Part 14

The American people need to be educated regarding the principle and practice of coöperation. It should be taught in the schools, especially in the agricultural schools, as it is now in some of the agricultural schools of Europe. There should be state and national conventions for the discussion of coöperative principles and methods. There should be organizations of coöperators for the consideration of mutual problems and mutual interests. Every great library contains the history of all of the coöperative movements down to the present time, and the experience of the world is available to those who will use it.

What Americans most need is the coöperative point of view. We are accustomed to extravagance and speculation, but the time is at hand when we must practice the virtues of economy. We have been a nation of individualists, each sufficient unto himself; we must learn to unite with our fellows and consider their welfare as a part of our own.

Do we need coöperation? Consider the wide margin between the price on the farm and at the kitchen door! Consider the difference in cost between the boot at the factory and on your foot! Consider the enormous wastes and duplications of our system of distribution! Consider the fortunes that have been amassed by the concentration of profits that would have been widely diffused under coöperation!

We complain of the concentration of capital in the hands of a few; here is a system of business that will keep the profits of the people’s business in the people’s pockets where they belong.

We are concerned about the resources of Alaska lest they pass into the control of trusts and syndicates and serve to enrich a few at the expense of the many, as well we may be; but here is a wealth more vast, a tangible, visible, present wealth, many times greater than that of all the mines and forests of the Territory of Alaska, that is slipping through our fingers day by day and accumulating in the coffers of those who already have too much. The American citizen everywhere is paying a tribute from which there is but one avenue of escape—the adoption of coöperative methods of doing business.

During the reading of Mr. Beard’s paper Mr. J. B. White assumed the Chair.

Chairman WHITE—Mr. B. A. Fowler, chairman of the resolution committee, desires to make an announcement.

Mr. FOWLER—Members of the resolutions committee having been selected, the first meeting of the committee will now be held, and I invite the members selected for that committee to meet in the room back of the platform. This meeting will be for the organization of the committee, and I suggest to the chairman that if nothing has been said on that particular point, this a working committee, and you get results. Those of you who have resolutions to present should present them at the earliest possible moment. I will leave to you the lateness of the hour when they may be presented, but it would seem as if they all ought to come in to the committee some time today. I also suggest that anybody who desires to present a resolution should not send it up to the committee unsigned, and in the crudest sort of way; but that you prepare your resolution as you would like to have it presented, sign your name and send it to the committee.

President WALLACE—If I were the chairman of the committee I would not consider any resolution offered after this evening. It is unfair to the committee to throw resolutions at them at the last moment. Now, we must have a report of this committee the first thing after dinner tomorrow. Therefore, get your resolutions in.

We want the members of the committee on resolutions to go up to this room at once.

Gentlemen, we will now hear an address from Mr. Herbert Quick, of Madison, Wisconsin, editor of the Farm and Fireside of Springfield, Mass., on the subject, “The Farmer and the Railroads.”

Mr. HERBERT QUICK—Ladies and Gentlemen of the Congress: It is rather a difficult task which has been assigned to me, that of following such men as have spoken in the last two or three addresses, and that, too, at a time of day when the imperative calls of bodily sustenance begin to make themselves manifest. I cannot undertake to emulate in the matter of interest, in the matter of inspiration, any of these gentlemen who have just preceded me and addressed you. It is utterly impossible to be very interesting with reference to the subject of the railroads and the farmer unless you trench on the subject of politics, and they are barred here; therefore, ladies and gentlemen, I beg leave to be dull in my talk to you today, very dull indeed. I am, however, hopeful of giving you something to think about with reference to the very important matters of the relation between the railroad and the farmer.

