306 HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL. 



competing railroads, it costs as much or more to draw our produce the 

 few miles necessary to reach our general markets, viz. : Minneapolis, 

 Duluth, Chicago, or St. Louis, as it does to carry it thence a thousand 

 miles by rail through to New York, or even clear through to Liverpool ; 

 which practically amounts to the prohibition of shipments of heavy and 

 bulky articles when the price is low ; often potatoes, hay, corn, oats, wood, 

 brick, coal, cost much more for freight than the producers originally 

 received for them. Thousands of people burn hay, and other hundreds 

 of thousands burn much less fuel, and consume less of the necessaries 

 of life, on account of the additional cost resulting from excessive freight 

 charges. A coal-mine owner in Pennsylvania told the writer recently 

 that he would be glad to put coal on the car at 75 cents per ton, and 

 yet we, a thousand miles away, are compelled to pay $8 to $8.50 per ton 

 for that same coal, or do without. Coal in Iowa, 300 miles from Huron, 

 South Dakota, costs $1.40 per ton on board car. Delivered at Huron, 

 $5, i^ cents per ton per mile freight. Sworn statements by railroad 

 managers before Congressional committees put actual cost of railroad 

 freight transportation at two mills per ton per mile, which would reduce 

 the freight to 60 cents per ton, and cost of coal to $2 per ton at Huron. 

 Cheap bread and meat can never become a reality to the people so long 

 as transportation companies have it in their power to " tax the traffic all 

 it can bear." 



Again, for long years the elevator companies were in combination 

 with the railroad officials, being really a wheel within a wheel, officers 

 and stockholders in the one occupying a similar position in the other, 

 and by means of discrimination in rates and favoritism in securing cars, 

 practically monopolized the shipping interest and controlled the prices. 



North Dakota elects commissioners, but they haven't been in office 

 long enough to accomplish much good, and are handicapped by an 

 ineffective law, which the railroads take good care shall not be materially 

 tampered with. 



In Dakota the poor man who cannot afford to buy a two-thousand- 

 mile ticket pays four cents a mile passenger fare, while the rich man 

 rides at two cents, and the politicians, judges, and office-holders go free. 

 The people are tired of all this, and in casting about for relief, realize 

 that it must come through Congress, in the way of a greater volume of 

 currency, divorced from the control of national banks or any individual 

 or corporation, and in the ownership and control of our lines of trans- 

 portation by the government, and run in the interest of the people at 

 cost, the same as our postal system. But when we go to Congress with 

 our petitions and demands, we are coolly informed that farmers do not 



