SEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III. 115 



myself plain — put down here first-class, so much, sc-cond, third, fourth- 

 class, right along in a string; those are the rates on those different 

 classes; then put a number in front here, and you quote that rate by 

 number, and all you have to do is to see in your classification what 

 class it belongs to, and there you have your rate. Well, it just 

 seemed to me that you could publish a universal rate sheet. There are 

 all the rates there. But, if the rate on second-class is going to be made 

 50 per cent of the first-class at Marshalltown, and 60 per cent at Waterloo, 

 and 45 per cent at Des Moines, why, there would be so many combina- 

 tions that j^ou have broken up the system, and you have to get back to 

 your 666,000 volumes to publish it in; but these two methods of classl- 

 fiction, which are as old as railroads, have to be enlarged and 

 made uniform, and then the adopting of a relation between the classes 

 at a fixed relation between the classes, why, you have it down to a 

 point where you can publish a tariff between all towns with only 300 

 and odd million rates; but the places could be consolidated and system- 

 atized in the same way, so that -I am satisfied, without going further into 

 it — I am satisfied I shall be able to demonstrate to the Commission, and 

 to every fair-minded man, that the joint rates can be made upon that 

 principle between all the railroads in the United States in a book about 

 the size of Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. If it is arranged with the 

 names alphabetically, why, any man of ordinary understanding can tell 

 what the rate is. It goes without saying, gentlemen, that this method or 

 system will be unpopular with the old-fashioned freight agent who has 

 been in the habit of making one rate for one man and another rate for 

 another man. He will see that it will make it impossible to encourage 

 "infant industries." They are all great believers in the republican 

 principle of encouraging infant industries — suckling them at their breast, 

 you know — such infant industries as the Standard Oil Company and 

 United States Steel Company and the International Harvester Company. 

 Why, I honestly believe that nine-tenths of the freight agents of the 

 country, who work for $300 or $400 a month, believe if they could not 

 give these infant industries nurture from time to time that they would 

 be wiped off of the face of the earth. I mean the infant industries 

 would. If the rates were systematized the way I speak of, the only 

 practicable way to reduce rates would be to change the classification. 

 Now, what would that do? If they wanted to reduce a rate at the Mis- 

 souri river, and they did it by changing the classification, it would 

 reduce that rate at Des Moines, and at every other town just the same. 

 Now, is that right, or is it wrong? Is it right that when the railroad 

 company reduces the rate at one place it shall reduce the rate at all 

 places to the same extent and in the same proportion? Now, that, I 

 think, would be true competition. I don't think that giving one man a 

 reduced rate and advantage over another man is true competition. That 

 is discrimination. 



Well, gentlemen, I am afraid this is rather an abstruse question, and 

 I don't care to speak longer on the subject. As I say, I am satisfied that 

 the members of the present Interstate Commerce Commission are con- 

 vinced that the rates — the schedules — should be made in this simplified 



