The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-10-14

| it will be when we have devised sys- tenn of direct marketing.
 | We may build as big a navy as we please, but the German business man will go on drinking his wine and laugh ing at us, but when we introduce the | German system, minus certain German clumsiness, of bringing elemental pro- l ducer and ultimate consumer together, we will make the Germans sit up and I take notice!
 ism. It will suffice for the present if we get enough out of it to do for over sea traffic what our Interstate Com merce Commission did for Interstate traffic. In June 1912, the Democratic House | directed Committee on the Merchant Marine and Fisheries to investigate l over-sea rates. The testimony be- fore that committee brought out some | startling facts. First, that the evils of | unrestricted competition drive ocean | steamship companies to form under standings, conferences, combinations. These lead to shipping trusts. mo- nopolies, which maintain excessive and | unjust rates and by means of their fighting ships and by rebates to large shippers drive out tramp-ships and make monopoffes both in buying and selling. The old jungle law of the survival of the fittest, when it comes to unrestricted ocean competition, ul- timately results in monopoly. It must. It also introduces uncertainty instead of certainty; ineficiency instead of eff ficiency. It was shown also that shipping rings grow steadily larger and their power more colossal. Between 1910 and 1912 ocean rates went up from 100 to 200 per cent!
 The Committee unearthed many in fquities arising from shipping trusts, such, as rebates given to certain big interests-the Standard Oil, the liar vester Trust, the Steel Trust. In oth- CT words these big interests had god fathers. One was even discovered for the commission men and the dealers handling foodstuffs, but that Commit tee failed to find any godfather for the farmer!
 Is it not really curious fact that in this great and enlightened nation the Chambers of Commerce work their toenails off in the interest of freight rates on the importation of neckties and the exportation of photographs, but when it comes to equities in ex- change for the food products of this nation, not living soul says a word :?
 The shipping combine at an hours notice can jump up the freight rate on wheat so that it would make differ ence of nearly a quarter of billion dollars in the value of the yeats crop; and yet every raising or lowering of price in the cost of ocean carriage on staples raises or lowers the home price and the worlds price. Worse than that, though not so serious, it means an impossible, insurmountable obstacle for the farmer to become thA> business man that he should. Any shift of that sort in staples, that is package traffic shirts, shoes, millinery, etc, and Chambers of Commerce would cry out: You've got to stop that; you will ruin our business. You must give us fixed rates-otherwise we can neither buy nor sell on rational calculations
 But we don't hear the farmers yell about these things. Very few of them seem ever to have heard anything about it. talk to farmer in Iowa who grows corn. What does he say? T am not interested in the merchant marine. don't export any corn. What do care about the freight rate on corn between New York and Liver pool? I sell my corn to Bill Smith down at the county seat; I'm no ex- porter Poor blind man! He doesn't see that the shipping ring has a death grip on every human soul in every country in the world except the savage whose horizon is a coral stoll and his canopy a palm tree. Buy shipsI We can buy a hundred ships-yes, a mil Ion-but it will do no good as long as an invisible force regulates the r&tes. Our Interstate Commerce Com mission has done a great thing, but we must go far beyond that.
 As result of the findings of that 1912 commission, a resolution was in troduced in the House two years ago, directing our delegate to the Inter national Institute of Agriculture to ask that body to bring to~the atten- tion of the f1fty-four adhering nations the advisability of establishing a per- manent international commerce com mission on merchant marine and ocean freight rates. We'll, that resolution sailed right along under full sail. Mo- body denied that the great agricultural interests of the country had suffered from the shameful discrimihations be- tween them and the manufacturing tntertsts, nor was there any doubt as to the reason of the gross injustice the financial strength and powerful organization of the manufacturers and importers. The farmers have no such organization.
 And then came MT. Mann, Whip of the Republican Minority, speaking for the Interests! He assumed that the resolution would pass'-that being a Democratic Congress-but he did not believe that it would do any good it may do some harm This Repub- lican perhaps forgot the lowered rates and the general improvement in our economic situation since our Interstate Commerce Commission put stop to the railroad bosses juggling rates to suit their own private interests. He chose to forget, also, that ocean car riage increased from 100 to 200 per cent. in two years-not because of the war, but before the war was thought of! Naturally, MT. Mann was against the resolution.
 It was when Mann tried to belittle the measure that it was deemed ad- visable by those interested in its sue cess to have a conference with Pres ident Wilson. He at once entered