202 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



and eggs," that little action automatically raises that freight rate over 

 $300,000 a year. I went before the classification committee. I saw 

 the shippers getting up there and stating their cause of action, one 

 after the other, four or five minutes to each. You couldn't hear the 

 men thirty feet away because of the buzz of fans. Siiiteen men in front 

 making the freight rates for half a continent — a greater power than any 

 congressional committee now in operation doing its work at Washington! 

 I said to the chairman of that committee after that hearing: "I v:ant 

 to hear the other side of these discussions. I don't hear any answer in 

 discussion here. Why can't I go in and hear you people talk about 

 these things? I want to hear the railroads' side." "No," he said; 

 "nothing doing; you can't do that." Those questions affecting the shippers 

 of this state were decided by the railroad companies, interested parties, 

 in star-chamber session, without .a representative of the shippers being 

 allowed to be present, when the chairman knew that I v/as a member 

 of the Iowa State Board of Railroad Commissioners and trying my 

 level best to look after my duty when I was there. I say that is dead 

 wrong. A little bit after that meeting, I got a book at the office showing 

 the proposed changes, and they named about 2,000 of them. I asked 

 our boys to check that over by evening of that day; I wanted to know 

 whether there was a general advance or a reduction. One of them said, 

 "I can do it by tomorrow morning." The next morning, he said it 

 would take him three months, and then I wired different states, and 

 they sent men to Kansas City, and we analyzed a certain portion of 

 that, asked for a suspension, and the entire classification was sus- 

 pended. Among the things that were suspended was 100 per cent ad- 

 vance on binding twine, and that has now been permanently suspended. 

 There was a 50 to 100 per cent advance on silos. There were advances 

 on minimum weights in cars. I am not fighting the proposition that 

 you have to get good loads in cars, and as the size of cars gradually 

 increases, the size of minimum weights ought to gradually increase as 

 a general policy; and yet it is not fair to say, simply because it is 

 right to gradually increase the loads, that it must be applied to every- 

 thing. Let me give you one concrete illustration which does not affect 

 you at all. There was an advance on Ferris wheels that go around to 

 cur county fairs and our street carnivals of 50 per cent on the mini- 

 mum weight, because two wheels can be put in a car, although, as a 

 matter of fact, never more than one is shipped in a car. 



The carriers took the ground that in framing the minimum weights 

 for the United States, only physical capacity of the cars should be con- 

 sidered, and the Interstate Commerce Commission was directly divided 

 on that proposition. There were decisions in support of that side of 

 the case by eminent members of the commission, but at the conclusion 

 of our hearing the Interstate Commerce Commission ruled that com- 

 mercial conditions must also be considered in framing minimum weights. 

 In the case of the Ferris wheels, there would have been an instance 

 of an advance of 50 per cent minimum weight that would be absolutely 

 unreasonable. The point is that there is a fundamental proposition, 

 nation-wide in importance, that will help determine on a fair basis your 

 minimum weight. 



