over is that they never can grasp situation in large way and with the grasp of statesman; that they never can see the fact that they are confronted with small evil, ex- cept by the creation of evils and abuses which are infinitely greater than the one that is to be corrected"