88 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



an addition to the value of Iowa land of |35 an acre. I don't mean that 

 these changes have affected values in the way I indicated. You raise a 

 great many other things besides hay here in Michigan. The farmer of 

 Iowa can send his corn to market by the bushel or he can send it to 

 market in fat hogs and fat steers.- The freight rate as applied to all 

 commodities fixes the value of your lands and the value of the product 

 of those lands. 



In taking some testimony the other day in the state of Nebraska I 

 ascertained accidentally that the product of a creamery located there was 

 largely marketed in Lowell, Massachusetts. The largest creamery in 

 New England, and I think the United States, is located at St. Albans, 

 Vermont, in my own state, and I happen to know that that creamery 

 markets its product in Lowell, Mass., and when I looked up the freight 

 rate to see how they could do this, I found it is 1,700 miles from Omaha 

 through St. Albans to Lowell. It is 230 miles from St. Albans to Lowell. 

 The cost of transporting a pound of butter from Omaha to Lowell in an 

 iced car is one cent. The cost from St. Albans to Lowell is one-half cent. 

 You see the freight rate has absolutely abolished distance. For the pur- 

 pose of making butter to be sold in New England, a cow in Nebraska 

 and an acre of land which will grow grass or corn fodder on the plains of 

 Nebraska, is worth just about as much as that same cow or that same 

 acre of land among the Green mountains. And so I might stand here 

 during all the time allotted and multiply examples to show you in what 

 way the railroads affect the farmer. It determines what crop he shall 

 raise. It determines in what market that crop shall be placed. It deter- 

 mines the value of that crop. It determines, in a word, whether the 

 farmer shall be prosperous or the reverse, but I am only telling you 

 what you know, for every farmer knows from his own observation the- 

 dependence of himself upon the railroad. 



I want to direct your attention to another })hase of this problem, a 

 phase which is important, and I do it because I hope that every person- 

 present who listens to me will carry away Avith him a single thought 

 which I shall try and impress upon and make plain to you. Now at the- 

 basis of this thought lies this fact. The relative freight rate is of import- 

 ance to the man who buys and sells. That a freight rate should not be 

 too high is important to the man who produces and the man who 

 consumes. Some farmer here has a thousand bushels of grain to sell and 

 there are two or three merchants who are competing in the purchasing^ 

 of that grain. Now it does not make the snap of your finger's difference 

 to any one of those merchants what the absolute rate is, provided he pays 

 the same rate as his competitor does, but if any of them has "the 

 advantage of his competitors by so much as one-eighth of a cent, that is 

 suflScient to give him the market and drive his competitors entirely out of 

 the market. Now you with your grain to sell do not care the snap of 

 your finger to whom you sell it. What you want is the good price and' 

 the price which that buyer can pay you depends absolutely upon the rate- 

 which he has to pay the railroad company. Now you take the hay case.. 

 There was an advance on the average as applied to all the hay which was 

 transported of about 40 cents a ton, by changing from the fifth to the 

 sixth class of merchandise, which amounts to more than four million 

 dollars, a permanent addition to the railroad capitalization of this 



