324 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[August, 
Relation of Railroads to Agriculture, etc. 
BT MR. EDWARD ATKINSON, 
I infer from your request that I should sub¬ 
mit some further considerations on the rela¬ 
tions of “The Railroad and the Farmer,” in 
continuance of the subject, as treated by me 
in No. 1 of the “Journal of the American 
Agricultural Association,” that it is your de¬ 
sire to submit both aspects of the great 
question to your readers. 
Nothing could suit me better, my interest in 
the matter is purely that of a student, my prac¬ 
tical work being in an entirely different field, 
and I never value my own essays until some 
one finds enough in them to induce discussion 
and show the weak places in the argument. 
It is of the utmost importance to the country, 
and to every citizen, that the questions pend¬ 
ing in respect to the conduct of the railroad 
service of the United States should be rightly 
settled. If the advocates of State or National 
regulation of the rates of traffic are right, it 
is essential that that conviction should be¬ 
come general; if they are, on the contraiy, 
entirely wrong, and if every measure which 
they attempt is more likely to promote harm 
to the farmer than benefit, then that should 
become the general conviction, and the agita¬ 
tion of the question ought to cease. 
There ax - e two points of view to be taken 
in this connection. One, that of the farmer 
who thinks he has been aggrieved because 
the charge per mile for carrying his product 
over a short distance to its market, is greater 
than that to which his competitor, one or two 
thousand miles away, is subjected in the 
same work. The natural question which 
presents itself to his mind is, ‘ ‘ Why should I 
not be entitled to a pro rata charge, i. e. 
an equal charge per mile ? ” 
On the other hand, the railroad manager, 
who is endeavoring to the best of his ability to 
serve all his customers at the lowest possible 
rate consistent with his maintaining his posi¬ 
tion in competition with all the rivers and 
canals of the country, and in many cases with 
competing lines of railroad, is now asking him¬ 
self, “how can I possibly serve this farmer 
who is near the market which he wishes to 
reach without cutting off my income from 
the distant farmer whose traffic I can afford 
to take at a much less rate per mile?” 
The point which separates these two men, 
and prevents their coming to an adjustment 
to which both can agree, is substantially this 
—that the profit upon railroad service consists 
in a very small fraction of money per ton of 
merchandise handled and hauled. In the 
article upon the relation of the Railroad and 
the Farmer, one of the tables computed by 
Mr. J. R. Blanchard, of the Erie Railroad, 
shows that the entire profit of the railroad 
service of the State of New York, in the year 
1879, consisted of twenty-three hundredths 
of a cent—less than- a quarter of a cent—per 
ton of merchandise hauled one mile. This 
is a very small margin within which to work ; 
and a very slight variation may make profit 
or loss upon the undertaking. 
There has been a great deal of anxious con¬ 
sideration given to this subject by the man¬ 
agers of railroads ; and among other points 
that have been proved, it has appeared that 
on certain classes of freight hauled long dis¬ 
tances, the cost of loading, handling, and 
other terminal expenses amounted to only 
one-eighth or twelve one-hundredths of a cent 
per ton per mile of the distance over which 
the merchandise was carried. This example, 
of course, applied to large quantities of freight 
hauled long distances; while, on the other 
hand, another example upon the same line of 
railroad proved that the actual expense of 
loading, handling, and other terminal ex¬ 
penses, amounted to ten and four-tenths cents 
per ton per mile; and this, of course, was 
upon small quantities, loaded at a way sta¬ 
tion, and hauled but a short distance. 
The farmer who complains of his rate, and 
who asks a pro rata charge, therefore, de¬ 
mands to be protected at the cost of the rail¬ 
road against the disadvantages of his posi¬ 
tion. His complaint really lies against the 
nature of things, not against the railroad 
management. If the railroad managers un¬ 
dertake to work for him at the rate which 
he demands, they would become bankrupt 
within a year, and he would have no railroad, 
or a bankrupt one, which is about as bad. 
Then he could not move his crop at all with 
advantage. The value of his farm and his 
produce would both go back to what it was 
before the railroad was built. 
