28 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



with its two million inhabitants, had to depend on what could be transported 

 by wagon for its supplies; its radius of supply would be at the most not to 

 exceed fifty to one hundred miles. Obviously enough, there would not have 

 been enough food, enough fuel or enough of many other things to supply 

 such a population. As it is, Chicago receives its grain from a radius of fully 

 two thousand miles; its meat supply from an even larger radius, its fruit 

 supply from Florida and Cuba in one direction. Southern California in 

 another, Oregon and Washington in another; and so I might continue. 



Transportation facilities have always tended to level down prices, and 

 make them less liable to fluctuation; thus, we can not have in this country 

 the terrible famines which have existed in Russia, and some of the countries 

 of Asia, because the shortage in one section of the country would be quickly 

 made'good by the abundance elsewhere, nor does any community depend on 

 its supplies from immediately adjoining territory. If a combination through 

 its ownership, we will say, of coal mines in a certain district should under- 

 take to force up prices of coal from that district, the coal from other districts 

 and other kinds of fuel, such as fuel oil, would soon come in to level down 

 the excessive charge. In fact political economists have frequently remarked 

 that although as a Nation we stand for protection , we represent in fact the 

 greatest free trade experiment that was ever known; forty-five sovereign 

 states and many territories compete in each others markets to an almost 

 unlimited extent. It is a friendly competition, it is true, and we have 

 become so accustomed to it that we hardly realize it, but no one locality can 

 so far take advantage of its geographical position that it can put the 

 "screws" on any other locality. In Europe, particularly in Germany, the 

 effort in the way of transportation has been entirely in the direction of 

 building up a great internal system of water ways. Railways are used there 

 to carry the product of the mine, forest and farm, to the nearest point on 

 the seaboard, or to some large river or canal, thence these products are 

 carri-d by slow going canals, either to the city where they are used or 

 reloaded on cars at some other point and brought inland. A student of the 

 transportation facilities in Germany is struck with the fact that this method, 

 developed under Government auspicies, has tended to build up large cities 

 with water facilities, while the inland country has suffered. What would have 

 been the fate or the great State of Iowa if that policy had been advocated 

 in the United States. And yet, even to this day, Government effort, both 

 National and State, has been in the direction of developing waterways, and 

 for some unaccountable reason, the public ignores the fact that even the 

 great waterways that nature gave us, are used to a very limited extent. 



The name of Mr. Lincoln, our Martyr President, is interestingly connected 

 with the development of Railway Transportation, and the building of the 

 first railroad bridge across the iMississippi river, at Rock Island in 1856. 



The steamboat interests and the citizens of St. Louis and other Miss- 

 issippi river points, protested most emphatically against the construction of 

 the bridge, and a bill was filed by citizens of St. Louis, in 1858, to have the 

 bridge, which had just been built, removed. On April 3, 1860, the United 

 States District Court for the District of Iowa, decided that the bridge was a 

 material obstruction and a nuisance, and ordered it removed. An appeal 

 was taken to the Supreme Court of the United States, and Mr. Lincoln ap- 

 peared as counsel for the Bridge Company. In his argument Mr. Lincoln 



