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FREIGHT RATES. 



WHEREAS, It is unfair to expect farmers to continue to pay the 

 present excessive freight rates with farm products at pre-war levels; 

 therefore, be it 



Resolved, That we demand that railroad freight rates be reduced 

 at once to a level corresponding to the price of farm products. 



LIVE STOCK MARKETING. 



Resolved, That we heartily endorse the plan of live stock marketing 

 recommended by the Committee of Fifteen, including the encouragement 

 of local live stock shipping associations, the establishment of farmer- 

 owned cooperative live stock commission companies, and such method of 

 stabilizing market receipts and prices as may be found practical. 



COMMUNITY HIGH SCHOOLS. 



Mr. ABBOTT: The Community High School Law, as you know, is a 

 law that permits cities and towns to vote a country rural district into a 

 high school district. It has been in operation for some two or three years, 

 and I want to briefly show some of you people who have not had any experi- 

 ence with it and are not familiar with it, the way the law works in some 

 instances. 



This is not the Township High School Law; this is the Community 

 Hieh School Law. I will give you just a few instances of some real things 

 that happened in the county in which I live, in Whiteside County. Here is a 

 little town in the center of the township; they thought they would form a 

 community high school and take in that township. They ape quite a ways 

 from the railroad, and it was really a pretty good thing with them. Over 

 here in another county was a town of considerable size and they thought 

 they would operate under this law. They heard these people were going to 

 have a community high school, and they said the folks back there dated their 

 petition one day back so they could have an election one day before these 

 other people could. What did they do? They came down here within eighty 

 rods of that town and they put it into this high school district up here 

 eight miles away. These people had the election the next day and they 

 got this little territory right here, and these folks had to go eight miles up 

 to that other town in another county. That is the way it worked there. 



Q. Mr. Speaker, that was because the other township had a large city 

 in it? 



Mr. ABBOTT: Yes, sir. They had the larger city and they had the 

 election first, anyway. 



Q. The district outside of it did not have votes enough. 



Mr. ABBOTT: No, the people could not outvote that proposition. It 

 killed that little school practically. Here is Rock River (illustrating on 

 blackboard), here is Sterling, here is Rock Falls. They are in the same 

 congressional district. Sterling has a good high school, but Sterling and 

 Rock Falls do not get along very well together, so Rock Falls sent a man 

 down to the legislature and he got a bill through the legislature which says 

 that where a township is separated by a river the township high school 

 law does not apply. These people did not want to send their children across 

 there to school, a half mile, to one of the best high schools in the State, so 

 they came down here, fourteen miles away, and took these people here up 

 into their school. They had another school here within two miles of them. 

 That was this community high school law. 



Here is another case. Here was the little town of Erie (illustrating on 

 blackboard), here is the county line, here is Hillsdale. Now, both of those 

 folks thought they would have the community high school. Erie says: 

 "We are going to take Hillsdale into our school." Hillsdale got busy and 

 they had the election next day, the day before the Erie folks did. They 

 came up within a mile of Erie and took all of this into their school district. 

 Then Erie had to do something, you know, and they looked away over here 