On the other hand, the farmer alleges that 
it may be in the power of railroad managers 
to so arrange their schedule of charges as to 
make the short haul pay more than its rela¬ 
tive expense, and thus make up for the loss 
that they may have incurred in doing the 
long distance business at less than cost; 
occasionally in the railroad wars such a state 
of things may have existed for a very short 
time. Few men, however, appear to be more 
conversant with the real need of their cus¬ 
tomers than the sagacious managers of the 
railroad service of the United States; and 
one who, like the writer, has no interest in 
the carriage of freight, either over the long 
distance or the short, may find much interest 
in observing the care with which many of the 
schedules have been arranged ; such as those 
established in connection with large factory 
towns, for moving into those towns the food, 
the fuel, and the raw material at very low 
charges, in order to foster and promote the 
special industry of that town or city to the 
utmost; while somewhat higher charges are 
imposed upon the finished product carried 
away and distributed to distant places. If 
we regard the railway charge as a necessary 
charge upon industry, and one that cannot be 
entirely avoided, this plan certainly consti¬ 
tutes the most sagacious method for promot¬ 
ing and developing the branches of industry 
which are most served by the railroads. 
In point of fact, these questions are the 
constant study of the ablest men in the coun¬ 
try, whose interests are identical with, and 
not antagonistic to, those of their customers ; 
who are compelled to study every part of 
their work, and whose profit consists in a 
very small fraction of the sum that they save 
the community in the conduct of their work. 
The main point from which this subject 
needs to be considered, is the function of the 
railroad system as a whole. When these ques¬ 
tions are considered in this larger way, with 
sol§ reference to the general business of the 
country, the facts assume an importance 
that almost bewilder the student in attempt¬ 
ing to present them. For instance, there is 
one aspect of the question that was not pre¬ 
sented in my contribution to the “ Journal of 
Agriculture,” which has since occurred to 
me, as follows :—there will probably be con¬ 
structed, in the year 1881, within the limits 
of the United States, ten thousand miles of 
new railroad. The average cost will not be 
far from twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000) 
per mile. The total expenditure will be two 
hundred and fifty million dollars ($250,000,- 
000) in one year. This statement in money 
is merely the measure of the actual substance 
in food, fuel, clothing, means of shelter, iron, 
steel, timber, and other articles which will be 
consumed during the year ; a part of them 
in enabling the workmen to do the work, and 
a part being the fixed investment which 
will depend for its profit upon its future use. 
Nearly all the substances thus consumed 
must have been produced and saved during 
• the year preceding the one in which they are 
invested in new railroads. Whence comes 
this force ? How can we spare it from other 
work without the other work suffering ? The 
answer may be found, perhaps, in the follow¬ 
ing statement:—The difference in the railroad 
charge for moving merchandise—mostly 
western farm products—over the N. Y. Cen¬ 
tral and Hudson River Railroad in the year 
1879, as compared to the rate that was 
charged from 1866-69 inclusive, by the same 
corporation, (reducing the charge of 1866 to 
1869 to gold), was a little under l 1013 / 100 ooths 
ct. per ton per mile (about one cent and one- 
sixth.) Applying this rate of reduction in 
the charge to the actual tons carried over 
that single road in that single year, and it 
amounted to twenty-six million six hundred 
and fifty thousand dollars. That is to say, 
if this corporation had charged in the year 
1879 the same rate (in gold) that it charged 
between 1866 and 1869 inclusive, it would 
have taxed the farmers, the mechanics, and 
the manufacturers $26,650,000 more than it 
actually did collect for the service. That road 
performed, in that year, one-twentieth part 
of the railroad service in the United States. 
If other roads have reduced their charge, 
in the same ratio that this corporation has, 
the difference saved for the year 1879 was 
five hundred and thirty-three million dollars 
($533,000,000). Many other roads have made 
as great a reduction, but not all of them. It 
is, however, far within bounds and under 
the mark, to assume that other roads have 
made an average reduction equal- to one half 
that made by this corporation. It therefore 
follows that the saving on the traffic of 1879, 
as compared to the period previously named, 
viz. 1866 to 1869 was two hundred and sixty- 
six millions five hundred thousand dollars 
($266,500,000); a sum far more than sufficient 
to build the 7,400 miles of new railroad that 
was constructed in the year 1880. ' 
In the year 1880 a still larger traffic passed 
over all the lines of the United States than 
in the year 1879, at as great a ratable reduc¬ 
tion in the charge. Hence it follows that a 
sufficient sum was saved in the year 1880 on 
the railroad traffic over existing lines, as 
compared to the rates charged only twelve to 
fourteen years since, to pay for the construc¬ 
tion of the ten thousand miles of railroad 
that are being built in the year 1881. 
It may therefore rightly be suggested that 
even where special grievances have occurred, 
it may be wiser to wait the sure remedy that 
time must bring, because the interest of the 
railroad managers is identical with that of 
their customers, rather than risk impairing 
a service on which the general prosperity of 
the country absolutely depends, by special 
legislation, which may in the nature of the 
case be either obstructive or inoperative. 
