i 9 o TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



barrel of flour produced in the United States, and directly affects 

 the price to producer and consumer of these important com- 

 modities. 



The preceding table shows the average wheat rate from Chi- 

 cago to New York, the average export price as compiled by the 

 Bureau of Statistics, and the number of bushels which could be 

 shipped between those points for a sum equal to the export price 

 during each of the years named. 



This table shows that the reduction in rates has been consid- 

 erably in excess of that in the price of wheat, and the same is 

 probably true of the other cereal products and of flour. 



The rates charged on the artificial fertilizers so largely used 

 on the cotton plantations of the south are of great importance to 

 the producers of that section. Taking that from Charleston, S. C, 

 to Albany, Ga., as an example, it is found to have been reduced 

 from $4.30 per ton in 1884 to $2.59 in 1894. Equally important 

 changes have taken place in the rates on the product itself, cot- 

 ton being now shipped from Memphis to Boston via rail for fifty- 

 five and a half cents per one hundred pounds, a reduction of about 

 thirty per cent from the rate in force during 1880, which was 

 seventy-nine cents. 



Nearly every one is familiar with the importance of the live- 

 stock movement from the southwest to Chicago. Shipments of 

 live cattle are concentrated at the railway centers on the Missouri 

 River and are carried forward to destination in train loads. The 

 rate per car load from 1877 to July, 1881, was $67.50. It was then 

 reduced to $60, but was advanced to $65, remaining at that 

 figure from 1883 to 1887. It is now twenty-three and a half cents 

 per hundred pounds, which is equivalent to $56.40 per car load. 

 The rate on packed meats from Cincinnati to New York city 

 averaged seventy-one and a quarter cents per hundred pounds 

 during 1867; during 1877 the average was 31*93 cents; during 

 1887, 2712 cents ; and during 1893, 25*43 cents. 



Turning to passenger traffic, it is found that the tendency 

 toward increased speed and improved facilities has operated as a 

 limitation upon reductions in charges, though by no means wholly 

 preventing them. The earliest available data give the average 

 charge per passenger per mile during the year 1880 as 2*51 cents, 

 which is higher than any subsequent year. The average for 1893 

 was 1*976 cents, and the saving upon the traffic of that year over 

 what the public would have paid at the higher rates of 1880 

 amounted to $80,568,025. 



Numerous reductions equal to those given could be cited and 

 to enumerate them all would require a statement showing rates 

 between practically all railway stations and upon nearly every 

 article commonly offered for shipment by rail. As such a mass 



