The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1909-07-03

commerce commission permits the
establishment of single line mileage
for two line service on interstate
| Shipments, the board will forthwith
grant similar relief to the Continental
| Creamery company or any other Kan
sas concern that might be affected.
The article referred to asks the
producers of cream and creamery
products to look up the map with
reference to the cream rate adjust
ment. While they are looking at the
| line around the counties of Doniphan,
Brown, Atchison, Nemaha, Marshall
and Washington they will have the
territory in which the Continental
company strictly refrains from solicit
ing business; the cream fro nathis ter
ritory going to the Beatrice Creamery
company, the parent of the alleged
creamery combine. Draw another red
Miami, Franklin, Linn Anderson,
Bourbon, Allen, Woodson, Crawford,
Neosho, Wilson, Cherokee, Labette
and Montgomery and you will find the
territory from which the cream goes
to the Kansas City branch of the al
legged combine, while the product
from approximately the western one
third of the state goes to Denver, an
other one of the allied creameries.
Looking at the map again, there is a
creamery at Harper, Kansas, from the
tinentaI Creamery company, in the
year of 1908, took S,446 cans of ten
gallons each; the cream from which
territory must of necessity have been
shipped through the dooryard of from
three to four other Kansas creameries.
approximately ten years ago Kan
saS had three hundred creameries as
against the present fifty-nine. The
conditions as cited above as existing
at Harper must of necessity tell a
story well worthy of the serious con-
sideration of every producer and con-
sumner of creamery products. To give
he TIr1~rJ 10
would it be to the best interests of
the state to have one big department
store to serve the citizens their dry
goods and groceries,
1.-THE article further claims that
the order of the board gives the fifty
eight creameries the monopoly of the
trade to the exclusion of the Contin- |
entail. This statement is as false as
were the statement of rates as pro- |
vided for for Topeka and the Topeka |
parity with relation to its intrastate
competitors, as is evidenced by the |
fact that the price that is paid by the |
fiat rate in cents per pound of butter |
fat contained in the cream and that |
price is the same whether paid to a |
producer of cream within twenty |
miles of Topeka, where the express
rate is Is cents, or three hundred |
miles from Topeka, where the express
rate is As cents. and this price is
based upon a quotation made by a |
committee or hVe men located at Ell
gin, Illinois.
with reference to the application |
of these rates to the producer of |
cream, if the price of butter fat should |
be reduced one cent on account of the |
increase in rates for any distance I'M |
der 900 miles and over ITO miles, |
such decrease would represent an
added profit to the creamery COM
pany making the same, over that now |
enjoyed, of more than ninetenths of |
a cent, as the increase in rates for
these longer distances is only approx
imate1y one per cent over the inter
state schedule. In my opinion the
producers of cream cannot be other
than benef1cially affected by the sched
uIe of cream rates ordered by the
board