400 THE GROUNDSWELL. 



that the average rate on fourth-class freight for nine years, 

 beginning with 1864 and ending with 1872, was seventy- 

 two cents per hundred pounds, or, calling the distance one 

 thousand miles, 1.44 cents per ton per mile. 



This is about the average charge on all the freights on 

 the compartively local routes of the Pennsylvania Central, 

 and is forty-three cents, and more, on every bushel of wheat. 

 First-class freights, to the same point, averaged, during 

 this nine years, one dollar and eighty-seven cents per hun 

 dred pounds, or nearly 3.38 cents per ton per mile. From 

 St. Louis, so far as I can ascertain, the average rates have 

 been rather less favorable. 



In 1872, the rail rate from Chicago to New York, on 

 fourth-class freight, was, according to the Railroad Gazette, 

 fifty-eight and two-thirds cents per hundred pounds 1.17 

 cents per ton per mile or a little over thirty-five cents per 

 bushel of sixty pounds. Supposing this freight to have 

 been carried at a cost of six mills per ton per mile, it would 

 amount to thirty cents per hundred, or eighteen cents per 

 bushel, a difference of seventeen cents per bushel ; and on 

 the two hundred million bushels we may suppose to have 

 been shipped from the West, and to have been affected in 

 cost of transportation and in price, this would amount to 

 thirty-six million dollars, drawn from the pockets of producer 

 and consumer. 



EXCESSIVE CHARGES IN TENNESSEE AND IOWA. 



These overcharges, however, are moderate compared with 

 the local charges made at non-competing points, when no 

 &quot;contract &quot; is made. Here the charge, in many cases, is lim 

 ited and fixed, not with any reference to the cost of trans 

 portation by rail, but by the inability of the shipper or con- 



