Truth. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1901-1908, 1906-01-20

Wnen Mr.. AcWOrth teStlned last year
before the senate committee on inter-
state commerce, he expressed the con-
victior that the interference Of parlia-
nent with railway rate making had
tended to stereotype and keep rates at
an unnecessarily high level. 1t
seemed to him that the heart had been
taken cut of railway men.
In Canada, the Dominion govern
ment. after operating the Intercolo-
NAL railway for years at loss, an
nounced last summer an increase of
rates all along the line, to the disgust
of persons who had assumed that
government ownership would neces-
sarily mem lower rates. In 1900 ev-
| cry dollar earned by the road had
cost $1.14 in operating and mainte-
nance alone, nothing being left with
which to pay interest on an invest
met of $80.000,000. In Georgia the
rates on railway traffic within the
state are fixed by the state railway
commission. What is the result? A
merchant in Marietta, Georgia, can
ship certain goods to Chattanooga for
fifteen cents per hundred; to Knox
vile for nineteen cents per hundred.
To ship the same goods to Atlanta he
must pay thirty cents per hundred
to Macon seventy cents per hundred.
Now Atlanta is only twenty miles
from Marietta, and Chattanooga is 1913
miles; nevertheless, the Chattanooga
merchant pays just one-half the
freight paid by the Atlanta merchant.
Why? Because Chattanooga is out
of the state and Atlanta is in it. When
a merchant applies to a railroad for
lower rates in Georgia, he is met with
the reply that the railroad commission
fixes the rates within the state, and
the railroad is unable to reduce them.
IT, however, a railway manager is
asked for rates to towns outside OF
Georgia, the application receives i'm
mediate and favorable consideration,
and low rates are granted, because
the point of destination is beyond the
limits of the states jurisdiction, and
therefore, not controlled by the state
commission.
|, Further light On the meaning of the
phrase charging what the traffic will
bear" is thrown by the fact that the
whole development of manufacturing
industries in the region west of the
lAlleghany mountains has been stimu
Ildlpu anu Dldut DOSSlDlt Wy ihN
prompt adjustment of transportation
lcharges to the changing demands of
an intensely dynamic industrial situa-
ton BY this means the economic
condition Of an area of imperial di-
mansions has been changed so that
diversified industries furnish stable
foundation for a population far more
numerous and prosperous than exclu-
lsive reliance upon agriculture would
have permitted. Without freedom of
action, however. in quickly adapting
rate schedules to new needs. the
whole western section of the United
States would have remained exclu-
sively agrarian. From Michigan to
Louisiana and from Texas to Oregon
the rates of the railroads have been
so adjusted to the requirements of the
shippers of lumber that logs and their
products have found continually ex-
banding markets. The citrus and de-
ciduous fruits and the canned goods
of California likewise find a widening
market through necessarily declining
rates. The sugar beet industry of
Colorado and California could never
have been placed upon a paying basis
had not the railroads made very low
rates for it's furtherance. The trade
of the United States with the Orient