The Holbrook news., 1911-05-12

It will be observed that in the face
 of this heavy reduction in rates, and
 on an article usually sold at retail by
 the ton, the dealers in no instance
 gave the consumer the full benefit,
 but in eleven of the seventeen towns
 mentioned pocketed every penny of it themselves, gave the consumer only part of the benefit in three of the towns, and actually increased the sell ing price to the consumer in the three remaining towns. The money was taken from the railroads of Oklahoma, and benefited nobody but the coal deal CT. Had it gone to the railroad, it would, on the other hand, have been used to pay more wages, build new lines, improve the property and the service, and develop the commercial and industrial resources of the com munity served by such railroad; it would have been spent in a thousand ways to the benefit of everybody.
 It must be evident, too, that, so far as the cost of living is concerned, freight rates are not responsible for the prevailing high prices of food stuffs, clothing and other necessaries of life. Made desperate by the con- tinuously increasing cost of foodstuffs, with no increase in freight rates, the Dahlonega Club of the University of California, by the mere purchase of supplies at wholesale, reduced the liv- ing expenses of its student members 33 per cent.
 Only recently the packers arbi- trarily reduced the price of meats and provisions, and, without attempting to make false excuses, and wholly re- gardless of rates, said that further reduction would be made.
 Oranges, grapes and dried fruit grown in California are hauled 4,000 miles by rail to New York and there sold on the retail market approximate ly as cheaply as right here at home, though some of the home product is delivered by wagon from the field of production, and on which there is, therefore, no railroad freight charge. If freight rates substantially entered into the retail cost of an article to the consumer, why should the New York retail price and the California retail price of a California product be ap- proximately the same?
 The cost of living is much lower in foreign countries, like Great Britain, France and Germany, and yet it costs on an average $1 to move a ton of freight forty-three miles in England, sixty-six miles in France, and seventy five miles in Germany, whereas in the United States, for the same amount, a ton of freight is moved on an average one hundred and thirty-two miles.
 In other words, the average freight rates in England are more than three times as high as in the United States, the rates in France twice as high as in the United States, and the rates in Germany nearly twice as high as in the United States, and yet the cost of living is much higher in the United States than in the countries men, toned all of which explodes the the ory that the high cost of living in the United States is due to freight rates, or that a reduction in freight rates would in any way afford substantial relief from the prevailing high prices of foodstuffs, clothing and other necessaries of life. Freight charges are so small and so insignificant in the price-making of an article to the consumer that when apportioned to the individual article the amount is in most instances too small to affect