562 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



Mr. Harris is an efficient and thoro-going railroad man as well as the 

 avowed friend of the stock men. and the work which he did for them in 

 the improvement of their service saved them thousands of dollars in 

 feed bills and increased shrink. 



Now, I have not gone into the service we have put up with since the 

 writing of this report this winter, and, of course, that matter will be gone 

 into during this convention and I feel it would be useless for me to 

 take up your time at this time to enlarge on current conditions, especially 

 during the past two months. Mr. Harris is here and will speak to you 

 about it, as well as others, when those subjects properly come before 

 you, and for that reason this part of the report should not be criticised 

 because up to the date of the writing of it our service was fairly sat- 

 isfactory. 



LOSS AND DAMAGE CLAIMS. 



You will doubtless remember that at the time of holding your last 

 annual meeting the question of settling loss and damage claims of live 

 stock was very much up in the air, as very few claims were being settled 

 and your officers had been working on this matter with the railroad 

 administration at Washington for several months. These efforts finally 

 culminated in Mr. Howard, chief of the claim department, appointing a 

 committee of claim agents headed by Mr. Walton, of St. Louis, to rep- 

 resent the railroads, and directing Mr. Walton to call a meeting of the 

 stock men in the near future at which time a similar committee should be 

 selected from the live stock interests. The two committees would then 

 get together and endeavor to work out a set of uniform rules and reg- 

 ulations which would serve as a basis for the submission and settlement 

 of loss and damage claims over the entire country, so accordingly Mr. 

 Walton called a conference at St. Louis on March ISth, and Mr. Thorne, 

 your president and others representing your interests, were present and 

 took part in the proceedings, which resulted in a general committee of 

 some twenty-five members being selected and out of this, a sub-committee 

 of seven, of whom Mr. Thorne and myself were each named as members. 

 This sub-committee was to meet with the committee representing the 

 railroads and try if possible to arrive at a solution of the difficult 

 problems. 



The draft of rules and regulations which had been prepared by the 

 committee from the railroads was presented to the stock men and seemed 

 so unreasonable and unfair that they were rejected as a whole, on the 

 theory that they were impracticable and unfair and would rob the shipper 

 of the rights and privileges which he already enjoyed. 



After a day and night session at St. Louis in threshing over these 

 matters and making but little progress it was decided to adjourn to meet 

 in Chicago the early part of May to make a further attempt to get to- 

 gether, and in the meantime the live stock committee drafted a set of 

 rules and regulations which it felt would be fairly satisfactory to the 

 stock men and was prepared to submit them to the railroad people at the 

 Chicago meeting. 



This meeting proved to be a very boisterous one, and soon developed 

 into one of the fiercest contests ever staged between the railroads and the 



