DISCRIMINATION IN FREIGHTS. 139 



hundred miles, and delivered in Boston in prime order, for 

 seventy-five to eighty cents per hundred-weight. For butter 

 made throughout Western Massachusetts, full half as much 

 is charged for carrying only a hundred miles or so in com- 

 mon freight-cars, the shippers paying for ice if they want 

 it. Last August I saw butter unloaded at Boston, which 

 had been placed in a Tiffany car in Iowa, had been seven 

 days on the road, by the Canada route. The car had not 

 been opened the whole distance ; and the butter came out as 

 fine and fresh as when it started : the freightage, sixty cents 

 per hundred-weight. The same train brought into Boston 

 a load of butter from different places in Vermont, in a com- 

 mon car ; its condition soft and unsatisfactory, and the 

 freight rates varied eighty cents to a dollar. These two 

 lots of butter were in equally good order at home ; but, on 

 arriving at market, the one which cost the more to get there, 

 sold for less than the other. 



Now, I have great regard for the railroads, — what could 

 we do without them ? — and we all must appreciate the ac- 

 commodation and favors of several companies in connection 

 with these meetings. But it is not pleasant to have a man 

 pat you on the back with one hand, while he puts the other 

 in your pocket. I believe these roads, with the great privi- 

 leges and powers granted them, should be required to ac- 

 commodate the people through whose lands and villages they 

 pass, and certainly not discriminate, as they now do, in favor 

 of far distant communities and their products. The Boston 

 and Albany Railroad is largely owned by the State ; yet the 

 cheese-makers in Berkshire and Worcester, part owners of 

 the road, are compelled to pay four times as much to carry 

 a ton of their product to Boston as is paid for the same 

 weight of Wisconsin cheese carried over the same rails. 

 Over the Troy and Greenfield Railroad, built wholly with 

 the people's money, winding through these Franklin hills, 

 come loads of butter from Ohio and Michigan, Illinois and 

 Iowa, for the Boston market, freighted from four hundred 

 to fourteen hundred miles, for half a dollar to a dollar per 

 hundred-weight : this gives less than ten cents for the ser- 

 vice from the Tunnel to Boston, in superb refrigerator-cars, 

 all expenses paid. But these Franklin-county farmers, who, 

 within the past year, have sent three hundred and thirty 



