114 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTUKE. 



I am going down next week to report to the Interstate Commerce Com- 

 mission the way I think it can be done. 



In studying this problem I picked up a tariff of rates called the Trans- 

 Continental Tariff — that is, the rates on the classified articles from the 

 Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific seaboard, not including any intermediate 

 rates — and it was a book as thick as those two (indicating), and larger, 

 and there were 800 different commodities, each one having rates opposite 

 it. Well, I sat one day looking at that. That was a sort of a "stumper," 

 you know. Eight hundred different commodities filled 250 quarto pages 

 of figures, and I commenced to look at the rates, and I found they were 

 continually repeating themselves, and I called in my clerk, and I says: 

 "Here; here's a dollar rate, here's a 65-cent rate, here's a so-much rate. 

 Find out how many there are in this — find out how many different rates 

 there are, really different rates." And to my astonishment, in that full 

 schedule of 800 and odd rates there were only thirty different rates. The 

 others were all repetitions. All you had to do was to group these com- 

 modities with reference to the rates that they bore, and that is the 

 classification, and instead of having to publish 230 pages of figures, why, 

 you could publish all the rates on the size of one page. Thirty rates. 

 Thirty different rates. That is all there were. 



Well now, I haven't got time, and I don't suppose it would interest 

 you — it would be rather abstruse to go through the whole thing of this— 

 but that set me to thinking, and I said to myself, "I wonder what the 

 highest rate on the highest class is," and I went to hunting. I thought 

 I knew about where the highest line of rates were, and I found that the 

 highest rate was about four dollars. Well, I said, the lowest rate on first 

 class is about 12 cents. Now, the difference between 400 cents and 12 cents 

 Is 388 cents, and if we don't make the rates more than one cent apart, why 

 there can be only 480 rates — actual rates — in the whole United States on 

 first-class goods. Well, to make that rate between all stations, unless you 

 can classify and arrange the stations somewhat or some way, you have got 

 to make — how many millions was it? — two or three hundred million 

 rates. But if you can reduce the actual rates to 480, why, you have got 

 a large step. Well, then I said, "Here's this tariff with 800 commodities; 

 there are only thirty classifications. Well now, you keep these a cent 

 apart at a given point, and add them on to the ten classes we have 

 now, it will make forty classes. Well then, the problem is, there would 

 be 480 rates and forty classes; that would be forty times 480. That 

 would be the number of rates. 



Now then, I says, here is first-class $4.00; second is something less; 

 third, fourth and fifth, and so on. If that ratio— the ratio or relation 

 between the classes and the rates — is maintained at all stations and every- 

 Tvhere— that is right; that is the law— if the rate on first-class is twice 

 the rate on second class at Marshalltown, it ought to be twice the rate 

 on second-class at Des Moines, and at all other stations. 



Now, if we can maintain these ratios — that relation of rates — why, 

 we can print a universal schedule of rates — a table of rates like an inter- 

 est table. Why, I can print this on ten pages, and if I number each one 

 of these rates, considering them as one rate — I don't know as I make 



