594 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



Commerce Commission. Consequently, we got no assistance from the 

 executive council or the state of Iowa. Today the state of Iowa is not 

 doing anything toward gathering the concrete facts and data on that 

 subject. 



I am telling you these facts for this simple purpose: That valuation 

 is liable to consume several years of time. You gentlemen come from 

 all over this state. You represent the very best element in every 

 county in the state. The stockmen are the richest, the strongest bunch 

 of men in Iowa today, and it is up to you people to tell your legislators 

 what you think on that proposition. That can be cared for in the general 

 assembly, if they so desire. 



Another proposition is the advanced rate case, that I want to discuss 

 with you briefly. The appropriation given at the last session of the 

 general assembly, two years ago, to the state railroad commission, was 

 $40,000, to take care of rate cases for the two years— $20,000 a year. The 

 leading attorney for one of the railroads in most of the cases that we go 

 into is making that much. For that cost of $20,000 a year which you 

 people are paying to prevent the rate being advanced, or to secure re- 

 ductions, you have five or six rate clerks, working constantly every 

 working day of the year. We have built up a tariff file of 20,000 tariffs 

 and supplements, properly indexed. We are watching the changes con- 

 stantly. We have numerous cases now pending before the Interstate Com- 

 merce Commission, and within the past year we have secured the first 

 general revision of interstate rates on eight thousand articles to twenty 

 or more states in the eastern and western parts of the country. We have 

 tried to represent you in connection with the live stock valuation clause; 

 we have tried to represent you in many different cases that have been 

 pending. That fund, I told them, could only take care of the actual, 

 ordinary routine work of the commission. Unless something extraor- 

 dinary developed, we could get along, I told them, with $40,000; that 

 is, $20,000 a year, to take care of our half-dozen rate clerks, from three to 

 five stenographers, one or two statisticians, and pay the traveling expenses 

 and the cost of printing briefs and buying records. The record in the 

 last advanced rate case covered 23,000 typewritten pages. There is not 

 a lawyer in the state of Iowa, I believe, that has ever handled a case in- 

 volving that extensive a record. We were given twenty days to analyze 

 23,000 pages, prepare our briefs and prepare for oral argument. You sit 

 down some time and figure how long it will take you to read that 23,000 

 pages, and then think of analyzing it, producing a book of your own of 

 three or four hundred pages, having it printed, bound and filed. 



The law was changed so that if any extraordinary cases came up, the 

 executive council could take care of us under the chapter I referred to. 

 That was the specific understanding before the committee on Appropria- 

 tions. If there is any man present here who belonged to that committee, 

 I would like to ask him to stand up and correct me if 1 1 have not stated 

 that accurately. Since the legislature adjourned, the advanced rate case 

 came up, involving $50,000,000 annually. Every article that you buy or ship 

 east of the Indiana-Illinois state line would have been advanced if that 

 had gone into effect. Where did you get your suit of clothes originally? 