The relations between the farmers and the railroads are not always amicable, but they are always close. When capital was first solicited for the building of our railways the capital that responded was in large measure that of the farmers. Enterprise came from the cities, but before it could successfully appeal to the bond market, it was obliged to show something in the way of local aid. The history of railway exploitation in the Mississippi Valley, and in the whole country at the period of most rapid development in railway building has not yet, so far as I am aware, been adequately written. When it is written, it will show an astonishing array of facts relating to the extent to which the farmers of the land really built the railways—by stock subscriptions, by votes of aid, by donations of right-of-way, and by outright gifts of cash. And a depressing phase of the story will be the tales of bonds issued and upheld by the courts, although no railway was ever built, and of the almost automatic manner in which the farmer’s interests were closed out by receiverships. During the time when investments in railway buildings were uncertain, donations of public lands, gifts of rights-of-way, and votes of bond issues in the way of local aid gave them standing in the money markets. So to a great extent, the farmers built the railways—and were then neatly beaten out of their interests.

That, however, is not the story of the farmers of today and the railways of today. It belongs to the past. Our task relates to the future. In that future, the relations between the railways and the farmers must continue to be close, whether they are amicable or not. The two parties belong to each other. One cannot exist without the other. When the farmers succeed in wresting a good crop from the earth, stocks go up in Wall street. A hot wind in Montana affects Great Northern and Northern Pacific on ’Change; and when the railway fails to furnish cars for the carrying of the crop, that failure affects the notes of the farmer at the bank. For better or for worse, the farmers and the railways are irrevocably wedded. A little careful and dispassionate consideration of their marital relations may assist in the maintenance of that peace which is necessary to happiness—and as a mere outline of the broader principles governing such consideration, this address has been prepared.

The great railway men of the United States have always felt the burden of a duty towards the farmers, even when denying any legal claim back of it. Fifteen years or so ago an enthusiastic believer in the semi-arid West worked out a plan for moisture-conserving farming—one of the greatest steps in conservation ever taken in this country. The management of the Northern Pacific helped him educate the farmers in the principles of his science. The managements of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul, the Soo Line and the B. & M. in Nebraska also gave him assistance. They foresaw the development which would come to Montana, Nebraska, the Dakotas and all the semi-arid country if “dry farming”, as it has come to be called, could be made to succeed. They saw a duty to the stockholders—saw it clearly; and I believe there was not lacking to their vision a glimpse of the duty they owed to the Nation through ministration to the prosperity of its farmers.

HOW THE RAILROADS LEARNED.

The management of the Great Northern, though since enthusiastic, could at that early time see nothing in the Campbell method of farming to enlist its sympathy or its dollars, nor could the Northwestern line, though both of these systems ran through hundreds of miles since reduced to the settled state through dry farming. But at that very time Mr. Hill was showing his interest in agriculture through the introduction of improved breeds of livestock along the lines of his system. And the Northwestern officials withheld their aid from Campbell, because it was believed on their part that it was better to leave the semi-arid regions in the condition of unbroken prairie from which they might receive trainloads of cattle, than to encourage its opening to an agriculture which was likely to be unsuccessful. Perhaps that was the controlling opinion in Great Northern circles, too. In any case, the railways were exerting an almost monarchical power over farming in their spheres of influence. Nothing, it seems to me, more clearly shows the power of the railways over farms and farming, than these instances of both action and inaction at the critical stage of development. We do not see it so plainly in regions long settled and in agricultural equilibrium, but the power is always there and always exerted for all that.

