EEPORT OF COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION. 143 



in. While the government has been building railroads and princely 

 monopolies, it has neglected the husbandmen of the north. They 

 look to this jurisdiction to help them secure an appropriation to 

 open the Columbia river, and to relieve the Willamette river of the 

 obstruction to navigation. He thanked the Grange again for their 

 greeting, and begged that, while others were laboring in the field, 

 he might be permitted to retire to a fence corner. 



The Committee on Transportation and Legislation reported as 

 follows : 



Your committee, to whom was referred that portion of the &quot;Dec 

 laration of Purposes of the State Grange&quot; of California having ref 

 erence to the subject of transportation and legislation, beg leave to 

 report, first: It has been said that &quot;cheap transportation of persons 

 and property is a national necessity.&quot; Nowhere can the force of this 

 axiom be more fully realized than here in our favored State. With 

 a territory great in extent, affording within its limits the preductions 

 of both torrid and temperate zones, with a climate varied as its pro 

 ductions, and with a population gathered from all parts of the globe, 

 we can readily understand how facilities for bringing producer and 

 consumer together will contribute to our comfort and convenience. 

 Our wheat, our wool, our wines, our fruit, our minerals, all sources 

 of wealth, health and luxury, must be transported either in a raw or 

 manufactured state; to fetch and carry them, so that the greatest 

 good will ensue to the greatest number, is a study well worthy of the 

 political economist, and its solution will remove an oppressive 

 burden which now hangs like a millstone around the neck of the 



Eroducer of our State. Our present avenues for transportation of 

 .-eight are either insufficient or do not perform their proper work. 

 Oar inland water courses are blockaded for months during the dry 

 season by sand bars and shoals. The exorbitant rates in many cases 

 charged for transportation on railroads make the cost of moving our 

 crops to market almost prohibitory, and in years of plenty the pro 

 ducer can scarcely realize the cost of production. These things, 

 with the unjust discrimination sometimes made, cause fluctuations, 

 which at times unduly excite, at other times depress and destroy the 

 agricultural and manufacturing interests of our State, and have a 

 tendency even to depopulate it. 



While we recognize in the railway an effectual instrument to aid 

 in developing the agricultural resources of the State, and believe 

 that the public interests of the country and its producers would be 

 subserved by fostering the further development of the railway sys 

 tem, provided such a judicious management can be obtained as will 

 secure equitable and just treatment in the way of fares and freight 

 to all localities through which they pass, yet w r e are satisfied that the 

 present system of building and managing railroads is injurious to the 

 best interests of the producers: 



1st. In companies having such special privileges granted them 

 as enable them, after obtaining large subsidies and stock subscrip 

 tions from individuals, corporations and counties, to depreciate the 

 value of stock to such an extent as to enable an interested ring to 

 secure the entire control of the road and deprive those who aided in 



