REPORT ON THE TRANSPORTATION QUESTION. 331 



ceiving the benefit of acts donating land, shall plant with 

 timber trees one- half of the land so donated ; that our Ag 

 ricultural Colleges should give more attention to forestry, 

 as in similar institutions in Europe; asking railroad com 

 panies to co-operate in restoring the timber growth ; and 

 directing attention to the practical importance of the science 

 of entomology, and declaring that each State should appoint 

 an entomologist. 



The &quot; eight-hour law &quot; was discussed at length, but no 

 decision was arrived at thereon. 



EXHAUSTIVE REPORT ON THE TRANSPORTATION QUES 

 TION. 



A committee appointed on the transportation question de 

 livered the following exhaustive report : 



1. The cheap transportation of persons and property is a national 

 necessity. Our country is immense, and its climate, productions, 

 and wants very varied and diverse in its different parts. The emi 

 nent thinker, Dr. Draper, in his &quot; Civil Policy of America,&quot; has 

 stated that he regards cheap transportation, even looking at it simply 

 as a means of commingling, fraternizing, and unifying our popula 

 tion, as a natural necessity. Even more true, if possible, is the state 

 ment that the greatest good of the masses of the people is to be 

 observed by furnishing all articles, whose production is local, but 

 whose consumption is general and necessary, at the lowest possible 

 cost of transportation. Eight States in the Northwest produced 800,- 

 000,000 of cereals in 1862 eighty bushels for every man, woman, or 

 child of its population, and enough, properly distributed, to feed the 

 whole forty millions of the nation, whilst the East had not grain 

 enough to last her more than three months of the year, and the 

 four Southeastern States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and 

 Florida, required fifty millions of bushels more gram than they 

 grew. Pennsylvania has exhaustless mines of coal. Massachusetts, 

 with her immense factories, has none. The Southern States have a 

 soil eminently adapted to the production of cotton and sugar arti- 



