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The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The question is on the amendment of the Senator from Iowa [Mr. WILSON].

Mr. CULLOM. I hope the amendment will be voted down.

Mr. CALL. The fourth section of this bill as it stands authorizes a railroad for any distance within 500 miles of New York to charge as much as it does from Chicago to New York. It authorizes it at any intermediate point, for any distance whatever, to charge the entire rate, whether it be 1 mile or 100 miles from the city of Chicago or the city of New York, or from any other terminal point, no matter how short the distance. The entire charge for the whole distance between the terminal points is authorized to be made.

Mr. CAMDEN. Allow me to say a word in explanation.

This bill

is not limited to extreme terminal points; and therefore a company can not charge more to one point in the line than to the next point. So this regulates itself by various points. The companies can not go back. In other words, when you go to a point within 10 miles of New York they can not charge more for that 10 miles than they charge for any other 10 miles, nor to the next point 20 miles, and so on.

Mr. CALL. We have struck out the words "from the same original point of departure."

Mr. CAMDEN. Which leaves it that they shall not charge more for a shorter than for a longer distance over the same line in the same direction.

Mr. CALL. That is an improvement; but the amendment proposed by the Senator from Iowa effectually declares that to be the purpose of the bill.

Mr. INGALLS. Mr. President, the amendment proposed by the Senator from Iowa shows that we are attempting to solve a problem here with whose elements we are unacquainted. The fourth section of this bill is like a crowbar thrust into the works of a watch, and I venture to say that as it now stands with the amendments that have been proposed there are not two Senators, whether they are friendly to the bill or opposed to it, who will give concurring opinions as to its effects if it shall become a law.

The amendments that have been adopted hitherto, one particularly at the suggestion of the Senator from West Virginia [Mr. CAMDEN], are in such absolute hostility to the interests of the West, of those whose location compels them to depend upon long hauls, that should the bill in that form become a law-which I should very much deplore-there never would be a bushel of grain from Iowa, Kansas, or Nebraska, there never would be a pound of beef or pork from those States go east of the Ohio River; and the Senator who lives in a region of country that will be benefited by that discrimination knows that will be the effect of it, and that is the reason why it was offered. The Senator from West Virginia lives upon the line of a railroad that is directly interested in the short-haul business. Those who have acted with him have voted for that interest. It is a direct attack upon the welfare of the West, upon the producing interests of this country.

Mr. CAMDEN. Does the Senator say I am interested in a railroad? Mr. INGALLS. I say that the Senator from West Virginia lives upon the line of a railroad that is directly interested in the short haul. Mr. CAMDEN. To what road do you allude, the Baltimore and

Ohio?

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Mr. CAMDEN. I live on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. not interested in any trunk-line road of this country.

Mr. INGALLS.
Mr. CAMDEN.

If there is a line of road in this country

I am

I want to say further that I never have had a particle of interest in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company.

Mr. INGALLS. If there is a line of road in this country that is directly interested in the amendment that the Senator from West Virginia promoted, it is the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

Mr. CAMDEN. I understand the Baltimore and Ohio's interests, if there is any railroad whose interests are opposed to this, would be so opposed. I understand the Pennsylvania road is not so opposed, and that the New York Central road is not. If there is any trunk-line road in this country that is opposed to this amendment, it is the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad; but I have no knowledge of what the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad desires or how it feels on this subject.

Mr. ALLISON. Do I understand the Senator from West Virginia to say that the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central Railroad are in favor of this proposition?

Mr. CAMDEN. I understand that the Pennsylvania Railroad is at this time operating under this amendment, and it is approved. I understand that the commission of the State of New York have adopted that rule in regard to the New York railroads, and they are now governed by it.

Mr. ALLISON. These railroads then that operate the Eastern lines desire this arrangement?

Mr. CAMDEN. I do not know whether they desire it or not, but I understand they are operating under this provision now,

Mr. PLATT. I know it is said that the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central Railroad are of late observing this rule. I think there are a great many exceptions to it if they are observing it.

Mr. INGALLS. Mr. President, I speak in no spirit of hostility to the Baltimore and Ohio, the Pennsylvania, and the New York Central Railroads; but if they can obtain local rates, if they can obtain shorthaul rates on the merchandise that they are bringing from the interior of this continent it will be greatly to their advantage, and the direct, specific effect of this amendment that has been adopted to this section, on the motion of the Senator from West Virginia, is to compel the producers of the West, the men who raise the corn and the wheat, the beef, the pork, and the wool that are transported over these lines, to pay local rates and short-haul rates on every pound of their products that is brought to the seaboard.

