There is another class of legislation to which we cannot look with equal satisfaction. Every railroad charter contains provisions for the regulation of fares and freights; and yet since the railroads were established, no single act has been passed directly for this regulation.
The question has involved so great difficulties that no legislature has yet ventured to grapple with it. The tendency of legislation in that direction is obvious. Commissioners have been appointed to consider the subject and no result has followed. A Board of Railroad Commissioners has been formed, which has been productive of great good both to the railroad corporations, and to the people.
This board has been directed to fully consider and report some plan of regulating fares and freights; and has reported that it cannot recommend any means of reducing this transportation tax, by direct legislation, but strongly advises the trial of State ownership, as the only means of attaining the desired end.
THE EFFECT IN OUR EXISTING SYSTEM.
While it may be said that under the present system of railroads, the Commonwealth has been prosperous, there are drawbacks and defects which need careful examination, and if possible a remedy. To those who are familiar with the condition of our manufactures, the most striking want is the failure of our home market for our productions.
We are tributary to New York in many ways. The great sale of our manufactured goods is made in New York, and goes to build up a rival city. Our great commission houses have been compelled to establish branches in New York, which in a short time have surpassed in business and in importance the home establishments.
If we could have kept at home the sale of our manufactured goods—have retained here in Boston the great houses through which the exchanges are made—could have brought to New England the purchasers from the West and South, it would have vastly increased the prosperity of Boston and of New England.
Business can be done cheaper in Boston than in New York; and yet New York has drawn away from us a large proportion of our legitimate business,—the sale of our manufactured goods; and this loss can be directly attributed to a defect in our railroad system, which can and should be remedied. I say defect, but, more properly, the want of a strong and independent line of railroad through to the West, controlled in the interest of Massachusetts. Why, Mr. President, if we could withdraw from New York the firms and business that represent the sale of Massachusetts goods, it would more than cover the burnt district of this city, and double the business of Boston; and New York would feel that her loss was much greater than the Boston fire. And why is it that our goods are sent to New York to be sold? Simply because New York has three great trunk routes to the West, which control the transportation of the Southern and Western productions, and the owners, who are the merchants, follow their goods, and are the customers who purchase our manufactured goods of New York houses, and ship them in return over these same trunk lines, giving them a large and profitable business; which should be and can be controlled, by proper management, in the interest and for the benefit of a through line or lines from Boston to the West.
To-day Boston is without a through and independent line to the West, and while we are shipping our goods to New York to be sold, to be transported over the great lines leading South and West, our own Western road, so called, in 1872, according to the annual report of the directors, carried through from Boston to Albany 112,071 tons of freight, and from Albany to Boston 556,202 tons—more than four times as much from the West than is carried to the West; which state of things would be reversed if the sale of our goods was made here instead of New York; but this can only be accomplished by a through line West, controlled in the interests of Massachusetts, and not in the interest of New York.
A line to the Lakes in competition,—not with the Boston and Albany Railroad, as that is dependent upon the New York Central Railroad in a great measure for its Western freights,—but an independent line, so organized as to guard against any combination, that will force by competition the New York lines to give to the Boston and Albany and the Boston, Hartford and Erie Railroads less rates, making Boston a competing point, thus securing the advantages of four competing Western lines, including the great Northern line, which must bring to our seaboard the products of the great West, and thus secure an exchange of trade that will increase the growth, and prosperity of Massachusetts, that will equal the prophecies of those who are called visionary theorists. It was by competition of the three great trunk lines running to New York—discriminating against Boston—that forced the removal of the sale of Massachusetts productions to that city; and it is estimated these sales amount to more than two hundred and fifty millions of dollars per annum at the present time; and the golden opportunity is now at hand to restore in a great measure the advantages lost by not having a strong and efficient line of railroad leading to the great West, in the interest of the State.