INDIANA. 



311 



of the country are inoperative during the winter sea- 

 eon. The charges of elevators, and other warehouses, 

 have at many points been also exorbitant and op- 

 pressive. Thus, in seasons of plenty, the producer 

 Sods 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 producer's 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 

 be sells at home. With an immense region of wheat 

 and other grain-growing country opening up in the 

 Northwest, these evils to our special farming inter- 

 ests threaten to be greatly aggravated and increased 

 in the future. 



4. We may add that the unjust discriminations 

 of railway corporations have greatly aggravated and 

 intensified this evil. Discriminations are unduly ex- 

 citing and building up the prosperity of competing 

 points, and depressing and destroying that of other 

 points; real estate is depreciated ; manufactures and 

 agriculture languish, and the country even becomes 

 depopulated by reason of unjust discriminations. 



5. In view of these facts, your committee believe 

 that due encouragement should be given to the open- 

 ing of new routes, and the improvement of the old 

 ones, so as to furnish transportation at cheap rates 

 between all parts of the republic. Among these, we 

 would call attention to the following, which, from a 

 cursory examination, seem to have more or less mer- 

 it > The Niagara Ship-Canal, the Caughnawaga and 

 Champlain Canal route from the St. Lawrence to 

 Naw York, the Fox River Canal of Wisconsin, the 

 James River and Kanawha Through Water Line, 

 the Illinois and Michigan Canal and Illinois Eiver 

 Improvement, the Atlantic and Great Western Ca- 

 nal, and the Mississippi and Appalachicola Canal, 

 along: the Gulf coast. 



6. The Southern Pacific and Northern Pacific Rail- 

 roads are already aided by grants of lands to aid in 

 their construction, and, when completed, we believe 

 they will be important means of relieving the press- 

 ure of trans -continental transportation. The scheme 

 of the Eastern and Western Transportation Com- 

 pany also promises a valuable new through-route 

 from the Northwest to the Atlantic. 



7. We call attention to and ask an investigation 

 of the merits of the narrow-gauge railways, as much 

 cheaper in their construction and operation than 

 the existing railways ; of freight-tracks or railways 

 adapted especially 10 cheap transportation ; and of 

 tram-railways laid upon the common highways of 

 the country, which we believe can be done at a cost 

 not exceeding that of macadamized roads. 



8. We recommend that efforts be made and perse- 

 vered in. until all railway corporations shall be sub- 

 ject to the regulation of the General and State Gov- 

 ernments, so as to insure the absolute and perpetual 

 prohibition and prevention of extortionate charges 

 and unjust discriminations. 



9. We recommend that all men who believe the 

 rights of the people should be protected from the 

 extortions and discriminations ot transportation mo- 

 nopolies, should unite in reforming the executive, 

 judicial, and legislative departments of our Nation- 

 al and State Governments, by excluding therefrom 

 the proprietors and servants of such monopolies. 



10. We deprecate, finally, the practice of executive, 

 judicial, and legislative officers, in accepting favors 

 from transportation corporations whose interests are 

 more or less in conflict with those of the people, whom 

 luch officers are elected to serve. 



During the discussion on this report, which 

 wan finally adopted, Dr. Kyland T. Brown, of 

 Indianapolis, who represented in the congress, 

 by appointment, the Agricultural Department 

 of Washington, thus spoke on the subject : 



This is a very grave question a question that at 

 the present moment, perhaps, is exciting more inter- 

 est than any pecuniary question in this country, es- 

 pecially the Northwest. The enormous crop last 

 year taught our farmers in the West an important 

 lesson. That lesson is the difficulty of getting large 

 crops of grain into market. W e cannot eat it ; we 

 have no means of consuming it ; much of it would 

 not bear transportation. Now we suppose in this re- 



Fort in the main the subject is very fairly stated, but 

 am not so certain that the remedy will reach the 

 disease. I have no doubt but that the diagnosis is 

 well taken, but I am not so certain that the prescrip- 

 tion that follows will save. We have not more than 

 ten per cent, of the prairies in the West in cultiva- 

 tion. When the other ninety per cent, comes into 

 cultivation I want to ask the question, where are we 

 going to get the means of transporting 3 The rail- 

 road and your canals will not carry it. Looking at 

 the great prairies between here and the middle of 

 Nebraska, where every acre shall produce for the 

 market fifty bushels of corn or twenty-five bushels 

 of wheat, it becomes an important question, how will 

 we get this immense mountain of food over the 

 mountains to the sea-coast ? We must have a class 

 of laborers consuming these products at home, and 

 ship the finer products. We must divide our Western 

 labor. We must consume a great portion of this 

 crude product at home, and capital should be in- 

 vested in manufactures. Whenever we invest our 

 money in manufacturing establishments we will be 

 masters of the situation. So long as we take our 

 grain a thousand miles to feed the operatives of the 

 workshops of the East, and bring back the manu- 

 factured products, transportation will always be in 

 demand, and the law of supply and demand will al- 

 ways make the transportation lines masters of the 

 situation. We cannot expect to learn this lesson in 

 a day, but we will ultimately do it. We have brought 

 from twenty to thirty million dollars into Indiana in 

 the form of manufactured capital within the last ten 

 or fifteen years. When we nave enough operatives 

 to cat our products, then we will be at home. We 

 will find the railroads begging of us something to 

 carry. Manufacturing is more profitable than farm- 

 ing, but it will not be when all go into it, as they 

 have done into farming. 



Atlanta, Ga., was selected as the place for 

 the next annual meeting. General W. H. Jack- 

 son, of Nashville, Tenn., was elected president 

 for the ensuing year, and the second Wednes- 

 day of May, 1874, fixed for the next meeting. 



The following was also adopted as a sup- 

 plemental report from the Committee on Trans- 

 portation : 



We, the farmers in National Congress, respectfully 

 represent to the Senate and House of the Forty-third 

 Congress that the great want of the whole country, 

 and especially the West and Northwest, is increased 

 facilities for transportation between the valleys of 

 the Ohio and Mississippi and the Atlantic seaboard j 

 that in consequence of the rapidly-increasing prod- 

 ucts of the West and the corresponding increase of 

 its demand for the manufactures, merchandise, and 

 other products of the East, the necessity to meet this 

 want is daily becoming more imperative ; 



That to respond to this want the best interests of 

 the country demand continuous water-ways between 

 the East and West as public highways, made free for 

 the use of all on the same terms, and subject to only 

 such tolls as may bo necessary to keep the same in 

 repair; 



That the central water-line through Virginia by the 

 James River & Kanawha Canal, in connection with 

 the proper improvement of the Ohio and Kanawha 

 Rivers, in eminently of that character, and from its 

 directness and central position across the very centre 

 of our country from north to south, with every con- 



