Arizona republican., 1911-12-21

The Commissions Report.

merce commission. which has just been made to congress. contains a number Of interesting matters. Most interesting to the people of the inter mountain district is its excoriation of the railroads for the maintenance of the back-haul provision in their freight tariffs
 There is d vast amount of red tape about all this business; there are in- terminable classifications and rules and precedents that the layman can not understand. In fact. it is doubt full if d good deal Of the matter that has been injected into these rate hear ings by the railway companies has not been injected for the partial purpose, at least. of keeping the public in the dark. But while the public may not understand the nomenclature of the railway office. it has pretty fair idea Of what sense and reason and jus tice are, and it is pretty certain that reason and justice have not been ap- piled by the transcontinentaI lines in dealing with the people of the inter mountain section.
 Now, why should it cost more to make a shipment from St Louis to Phoenix than from St. Louis to Los Angeles? or course the railway men can give seventeen different kinds of reasons why that proposition is emi- nently fair and just, and why the common sense plan would mean ruin to the railroads But look at the matter in the fairest light. and one doesn't have to be a railroad man to understand this-isn't the proposition on the face of it an absurdity? If it is right to charge more to make d ship ment from St Louis to a point 800 miles east of Los Angeles than to Los Angeles itself, then it should cost still more to make a shipment to a point 1000 miles east of the coast and still more to ship to a point 1,5OO miles east of the coast. Tn other words. the nearer you move the cbjec- tive point to the point of shipment, the heavier should be the tariff. Could anything be more absurd?
 Of course, the railroad men say they haul the freight through to the coast and then ship it back again. Well, they have to transfer it at the june ton point in either event. Why is it any harder to transfer freight from a westbound train than from an east bound train?
 Of course any railroad man can come forward with voluble explana- tions of this whole matter; but some how these explanations fail to explain. The average man will stick to the idea that freight can be hauled 1,5OO miles cheaper than it can be hauled 1000 miles. Otherwise our cheapest freights should be from New York and Boston.
 The commission. in its report, goes into the matter of water competition at some length. and it shows, what has long been known to well informed people, that much of this competition exists only in name. It shows that at least some of the transcontinental lines are heavy stockholders in the steam ship companies that have been touted as competitors of the heaviest freight carrying roads.
 And finally. the commission arrives at a conclusion that will appeal to everybody in Phoenix and in Arizona which is this: The unjust discrimina- ton practiced by the freight carrying roads is practiced in the interest of the coast cities of California and at their behest And there is another conclusion that is absolutely correct that the inter mountain district is being retarded in its development by the injustice of the railroads.
 It is time for the application of d little more common sense and a little less railroad language that nobody can understand. No reasonabl man con-