FIFTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART IX. 607 



I hold in my hands a book filled with figures. Every one of them 

 represents a reduction that we have secured in our rates in the general 

 revision of interstate freight rates. I had a mass of stuff here that I 

 wanted to tell you about. I wanted to show you how Mr. McPherson, 

 who purports to represent the Johns Hopkins University, is sending out 

 literature to all parts of the country, free of charge, creating sentiment 

 on the side of the railroads. Here is a very finely written book. In the 

 back of it is the poison. He shows that the return the railroads are 

 receiving is around 5 per cent, and the return the farmers are receiving 

 is around 9 per cent. He says that the farmers are able to pay all of 

 their labor cost, taxes, and all of their maintenance, repairs, etc., and then 

 have enough left to equal 9 per cent on their capital of $30,000,000,000. 

 It seemed to me that was a rather remarkable situation, and I went to 

 checking it through, and I am not going outside of this sheet of paper. 

 On that same sheet of paper, I will impeach his own figures. 



How did that happen? Just this way. The railroads report the wages 

 they pay out, from the president down to the section hand. If there is 

 any farmer in this room who is running his own farm, and reports the 

 wages paid the boss of the job on his farm, I would like to have him 

 stand up. That is the situation. I apply that $607 average of the rail- 

 road labor to the number of men engaged in farm labor, and I get a sum 

 that is greater than the total value of all the products of the farms of 

 the United States put together, and you wouldn't have a cent to pay on 

 $30,000,000,000; it exceeds it by $900,000,000'. 



That is the kind of dope that is going out over this country, poison- 

 ing the minds of the readers — business men and bankers and manufac- 

 turers and clerks in stores. It is an outrage. 



Here is a book. I was going to read the introduction. This fellow 

 wrote some articles for Hampton's Magazine — Charles Edward Russell — 

 and before they were in print, they had been read by railroad officials. 

 Representatives went to the publishers, protesting against the printing 

 of those articles, when the owner of the magazine didn't believe there 

 was a soul in the world knew anything about the articles except his own 

 employes. They challenged the railroad men to name where there were 

 any mistakes, and offered to leave those out of the article. There were 

 only one or two on insignificant matters. The railroads got even with 

 Hampton's; they broke the firm. 



There is one figure I want to leave with you. I don't know whether 

 the western railroads are entitled to more revenue or not; it is quite 

 possible they are, and that some rates ought to be advanced. It may be 

 your grain rates ought to be advanced; I have not investigated the facts. 

 It may be that there should be a general raise in western freight rates. 

 All I maintain is that you are a bunch of fools if you are not on hand 

 presenting your side of the story. I do want to tell you what happened 

 in the eastern case. The evidence in that case is summarized on these 

 exhibits I have before me, and I don't ask you to take my word for it. 



Here is the exhibit introduced by the railroads themselves — a combined 

 statement showing all the railroads operating between the Mississippi 

 river and the Atlantic coast, in official classification territory — all of the 



