FIFTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART IX. 595 



Where do most of the things you wear come from? Where does your 

 sugar come from? Where do most of the products of the farm go to 

 ultimately? It is estimated that the great bulk of all our traffic goes to 

 and from that territory. It would have cost Iowa over a million dollars 

 if those advances had gone into effect. 



Today we are confronting another advanced rate case. I suppose a 

 good many of you gentlemen produce grain. How many of you men in 

 the room do produce grain to sell? Hold up your hands. It looks to me 

 like there are two-thirds of those in the room who do; over half, at least. 

 There is an advance proposed of one cent a hundred pounds on grain 

 from practically every Iowa point to St. Paul, St. Louis, Omaha, Kansas 

 City, and Chicago. There is also two cents proposed advance to the 

 Atlantic seaboard, and on export stuff. Ordinarily, twenty per cent of 

 our wheat is exported. Most of our corn, however, is consumed in this 

 country. We produced something like 350,000,000 bushels of corn in the 

 state last year. An advance of one cent per hundred pounds would have 

 amounted to over $2,500,000 annually. Where is your capitol extension 

 of a million and a half in comparison? Here we have a proposition in- 

 volving $2,500,000 every year. 



But what becomes of the price of the corn that you don't ship? What 

 is the price of corn at Mt. Pleasant, if it is not the price at Chicago, St. 

 Louis, or some other primary market, less freight rates? If you produce 

 corn to sell to your neighbor, it affects you. If you ship it in the sheep 

 or hogs or cattle, it doesn't affect you unless the hogs or sheep or cattle 

 are advanced also, or the products which are made from those hogs or 

 sheep or cattle. They are proposing an advance of something like thirty 

 per cent on packing house products east. It has been estimated that 

 forty per cent of the live stock that goes into Chicago, goes out on the 

 hoof. They are proposing advances on live stock from Texas to Iowa 

 of three cents a hundred pounds, or in the neighborhood of $11 a car. 

 We asked for all the advances to be put into the one case. The com- 

 mission granted it, and 1,124 tariffs have been suspended. 



Grain and live stock are not the only products concerned. In the past, 

 agricultural implements have been shipped to a given point, partially un- 

 loaded, by the purchaser paying $5 for the privilege, and shipped on to 

 the next town. That enables the small individuals to get a carload rate 

 when they have only a small shipment, by paying $5 for the privilege of 

 unloading that shipment at their stations. That has been the custom for 

 some time. Years ago it was done free. They now propose to eliminate 

 that entirely on agricultural implements. Lindsay Bros., of Milwaukee, 

 and the National Implement Dealers' Association inform me that this 

 will mean an advance of from ten to one hundred per cent on the bulk 

 of the shipments of agricultural implements into the state of Iowa. 



I am again compelled to say that the state of Iowa has refused to lend 

 the necessary assistance to take care of this stupendous case. The coal 

 men of the east have united in employing two or three expert accountants 

 to do nothing but take care of the coal rates and the most of handling 

 the coal traffic. I believe that that will be absolutely necessary as to the 

 grain proposition. I believe it will be necessary for the farmers of 



