370 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



rate for long distances. There is wide-spread movement on the part of 

 the centralized creameries all over the west to maintain as low rates as 

 possible, or to secure lower ones where the tariff equal to the Iowa rates 

 obtains. There is a movement equally wide-spread on the part of rail- 

 roads to make a higher rate for cream than for milk and thereby to raise 

 rates on shipments of cream for buttermaking purposes, so that the mat- 

 ter is one which has been brought to the attention of the Interstate 

 Commerce Commission and the Railroad Commission in Minnesota, Ne- 

 braska, Iowa and Wisconsin, and indeed has got into federal courts on 

 a petition for injunction against raising rates. 



Different conditions may exist elsewhere. Iowa conditions do not de- 

 mand a rate on cream shipments different from rates on other products 

 which naturally go by express. The shipment of cream long distances 

 inevitably causes a loss in quality and value of cream, which loss is in- 

 evitably visited upon the seller of that cream. To make a rate of 21 co 

 22 cents for seventy-five miles and a rate of about 30 cents for two 

 hundred miles is unfair as between two persons, one of whom wishes to 

 ship the shorter distance and the other who wishes to ship the longer 

 distance. To make an extremely low rate for greater distances still 

 gives an advantage which is not shared by the purchaser in any degree, 

 directly or indirectly, if we may argue from experience in this State 

 and elsewhere. The majority of creamery patrons already have a market 

 at their doors without shipping by rail. The producer of cream who has 

 no such market is entitled to a fair rate on his cream in exactly the same 

 sense that he is entitled to a fair rate on his grain or live stock, but 

 neither he nor the plant to which he ships is entitled to have his product 

 carried free, nor to have it carried at a rate which is out of proportion 

 to fair rates on other products. To so reduce rates upon cream shipments 

 is to enable concerns with large capital and superior business resources 

 to monopolize in large proportion the dairy business and will be disastrous 

 to the dairy business of this State. Dairy people of this State should 

 understand that this is a question which will continue to be agitated and 

 will take such action as seems to them proper as safeguarding the in- 

 terests of the business as a whole. 



