Elbert County tribune and Elbert County banner., 1921-09-30

3
And what farmer cannot buy is
MT shipped. Reducing the farm
er's purchasing power Immediately
reacts on feight traffic and rail-
road earnings. High rail rates hit
him coming and going.
! With livestock selling at pre-war
prices. but with freight rates on
livestock nearly 100 percent. higher.
and with rates on meat fer export
more than 100 per cent higher
what can a reduction of 20 percent.
limited to long hau,5 for cattle do
to stimulate the cattle business?
"Cattlemen are beginning to real
ize that their only salvation is 10
keep their cattle out of freight cars"
is the comment of the livestock com
missioner of Kansas.
Canada, under the recent reduc-
tion of rail rates in the Dominion Is.
am told, able to move its livestock
and meats to market at SO great an
advantage that the CANADIANS are
taking the export meat trade away
from our packers whom we know
to be the best equipped and most ex-
pert in the world.
In many localities the best sheep
and steers, as we'll as all second
class livestock, are shipped at a loss.
II shipped at all. Hundreds of
trainloads of such traffic is lost
daily by the railroads
Our greatest railroad executives
of a generation ago, men like J. j.
Hill, made it a principle TO move
grain and livestock to market at
low rates compared with most other
freight. as a means of building mp
general prosperity along their lines
from countryside to terminals.
AS member OF the Joint Commis-
sion of Agricultural Inquiry, ! have
heard hours of such testimony as
these reports from counties In your
state, Ohio.
A local factory ordered lumber
posts. but found the freight charge
was more than the lumber cost. so
cancelled the order
A car of coal shipped from East
, ern Ohio to Columbus cost $3.50 a
ton. The freight came to $396
A farmer bought a car of waste
lime for $40 used on his land. The
freight on a 20-mile haul was SIS.
A carload of lumber from the
south cost less than $500 The
freight was s467.
A car of hay was shipped from
one Ohio county to Pittsburgh for
$172. Freight and war tax was
s2211O.
Sheep shipped from one Ohio
county 20 Cleveland left the farmer
q '.,bt for .r,rs;.t ana commission
A large share of Minnesota's 5
corn and oats will go to waste this
year unless freight rates are cut,
st's Thomas f eastman. Of the
Minnesota Farm Bureau Fedora
tion. Much Western corn will he
burned for fuel. because rail-shlpped
coal at $1,000 to SIS ton is too
expensive for farmers to buy.
For more than year. as a direct
result of high freight rates, there
has been and still is such immense
and widespread spoilage of crops
as no country at any time has ever
seen before. Even corn, heretofore
, considered the most profitable Of
gain crops, cannot be shipped at a
profit from many localities. When
! freight rates absorb the value of a
, crop. it doesn't pay to garner it..
Thousands upon thousands of bush
els of potatoes and apples are being
fed hogs in the United States
while people hunger for them in
our cities.
Where the high rates have not
prohibited farmers entirely from
using the railroads, they have com
PEELED them to discontinue shipping
to markets they formerly frequen-
ted and find new outlets. AS ore
witness before the Agricultural in
auiry in Washington put 1t, the en-
tire agricultural map is being made
over. Just as is happening in the in
dustrial field. Factories are NOV
ing closer to the source of suppl
Farmers are establishing market
nearer home The railroads are
losing tonnage daily which never
will be regained.
The Interstate Commerce Com
mission seems tn realize the need
of a general rate reduction to clinch