Beginning, so far as I am informed, with Mr. Hill’s livestock activities, and the aid of Mr. J. W. Kendrick to the great dry farming movement, railway aid to agriculture has grown to a fashion. The Pennsylvania maintains its demonstration farms on Long Island; the New York Central strives to bring back to their old-time headship in farming the Empire State’s half-abandoned farms. Scarcely a railway system can be mentioned which has not run its educational trains for the purpose of bringing agricultural science into touch with the farmers along its line. “Dairy specials,” “corn specials,” “bacon specials,” “fruit specials,” and dozens of other special trains have moved leisurely from station to station with agricultural lecturers aboard and cars fitted up as laboratories and auditoriums for the farmers. These are sure to be increasingly frequent as the demand grows on the part of farmers for accurate and authoritative teaching, and as the railway officials come to understand that the most profitable thing to sow along the line is knowledge, and that nothing gives such profitable crops as science. The great Burlington system now hires one of the noted agricultural experts of the world to work with the farmers, and another eminent agricultural college professor has gone into the service of that system which, while it may not reign, rules over the industrial destinies of “The Rock Island States of America.” The railroads everywhere, are doing excellent work in educating the farmers. This work is wise, and is sure to bring the results the railroads desire. The introduction of good agricultural methods, like the implanting of truth in any form, is one of those germinal acts that go on of their own accord when once the initial impulse is given. Dry farming will be practiced centuries hence better than now, and the Northern Pacific will carry its tonnage.

THE DOMINANCE OF TONNAGE.

But all these fine things have been done and are still being done with a eye single to tonnage. The railway officials who are doing them would strenuously deny any other motive than that of filling trains with agricultural produce. “What justification,” says the old-fashioned stockholder at the annual meeting, “can be given for using money of the railway for such new-fangled flub-dub as this special train filled with college professors and farmers?” “It’s a cold business proposition,” says the general manager. “If we can get the farmers to grow steers that will weigh a ton as against the present ones that weigh a thousand pounds, our livestock tonnage is doubled, and at the expense of a few special trains and an agricultural department, we obtain on the present lines all the results of a greater mileage. Better agriculture means more freight. That’s the justification, and the only one. It’s a plain business proposition!”

We may trust the enlightened selfishness of good business to push this sort of activity to the limit of its profit; and it is a fine thing to think that the railways cannot benefit themselves by spreading the light of agricultural science without benefiting the farmers and the whole nation. Favors of this sort bless him that receives quite as much as him that gives. But does the duty of the railway end with tonnage? Can we ask the railways to do anything for the farms and the farmers beyond the things which mediately or immediately will fill trains of cars with profitable freight? In the great task of conservation do the railways owe any duty to the farms beyond what they are now performing? This phase of the subject has yet to be worked out.

SOME HISTORIC PHRASES.

A few striking phrases have thrown on the screen of history the views of the generation of railway men who denied, and some of them still deny, anything in the way of duty of the sort hinted at. Some of these may be apocryphal utterances, but they tell the truth for all that. It is recorded that a Louisville & Nashville official, on being asked whether or not the people on his lines had any alternative other than to pay what the railway exacted, answered, “Yes! They can walk!” The historic Vanderbilt aphorism is “The public be damned!” It has been related of Jay Gould that his cynical rule for the making of rates on agricultural produce was that the farmers should always be allowed to retain enough for seed. Such opinions as these were the prevailing ones until recently. They were based on the view that the railways were purely private things. Under their sway railway men claimed the right to decide what cities should flourish and what decline, where towns should be built and where not, what shippers should be prosperous and what fail. They claimed these rights and they exercised them. To men of that school the things I shall say will seem like nonsense. They do not see that the control of the highways of a nation carries with it the rulership of the people; or if they do see it, they refuse to recognize the right of the people to say how that rulership shall be exercised, how long it shall continue, and when it shall end. And this is the lesson of the present and the immediate future for the railroads of America. A railway official is of right a public official, and he is nothing else. His duties to his stockholders are important and call upon him for scrupulous fidelity, but they are subject to his duties to the public. For on the highways depend the welfare of the whole people; the stockholders are a part only of the people; and the whole is greater than any part. In the last analysis, the stockholders and bondholders of the railways must come to a realization of the fact that they have placed their interests in the keeping of the people of the Nation, and that their profits must depend on the sense of justice of that people. Fortunately, there is no reason to expect from the people the slightest failure to respect the real rights of capital. But that modifications of railway policy are likely to be insisted upon, is not only likely, but inevitable. These modifications will be along the line of revisions of rates, the adoption of the principle that the railway must be used as a tool in the development of the Nation along rational and just lines, and not arbitrary ones, and in the conservation of the national resources—among which one of the most important, if not the most important, is the fertility of the soil.

