Daily Arizona silver belt., 1907-02-17

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 into Phoenix cheaper than the Arizona farmer who is located over one hundred miles from the territorial capital. This is certainly an intolerable condition To what end, then, is the government expending millions of dollars construct 1 ing irrigation works if the present freight rates prevent the profitable working of the land reclaimedf And l if this condition continues to obtain | what hope can we have that onr mil, lions of acres of fertile land will be settled9
 Lower the freight rates to a legiti mate basis, continue the work of re clamation by irrigation, and inside of seven years the population of Arizona will double. Leave the railroad tar ifs as they are, and Arizona s growth is retarded and restricted.
 State regulation of railroad charges is not an untried experiment. It has been well and satisfactorily tested Three of the greatest commonwealths of the union--Illinois, Minnesota and maintain stringent but equable control of their railroads by state com missions. Taking Texas as an illustra. tion (which is conceded by many public. ists to have the best regulation of its railroads of any state in the country, and of which state l can speak of cer- tain knowledge, since hail from there) the practical working result of its rail road laws has been the rapid settlement in the past ten years of millions of acres of land that without these laws would today have been largely unoecu- pied. The rates are so adjusted that the man five hundred miles from his market can reach it on as fair basis as his competitor but one hundred miles distant
 And have these laws operated to the disadvantage of the common carriers of the statef Not bit of it. Travel over any line in Texas and you will find at every station in the agricultural regions more freight than the roads can haul. To sum up, therefore, the estab lishment of lower and more equable freight tariffs proves good thing to the state because it insures the settle. ment of the public domain; good thing to the public because it gets lower rates; and good thing for the rail roads because it means greater business and increased dividends. The logic of the situation is so clear that one is really surprised that the railroads them selves do not regulate their rates along the lines of popular demand
 Of course, whenever any legislation is urged that deals with vested and corporate interests a howl goes up that the proletariat is trying to hand cap ital bunch. This howl went up all over the country when congress lately passed the Hepburn bill and amended the interstate commerce law. 1t will always arise. But today the railroads are paying the biggest dividends in their history, their stocks are quoted at prices never before reach and they have so much business that ship ping is eongested in every big center of the country. With no immediate re. lief, for Jim Hill of the Great North ern--that whom there is no better au- thirity-says, the railroads will have to build every year 10000 new freight ears to even keep pace with our con stantly eSpondilg commerce. Certainly corporate inter4ts haze nothing to fear from the enadment of legislation the only result of which must prove the de ..-i--v-----.--e4t v~--- --------s----1
 Here at home the necessity of rate regulation on our railroads is obvious. There is not household in Globe but feels the onerous burden imposed upon traffic.
 The prevailing excessive rates most certainly tend to restrict the develop ment of our mineral resources, since many of the smaller companies are un- prepared to put in the mechanical equipment they need by reason of the exorbitant expense of shipping. And we have already alluded to the soil tillers complaint.
 Should the present bill in the legisla- ture meet with defeat l certainly favor the insertion of plank in the next territorial Democratic platform de manding the creation of railroad commission for Arizona, and every can didate for the next legislature should be required to pledge the enactment of such a law.
 But let us hope the present law will be enacted
 Yours sincerely,
 J. s. MILES.