PLANS FOR TOMORROW 



to them . . . freight differences that have cultivated 

 industry in the East are now in the process of being re- 

 moved, and the result will be a shifting, an expansion 

 in the West and South, visible within five years/' 



Vividly, concisely, this quotation summarizes the 

 natural effects of the order of the Interstate Commerce 

 Commission advancing class freight-rates 10 per cent 

 east of the Mississippi and north of the Potomac and 

 Ohio rivers and lowering these same rates proportion- 

 ally South, Southwest, and West, except on the Pacific 

 Coast. Though the ICC order, in effect August 1, 1945, 

 was as thick as a big city telephone book, it is admittedly 

 but a start. It only affected "class rates" covering groups 

 of goods, almost all manufactured wares, the boxed and 

 packaged items of relatively high value. It did not 

 change "commodity rates" on the heavy bulk stuff such 

 as coal, ore, lumber, steel, grain, gravel, and cement. 

 Revision for the heavy commodities will come. The 

 practical problem is as complicated and intertwined as 

 a tropical jungle, and it will take time to clear away the 

 thickets of interrelated details. 



The class-rate order was but the beginning of a thor- 

 oughgoing revision of the national freight-rate structure. 

 This has been on the conference table of the ICC since 

 the late thirties. Direct action was jogged by the de- 

 cision of the Supreme Court to hear the case of the State 

 of Georgia claiming freight-rate discrimination against 

 the South, but the ICC has been thrashing out this 



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