BxjREATT OF Ageicxtltueb. 267 



of the cost of the production of all steel products is the 

 cost of transportation." And one of the secrets of 

 Schwab's phenomenal success was that he never calcu- 

 lated the cost of anything made of steel from a needle to 

 a, thousand tons of armor plate, that he did not calculate 

 the cost of laying it down F. 0. B., to the consignee. The 

 farmer does not calculate. He calculates the cost of pro- 

 duction in a rough way by taking cost of land, taxes, 

 labor and tools ; when he has calculated what it cost biTn 

 to get in fifty bushels of wheat on his wagon, or a thou- 

 sand bushels of com in his bin, completes his calcula- 

 tion. But he has not estimated the cost of that article in 

 its entirety, for no man comes to the bin for his com, 

 or to the thresher for his grain. Until he has calculated 

 the cost of transportation he has not made an accurate 

 estimate of the real cost of production. What is the ac- 

 tual value of the free public highway? Let us see — four 

 good horses and a wagon, for example — the four horses 

 at $150 apiece, $600, and the cost of shoeing, harness, is 

 to be considered, the whole will cost not less than $1,000; 

 adding in the cost of maintaining these four horses, say 

 at $8 a month, is $500 a year, and you have that to add to 

 the original cost. In six years your $1,000 in horses 

 and wagon is gone, as they will be worn out. The main- 

 tenance will cost you not less than $600 a year — $2 per 

 day. We may say that the same teams will do double 

 the work over a macadam road than they will do over a 

 dirt road. So that the farmer in the item of four-horse 

 team, wagon and driver has saved at least $1 per day by 

 the use of macadam roads. When the farmers have cal- 

 culated the saving in the one item of transportation, the 

 taking of their products to market, leaving out the pleas- 

 ure of traveling over macadam roads to himself and his 

 family, leaving out the advantages to the children in at- 

 tending school and his family in attending church, leav- 

 ing out the features of being closer to market or to mill, 

 on the plain basis of dollars and cents, there is no better 

 investment to the producer than in the making of a cheap 

 and convenient means of bringing the farmers' com- 

 modities to the market. 



But let us take a broader and a higher view. Every 

 man who cast his ballot in the hope of receiving some 



