332 THE GROUNDSWELL. 



cles sought and needed by all portions of the more Northern States. 

 Missouri has her immense mines of iron, whose manufacture and use 

 goes every-where. The Pacific coast has her wines, her wheat, and 

 her minerals, valuable to all. To fetch and carry these raw products 

 and the secondary products of their manufacture from producer to 

 consumer, at the lowest possible cost, is the worthy and most desira 

 ble object of the day. It will remove an oppressive burden that now 

 rests like an incubus upon the producing interests of the country, 

 and give cheap food, cheap clothing, and cheap fuel to the people 

 every-where. 



2. In examining into this subject, we find that, in the first place, 

 the present avenues for freight transportation are insufficient, or, at 

 least, as now organized and operated, do not do their proper work. 

 Our water routes are obstructed by falls and rapids that are not over 

 come ; by shoals and sand bars that are not removed ; and for months 

 of the year are blockaded by ice or by low water. The railways, 

 being used both for passenger and freight transportation, can carry 

 only relatively small amounts of freight, and both water and rail 

 way routes are blockaded by an insufficiency of warehouses, eleva 

 tors, and other means of transferring freight at our principal inland 

 and seaboard cities. 



3. We find, moreover, that rates charged by these transportation 

 companies are exorbitant, as compared with the necessary cost, and 

 are really prohibitory in their character at points remote from the 

 great markets. The rates by water, while considerably lower, are 

 still much above the necessary cost, and in the northern part of 

 the country are inoperative during the winter season. The charges 

 of elevators and other warehouses have, at many points, been also 

 exorbitant and oppressive. Thus, in seasons of plenty, the producer 

 finds the price of his products reduced below the cost of production, 

 and in seasons of scarcity the consumer must pay unwarrantable 

 and unbearable prices for the necessaries of life. Not only this, but 

 inasmuch as the seaboard prices, except in cases of local scarcity, fix 

 the producers prices at his own locality, the result is that the high 

 prices of freight are a cause of loss to the producer even upon what 

 he sells at home. With an immense region of wheat and other 

 grain-growing country opening up in the north-west, these evils to 

 our special farming interests threaten to be greatly aggravated and 

 increased in the future. 



