THIRTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART IV 201 



association for a great many years, and we would hardly feel that 

 a program was filled out unless we had a word from him. 



Mr. Thorne: Mr. Sykes says he has arranged for me to speak to fill out 

 the time this morning! Last night you good folks heard about that rail- 

 road train plowing through the country, and the farmer who had the dog. 

 The dog chased the train and barked and caused so much havoc in the 

 vicinity that complaint was made about it, and the farmer said, "Oh, 

 well, it is good for the dog, and it doesn't hurt the railroad any; so 

 let him bark." Now I suppose that I am the dog. I suppose the idea 

 is that it is good for me, and it doesn't hurt the railroads any, so 

 let me bark! I imagine that if that is the situation, there are functions 

 of value that I might perform. I might take the position of a sort of 

 mediator, and I don't know but what I have been rightfully criticized, 

 and that I should try to get you people together more than I do, if I 

 were a broad-gauged man. But you know if that dog would try to get 

 that farmer and the railroad train together, it might be hard on the 

 dog. He could lick the farmer's hand, but when he tried to lick the 

 train of cars, it might cause bruises on the dog, and I have been getting 

 some of those bruises during the past year that I want to tell you about. 



I think that this discussion today has been very instructive and very 

 valuable. I do think that we must take a more friendly attitude to- 

 ward each other and get rid of some of these unfortunate circumstances 

 that exist. At the same time, there are circumstances where wrongs 

 exist and they are not rectified when you go to headquarters with them, 

 and I am here to add my complaint to Mr. Whitenton and these rail- 

 road officials, and I mean business about it. It would have been very 

 well if I could come here in a different frame of mind, but during the 

 past year I have had occasion to make requests of the railroad companies, 

 and I have gone to their highest officials with them, and have been ig- 

 nored absolutely. So I come back to you folks who put me where I 

 am. If I can't get relief there, I propose to keep coming back to you 

 folks until I am treated right in regard to those things. 



A year ago you remember I told you about going up to a classifica- 

 tion meeting. And, by the way, do you know what a classification is? 

 I will bet a farm that there isn't a man in the audience outside of the 

 employ of the railroad companies that can tell me, A classification is the 

 basis of the whole rate structure in this country, outside of your commod- 

 ity tariffs. Your commodity tariffs may cover the great bulk of the traffic, 

 but there are over 7,000 articles that they classify. It would be impractical 

 to name the rates on every one of those 7,000 articles between every 

 two points in the United States; if you started out to do that, it would 

 take more books than there are in the congressional library at Washing- 

 ton to hold the tariffs, and then you would have to have that duplicated 

 all over the country. They distribute these 7,000 or 8,000 articles into 

 five or ten different groups, and then name rates on those classes between 

 points, instead of between points on each article. You can see from 

 that explanation how fundamental a classification is; and when they 

 scratch out the figure 2 and write the figure 1 opposite "butter, poultry 



