200 Wisconsin state agricultural soceity. 
ceeds three fold the amount paid to the producer. The people of 
this state in common with the people of the w'hole Union have 
now a grave responsibility forced upon them. While I concede 
the necessity of railroads, and I believe our prosperity is most 
intimately interwoven with that of the railroad system, yet I be¬ 
lieve they should be controlled by the state. They collected 
from the people last year in this country, $455,000,000. This 
large sum came largely from the producing classes. 
Let us be united in a common brotherhood, and stand together 
until these gigantic corporations who have been grinding us as 
between the upper and the nether millstone, shall be compelled to 
serve the whole people honestly, and acknowledge that the farm¬ 
ers have some rights which they are bound to respect. 
Mr. Carswell desired to know whether Mr. Anderson was in favor 
of more currency and lower rates of interest, and also whether he 
favored abolishing all laws upon the subject of tariff and support¬ 
ing the government by direct taxation. 
Mr. Anderson said that he was in favor of the first proposition, 
but did not favor the abolition of tariff, nor did he favor direct 
taxation. 
Mr. Robbins, of Grant, stated that the views of the writer were 
not in harmony with his experience in railroad transportation, and 
that the average cost per ton per mile, was much below the fig¬ 
ures given, and did not exceed one cent. 
President Stilson advocated the improvement of the Fox and 
Wisconsin rivers and other water routes, as water transportation 
would ever be a competitor of railway lines, and that it had been 
pretty fully demonstrated that water communication was much 
the cheapest. With great national highways of water com¬ 
munication open during the season of navigation, he said that 
freights would be kept down and vast sums saved to the pro¬ 
ducers of the state and to the whole northwest. Said he should 
be glad to give certain facts and figures relative to the improve¬ 
ment of the above named river, but did not have them at his 
command ; believed in the work being pushed vigorously forward, 
as it was, in his judgment, one of those great enterprises which 
