ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



67 



try, during a period of twenty years last past, have saved to the people, in 

 the single item of freight reductions, a sum larger than the total of our na- 

 tional debt. This is a strong statement, but easily proven by reference to 

 the annual reports of the various railway companies. The Rock Island road 

 alone has thus saved to its patrons within the past fifteen years more than 

 eighty-six millions of dollars. Add to this the showing of other companies, 

 and you have the enormous sum first mentioned. I had the good fortune 

 sometime last winter to notice a series of very able articles on this subject 

 in the Chicago Times, in which the figures were given and above results 

 shown. It has not been convenient to lay my hand again upon these figures, 

 but they are accessible to those caring enough to consult a file of that paper. 

 The Pennsylvania railroad, with which I am in a humble way connected, 

 and which has the largest tonnage of any road in the country, affords a 

 further illustration of the reductions mentioned. I am in receipt of the 

 following figures from our Auditor's ofiice in Philadelphia, showing the 

 average earnings per ton per mile for the years mentioned : 



1862, 2.038 cents per ton per mile. 



1872, 1.416 '' 



1882, 0.817 " 

 Or a general decrease in twenty years of 60 per cent. 



The difference per cwt. between the rates in 1863 and 1883, from Chicago 

 to New York, by same road on articles enumerated, is as follows : 





GRAIN. 



FLOUR. 



PROVISIONS. 



BUTTER & 

 EGGS. 



CHEESE. 



1863 



$1.00 

 .25 



11.00 

 .25 



$1.00 

 .30 



$1.55 

 .70 



$1.55 

 .60 



1883 







Decrease... 



.75 



.75 



.70 



.85 



.95 



The above representing a general decrease of 66 per cent. Now, the 

 money represented by these reductions has been just as much earned by 

 leaving it in the pockets of the producer as if it had been taken out and re- 

 turned. We have earned this by saving it, and the country is richer to this ex- 

 tent. Add to this already enormous sum the enhancement in value of private 

 and public lands brought about by the railroads which penetrate and develop 

 them, and you have a result too large for computation or conception, and 

 these are but a portion of the benefits derived through an agency everywhere 

 contemned and complained against. The showing I have made is but a re- 

 cital of plain facts of our history. They are parts of the nation's experience. 

 But experience is also prophecy, and who shall say that an agency so benefi- 

 cent in the immediate past must be abandoned or hindered in the future. 



I have spoken to you of this marvelous and now indispensable agency 

 only from the standpoint of the utilitarian, and only of its effect and influ- 

 ence upon the material prosperity of the country, for I have not felt called 

 upon nor, indeed, at liberty under the implied limitations of my text, to say 

 anything from a broader standpoint and better view. Of its utility as a 

 means of defense in time of war, of its civilizing power in the distribution 

 of knowledge, of its elevating and refining effect upon society through the 

 familiar intercourse and interchange accomplished by it, I have said nothing; 

 but, supplying as it does to the bodies and souls of men from day to day 