The Senator from West Virginia is too astute not to know that. The Senator from West Virginia had an object and a purpose in his amendment. He is not ignorant of the effect of it, and his design was to compel those men who raise the corn and the wheat and the produce of the West to pay local rates and short-haul rates on their products, and those who voted with him and those who supported him and those who sustained him, whether they knew it or not, voted to render it practically impossible for the produce of the West to be brought to the Atlantic seaboard.

The Senator from Iowa saw this difficulty, and he proposes, by an amendment that everybody can see is impossible to be effectuated, to prevent them from charging as much even for a short haul as for a long haul, the bill having declared that more should not be charged for a short haul than for a long haul; but it is apparent from an inspection

of the terms of this section that there we amend it the deeper we get into the mire.

Sir, the people that I represent occupy the focal position on this continent; the center of the territory of the United States is within the limits of the State of Kansas; it is midway between the Atlantic and the Pacific and equidistant between Manitoba and the Gulf. We bring our commodities from the seaboard, from the east and from the west; we export our produce to the seaboard on the east and on the west. From the east come our groceries, our dry goods, our hardward, our agricultural implements, for we are not a manufacturing State; from California come fruit and tea and the products of the Orient; from Florida come the oranges and the fruits of the tropics, and all our produce that is not consumed at home is sent to the seaboard in some direction to a market. And, sir, under this section as amended by the Senator from West Virginia, if its terms are not modified by the exception that has been inserted, the commerce of that region will be absolutely annihilated. There is scarcely a possibility for subsistence now for the farmer who raises wheat upon the uplands of Kansas. So great is the cost of transportation, even under present favorable conditions, that there are scarcely wages to the man who grows grain in the valleys of the Arkansas, the Solomon, and the Republican. Corn can not be exported at a profit. We are compelled to feed it to cattle and to swine, and you now propose to put an additional burden upon those pioneers and say that they shall not be permitted to obtain profitable remuneration for any of their labor. Why, Mr. President, the Senator from West Virginia declared his purpose very plainly in his speech yesterday, which I have read for the first time this morning having been detained from the Senate yesterday by illness.

Mr. President, there has been a great deal said against the effect this amendment would have on the shippers of the far West. It is not my desire, it is not the desire of any Senator who advocates this amendment, to impose any restrictions or burdens upon the shippers of the far West.

He does not desire it, but he is indifferent whether that is the result of it or not.

And when you look at it it is remarkable in my mind that the advocates of the producers of the far West should in this Senate contend that because of their distance from the market they must have lower rates, in order to compete, than the nearer shippers living between the Mississippi and the seaboard.

Why should they not have lower rates? Unless they do have lower rates, of course they can not compete with the shippers living near the seaboard.

What reason is there in that? Is there any reason for changing by law the geographical conditions of this country? This bill simply does that. It changes the geography of the States in order to make the far shipper nearer to the market than the near shipper, and that the far shipper shall be charged less for taking his products to the market than the near shipper. That is the English of it; that is just what it means.

And that is just what I mean. That is what railroads were intended for. They were meant to equalize the inequalities resulting from distance. What else were they builded for? Every Senator knows that if there were no railroads a bushel of wheat could not be hauled 100 miles to a market by wagon.

Mr. CAMDEN. Will the Senator allow me to ask him a question?

Mr. INGALLS.

Mr. CAMDEN.

Yes, sir.

Is there any reason why a bushel of grain in West Virginia, Ohio, or Kentucky should be charged a greater amount for transportation to a market than a bushel of grain in Kansas?

Mr. INGALLS. A bushel of corn raised in Kansas or Kentucky or Illinois is worth, we will suppose, a dollar in New York city. It is worth a dollar to the man who mises it, less the price of getting it to market. Because one man lives a thousand miles away from market and another man lives 10 miles away from market. why should the remote producer be compelled to have the entire value of his production consumed in getting it to market?

Mr. CAMDEN. He does not.

