From Cannon Falls the rate to Chicago is 15 cents a hundred on grain. The rate from Cannon Falls to Minneapolis is 7 cents, and from Minneapolis to Chicago 7½ cents. So it costs ½ cent a hundred more to ship from Cannon Falls direct to Chicago than to ship to Minneapolis and from there back through Cannon Falls to Chicago. And if he wants to send his grain to Louisville, Ky., it will cost him 5 cents a hundred more to ship from Cannon Falls to Louisville, than if he sends his grain to Minneapolis and bills it from there to Louisville.[[312]]
Denver still suffers from the sort of discrimination described in the preceding section.[[313]] The rate in cotton goods from New England to Denver is $2.24 per hundred. From New England to San Francisco, 1500 miles further on, the rate is $1 a hundred in carload lots. On a shipment in relation to which a Denver merchant made complaint, the Burlington road received $25.95 from Chicago to Denver, whereas if the same shipment had been intended for Frisco the Burlington would have received only $4.50.
Salt Lake City also is wrestling with adverse freight rates. On cotton goods the rate from New York to Frisco is $1, while on the shorter haul from New York to Salt Lake it is just double, $2 per hundred.[[314]] The rate on window-shade cloth from New York to Salt Lake City is $2.30. Carrying it 800 miles further, New York to California, the railroads charge only $1, and this affords a slight profit. Is it not clear that the $2.30 is excessive?[[315]] “The men who build a city in the interior cannot expect to get as reasonable a rate as the men who build their city on the shore of the sea, but the difference should be a reasonable one.”
It would seem that the men who build in the interior might expect that they would not be called on to pay railway fixed charges on coast traffic as well as on their own. It is unfair to give the coast people the celerity of railway traffic at the cost of water traffic. The railroad theory that every pound of freight is to be secured that will pay the cost of hauling or a little more, though a water route or a shorter rail line might carry the freight at less absolute cost, is not in accord with sound public policy or the saving of industrial power. It is an economic absurdity to haul by rail what can go more cheaply and as safely by water. A co-operative company or a consolidated company of any honest and sensible variety, owning both the railroads and the steamboat lines, would divide the traffic in such a way as to secure the maximum economy and convenience, and would make a reasonable payment for the extra speed and other advantages of railway transit the main condition of selecting that method of transportation, with an option in the company under specified conditions to facilitate the full loading of trains and boats through the adjustment of rates.
The case of Spokane is a specially aggravated one. The rate on bar iron from Chicago to Spokane is $2.07 a hundred against $1.25 to Seattle; iron pipe $1 to Spokane, 50 cents to Seattle; lamps $2.35 to Spokane, $1.10 to Seattle; belting $3.13 to Spokane, and $1.65 to Seattle; mining-car wheels $1.26 to Spokane and 85 cents to Seattle; cottons $1.75 to Spokane, 90 cents to the coast; soap (toilet) $1.23 to Spokane, 75 cents to coast cities; wire and wire goods $2.35 to Spokane, $1.50 to the coast; sewing machines $2.25 to Spokane, $1.40 to coast; typewriters $5.96 to Spokane, $3 to the cities of the coast.
In general the rates from the East to Spokane are the through rates to the coast plus the local rates from the coast back to Spokane.[[316]]
The preference which Tacoma, Seattle, etc., have over Spokane is about 80 percent. Spokane pays about $1.80 on shipments from Chicago, while Tacoma and Seattle pay $1.[[317]] Spokane is a great railroad junction, but competition has been suppressed by agreement between the lines, while competition is still active at Tacoma and Seattle, so that under the decision of the Supreme Court the railroads are free to discriminate against Spokane. Aside from water competition the railroads want to build up Seattle. They have invested a great deal of money in docks and facilities for doing business there. The manufacture of wooden pipe was flourishing in Spokane. The company was shipping 2 carloads daily and its pay roll was $3,000 a month. A rival factory in Seattle, backed by the big lumber firms of the coast, got the railways to make rates that enabled it to lay down the manufactured pipe in Spokane about 60 percent cheaper than the Spokane factory could make it. The situation came to light November, 1903, two months after the rates went into effect, when the Spokane factory came into competition with the Seattle factory for a contract at Butte. The bid of the Seattle firm was less than the pipe could be sold for at Spokane by the factory in that city, and Butte is 384 miles east of Spokane. The rates shut off the Spokane factory from the East entirely. In about 8 months that flourishing manufacture in Spokane was wiped out.[[318]] There was no water competition here to make an excuse for discrimination, for the cut was made from Seattle east to Spokane and points still further east.
The paper-box manufacture was forced out of existence in Spokane by similar discriminations. Eastern factories can lay down the boxes in Spokane cheaper than the local factories can get the strawboard. So with other trades. The manufacture of sash would be rapidly developed if it were not for the grievous discrimination on window glass, $1.38 from Pittsburg to Spokane, against 90 cents to Portland, Seattle, etc.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
OTHER PLACE DISCRIMINATIONS.
There are multitudes of other place discriminations besides those related to the long and short haul question. The Business Men’s League of St. Louis and the St. Louis Merchants Exchange complain of serious discrimination against their city as compared with Chicago, Kansas City, Omaha, etc., in rates on corn, wheat, oats, groceries, hardware, and cotton.[[319]] Des Moines gets supplies from Chicago at 60 cents, while Fort Dodge, the same distance from Chicago, pays 72 cents.[[320]] Shoe manufacturers and wholesale grocers of Atlanta who have had to close down declare they were ruined by discriminative freight rates. Two years ago a prohibitive rate was put on cotton bound for Atlanta, but the freight agents of the leading railroads entering the city were indicted by the Federal grand jury and the rate was withdrawn. Mobile complains of loss of business because of discriminations in favor of New Orleans on one side and Pensacola on the other. The Fort Wayne Commercial Club complains of discrimination in rates, demurrage, switching, supply of cars, etc. The lumber rate to Boston from points in West Virginia on the Norfolk and Western is 29½ cents, while points on the B. & O. and Chesapeake and Ohio in the same State and the same distance from Boston have a rate of 23½ cents.[[321]] The Pennsylvania Railroad taking lumber to points on the Long Branch Railroad made the rates by adding to the New York rate an arbitrary charge of 5 cents a hundred lbs. if the lumber came from Saginaw, Mich., but only 2 cents if the shipping point was Buffalo; held an unlawful discrimination.[[322]]