FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 91 



this service wliifU is pei-foi-iiied. It can only be increased by imposing 

 upon the transportation of that whole section, a greater transportation 

 charge than would otherwise be imposed. Let everyone take that thought 

 home to himself. It is just as certain as any logical, demonstrative con- 

 clusion of a proposition in geometry. You must in some way get more 

 money out of that traffic from the people who pay for the traffic, or the 

 scheme is not a success. 



He says there is no danger that freight rates can be advanced. Freight 

 rates have gone down and down and they are still going down within the 

 the last ten years they have gone down and they are bound to fall even 

 though you wipe out every particle of competition. He produces figures 

 to show it. In ISUO the railroads of this country hauled 72 billion tons 

 one mile. In 1900 they hauled 141 billion tons one mile, an increase of 

 100 per cent. In 1S90 the gross receipts were one billion fifty-one million. 

 In 1900 they had risen to about one billion four hundred seventy-eight 

 million, an advance of nearly 41 j)er,cent. Now. says Mr. Hill, just in pro- 

 portion as the number of tons carried has increased faster than the gross 

 receipts, just in the same proportion has the freight rate fallen. 



When I was a boy in the district school, I remember that my seatmate 

 came in one morning with an example that stuck me. If potatoes are a 

 dollar a bushel, how much will it cost to shingle the schoolhouse? There 

 is just as much connection between the rate per ton per mile, and the 

 freight rate, as there is between the price of potatoes and the cost of 

 shingling this bnilding. Suppose Mr. Hill transports a car load of first 

 class merchandise ten miles and gets |100. Next he transports a car 

 load of low class merchandise and gets |10. Then he transports one 

 car load of each kind and gets |110. Then one car load of the first class 

 merchandise and two car loads of the low class and gets |120 or $40 a car. 

 The rate per car. the rate per ton per mile has fallen, but the freight 

 rate is just exactly the same. 



On the whole it is my conviction that freight rates have risen rather 

 than fallen. There are more instances of an advance than there are of 

 a decline. I say that wherever they have fallen, that decline has been due 

 entirely to competition between railways and wherever freight rates 

 have been advanced that advance has been made possible by the elimina- 

 tion of competition between railways. Up here in this Northwest you have 

 wiped out that competition, you have put it into the hands of one man 

 to say what rate shall be paid. My friends, this is not right. The same 

 thing is being done everywhere and no amount of theorizing can convince 

 you that it is right. If your baker and your butcher without any com- 

 petition has a right to say what you would pay, they would rob you in 

 the end. The particular baker who sits next to you in church might 

 not rob you, but in the long run he would, and one man will rob that 

 section if given the opportunity to name the freight rate. It is human 

 nature, it is common sense, it is common experience that they will, and 

 the people of the United States will never rest content with any such 

 condition. What is the remedy? The obvious remedy is to compel 

 by law competition ; to prevent by law combinations. I do not think 

 you can apply that remedy. It would not be a very effective remedy 

 if you could. Suppose you dissolve the Northern Security Co. Substan- 

 tially nothing would be accomplished except to wipe out a little of this 