Mr. INGALLS. The bill absolutely provides for that in effect. That is the result of it. Under the amendment offered by the Senator from West Virginia the result of it is that the railroad company, being unable to make terms that shall equalize the distance-rate, will be compelled to put up long hauls to local rates or short-haul rates, whereby the entire value of the product would be consumed in getting it to market. That is to the advantage of the East. Every man who lives on the eastern slope of the Alleghanies is interested in having the amendment of the Senator from West Virginia carried into effect. It gives additional value to every bushel of grain they raise; additional value to every article that they produce for consumption, and compels those who live in the West to pay additional cost for every pound of coal, for every article that is manufactured that we are obliged to ship back in payment for our products and to consume because we do not ourselves produce them. That is the effect of it, and I believe that is the purpose of it. It certainly can make no difference to the Senator from West Virginia whether the farmer gets a dollar a bushel for his grain in New York less 10 cents a bushel for hauling, or less 50 cents a bushel for hauling it. What odds does it make to him? And yet he rises here and without any reason, without any justice arising from the relations of himself or his constituents to this subject, insists that those who live in the interior of this continent shall bear vastly increased burdens upon everything they produce and everything they consume. Mr. SAULSBURY. Will the Senator allow me? Mr. INGALLS. Certainly.

Mr. SAULSBURY. If I understand the amendment it has no such effect. The amendment of the Senator from West Virginia is that railroad companies shall not indemnify themselves for special favors granted to people living at a distance by adding burdens to those who are nearer the seacoast. That is all it is, to prevent an injustice arising from partiality which may be shown to the constituents of the Senator from Kansas. It is not for the purpose of putting any burdens upon them, but to prevent the cost of the favors being shown to his people being superadded to the burdens under which the people of the East labor. Mr. INGALLS. I suppose the Senator from West Virginia knows better what he means than the Senator from Delaware does. Under ordinary circumstances I should be willing to take the glossary, the polyglot edition that is offered by the Senator from Delaware to the remarks made by the Senator from West Virginia. But what does he say himself?

What reason is there in that?

Says the Senator from West Virginia.

Is there any reason for changing by law the geographical conditions of this country? This bill simply does that. It changes the geography of the States in order to make the far shipper nearer to the market than the near shipper, and that the far shipper shall be charged less for taking his products to the market than the near shipper.

That is what the Senator from West Virginia intended to reverse. He meant by his amendment that the far shipper should pay more than the near shipper. He meant that the farmers of Illinois and Kansas and Iowa and Nebraska should pay vastly more for getting their bushel of grain to the market than the producer in West Virginia should pay. That is what he meant. What odds does it make to him or the inhabitants of West Virginia whether the farmer of Kansas pays 10 cents a bushel on his grain or 50 cents a bushel? Why is he putting his oar in this controversy? He gets all he wants to eat and all he wants to wear and his people get it without any added burdens, and yet he comes here, I will not say as the agent but as the instrument of these grasping and overreaching monopolies, to compel these vast additional burdens to be imposed upon the people of the far West, in which he has no concern whatever.

This is in the interest of corporations and against the interests of the people. It is offered because it is in the interest of corporations, because everybody can understand that if this business is left to the operation of natural laws this equalization that the Senator is opposed to will inevitably occur by competition and by the extension of this vast system of railway transportation; and that the Senator wants to forbid. No matter how many railroads are extended into that region contending for this traffic, no matter how much the means of transportation are cheapened, the Senator from West Virginia rises in his place and, speaking in the interest of those who are concerned in short hauls, says: "I propose to impose upon the people west of the Alleghanies burdens that they might escape under the operation of natural laws, under the operation of the principle of competition, under the operation of the law of equalization for which railroads were constructed, and that they shall be compelled to bear those burdens in a greater and constantly increasing ratio the greater their production becomes and the more enlarged their facilities for transportation.”

Mr. President, the fourth section of this bill is an interpolation that ought never to have been permitted, and I regret that the Senator from Illinois, who, seeing the difficulties that environed the question, did not introduce it in the last bill that he submitted, saw fit to present it here. I grant that he has made it as innocuous as possible by inserting a proviso which seems to me to be inconsistent and to show the entire absurdity, the inconsistency of this whole provision by declaring this arrangement described in the first paragraph to be unlawful-which I suppose has a distinct meaning, a technical and well-defined meaning-declaring it to be something that is wrong in itself, then gravely proceeds in a proviso to say that it may be done, that this board of commissioners that is to be created for the purpose of regulating interstate commerce may permit this unlawful thing to be done:

Provided, however, That upon application to the commission appointed under the provisions of this act, such common carrier may, in special cases, be authorized to charge less for longer than for shorter distances for the transportation of passengers or property.

It

Mr. President, if this arrangement made by shippers and transportation companies is unlawful, then it is never right to have it done. is either right or it is wrong. If it is right, it ought not to be declared to be unlawful. If it is unlawful, then the commission never ought to have authority to permit it to be done; and by the very fact that the Senator from Illinois has seen fit to incorporate an inconsistent and in

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