"Although as far as foreign commerce is concerned, as far as business is concerned, when we get to the seaside, we have to hand it over to the ships. It must be done. But the great business is done in the railroad yards. I would not be without the harbor—far from it, but don't feel that the harbor is going to make you, and don't feel as a gentleman in public life in Washington, when a friend of mine talking with him said, 'You won't get any more railways built along the policies you advocate.' 'Oh, well,' he said, 'we have got them, we have got them.' And he was a member of the house committee of interstate commerce, a rather dangerous statement for him to make."
AT TACOMA.
In his address at the banquet of the Tacoma Chamber of Commerce on the preceding evening (November 9), Mr. Hill dwelt especially on the intimate relation of railway and agriculture interests. Among other things he said:
"The question of terminals means a great deal to a railroad and it is getting to be more and more full of meaning every year. Some cities, and large cities, today have all the railroads they will ever get, simply on account of the difficulty in getting terminals. I think the Northern Pacific terminals today—I think to buy them on the entire system—would cost more money than to grade the whole road, and I do not know but what it would cost more than to grade and put the rails down. That is a condition and, remember, that you pay the freight.
WILL SOON NEED ALL THE WHEAT WE RAISE.
"Within a comparatively short time, I will say that within six years, I will go on record, you won't send many cargoes of wheat from Tacoma by sea, simply because the United States wants every bushel that will be raised within the United States to feed her own people, and will pay you more money for it. If they didn't pay you more money for it, it would go to the foreigner, but our own people will pay more money for it and take it somewhere and grind it into flour. If you look for greater avenues or greater economy in transportation, but it will cease to go out as wheat. I will give you an illustration and you can draw your own conclusions as well as I can: In 1882 the United Slates raised 504,000,000 bushels of wheat and we had 52,000,000 people and we exported somewhere between 175,000,000 and 200,000,000 bushels. Twenty-five years later, in 1907, we raised 634,000,000 bushels. We increased in that twenty-five years a little less than 25 per cent. in our wheat yield, or 130,000,000 bushels.
"Our population increased 64 per cent., and converging lines meet somewhere. Now, if we had 90,000,000 of people—and we have between 88,000,000 and 90,000,000 this year—and use six and a half bushels per capita, it would take 585,000,000 bushels for bread and seed. Professor Rogers, of the Minnesota Agricultural College, puts our consumption for bread and seed for the last few years at a trifle over or a trifle under seven bushels. I think he uses ten years for his average, and I use twenty-five to get an average of about six bushels and forty pounds, and I call it six and one-half bushels.
"On last year's crop, with 634,000,000, we have had about 59,000,000 bushels to sell and we sold about 80,000,000. What is the result? After the 15th of January wheat was higher in Minneapolis than it was in Chicago, even up to the first of August, and part of the time it was higher than it was in New York, because they wanted it to make a loaf of bread to feed our people at home.
"We have not the great margin that we used to have. The seed on last year's crop went down to 59,000,000 bushels and, if my figures are equal to Professor Rogers'—and he is a professor of agriculture in the Agricultural College and maybe he has more time to look these questions up more carefully—but with his figures we hadn't a bushel to sell. Suppose we had 60,000,000 bushels to sell, and we are increasing in population at the rate of 2,000,000 per year, our natural figure is between 1,300,000 and 1,400,000, and allow 700,000 for immigration, not eleven, twelve, thirteen or fourteen as we have been having, but say seven and by 1950 you will have in the United States, it figures out to be accurate, 208,000,000, but suppose we have 200,000,000, it might come by 1945, or 1947, or it might be in 1955, but about that time we will have 200,000,000 people, and if they use six and a half bushels per capita for bread and seed, it would take 1,300,000,000 bushels to feed them.