The leader., 1905-05-27
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 ex-
pert 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 seven
ties when grain from the west began
pouring to the Atlantic seaboard) anc
acted upon the doctrine which the
Interstate Commerce Commission has
enunciated time and again, that nc
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 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 $4,000 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 if we
had not seen the years when we could
build 10000 and $4,000 miles of rail-
way a 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
up a steel and iron industry if there
had been no market for its product.
eve could not have in New England
a 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 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 ComE1is-
sion from the first to the last, and
what is one of the greatest character
istics of those decisions? !? The con-
tinued inability 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 a -four mill with produc-
ton Of SO barrels a 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
necessary incident to the industrial
and manufacturing development of this
country. And If 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 imen, 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 q
body Of civil servants. bureaucrats
whose besetting sin the world over II
that they never can grasp situation
iii large way, and with the grasp oi
the statesman; that they never can
see tho fact that they are confronted
with d small evil; that that evil ii
relatively small and that It cannot bs
corrected except by the creation q
evils and abuses which are infinitely
greater than the one that IS to bf
corrected.