RATES AND LIVING COST.

First, as to rates. There has been a good deal written of late for the purpose of securing for the railways an acquittal of every charge that has been or ever can be brought against them of having anything to do with the increased cost of living. Inasmuch as the cost of transportation is a part of the cost of every article consumed, freight rates may, and doubtless do, conceal much that makes for high prices. A Johns Hopkins professor says: “The claim of the railroads that the rates on foodstuffs are not high enough to enter as a factor in fixing the selling price is fully substantiated by the dealers in such products.” And again the same authority says: “The average weight of a carload of food products is 30,000 pounds. If the freight on such a carload be $300 the rate per pound would be only one cent, and there is scarcely a commodity upon which a freight rate of one cent per pound makes any difference in the selling price.”

When one considers the staples on which a cent a pound constitutes from six to twenty per cent of the selling price, these extremely sweeping statements must be admitted to need a lot of verification. Those who feel most keenly the pinch of high prices live mostly on things which sell at from four to twenty cents a pound—of which price an average of a cent a pound freight is a considerable increase. But the efforts mentioned have not been confined to arguments of the sort above quoted. We are called upon to believe not only that no appreciable freight charge is added to the burdens of the consumer, but that nothing worth mentioning is deducted as freight from the prices to the producer. We thus have the great incomes of the railroads very neatly palmed and effectually concealed somewhere between the professor of economics and the Secretary of Agriculture. For Secretary Wilson asserts that:

With approximate accuracy it has been determined that when the farmer receives 50 per cent of the consumer’s price, the freight charge on butter is about 0.5 of 1 per cent of the consumer’s price; eggs, 0.6 of 1 per cent; apples, 6.8 per cent; beans, 2.4 per cent; potatoes, 7.4 per cent; grains of all sorts, 3.8 per cent; hay, 7.4 per cent; cattle and hogs, 1.2 per cent; live poultry, 2.2 per cent; wool, 0.3 of 1 per cent.

These things are very convincing. And they are, no doubt, reliable as to averages. The trouble with them is that they are averages, and that they have the merits and defects of averages. One of the defects is that they do not tell the real truth. I have in mind a farmer living at New Rockford, North Dakota. He grows wheat as his staple crop, and about the only crop upon which it is at all safe to depend. His task is to help feed the world. As this is written, his wheat is worth in New York, if for export, a dollar a bushel, if for milling in this country two cents more. In addition to the cost of handling, the New Rockford farmer must submit to a deduction of twenty-four cents per bushel in price for freight to New York if for export, and of twenty-six cents if for domestic use. Something like 35 to 40 per cent of his returns is deducted for freight. It may satisfy the city consumer of bread to be told that this freight does not add “materially” to the cost of his living, but the New Rockford farmer is stubborn, and merely because his freight charge is a third or more of his returns, he is not mollified by Secretary Wilson’s statement that all grains “on the average” get to market with a deduction for transportation of three and eight-tenths per cent. In Johns Hopkins and at Washington, the freight charge may not amount to much. It is far otherwise at New Rockford.

A North Dakota station and a low grade staple are selected for the purpose of putting a finger on the point where the railways and the farmers clash crucially. They clash thus in the heart of the continent where distances to market are long, where there has been no rate structure fixed under competition, and where the farm produces in the main cheap and heavy staples. Whether grain, hay, root crops, or live stock, the case is the same—prices at the railway station are reduced to the point of vanishing profits by freight charges; and the cost of living on the farm is proportionately increased by the same agency.

HOW TO DEVELOP THE REMOTE PARTS.

The greatest transportation fact faced by the American people is the problem of developing the remote parts of the continent under conditions which are new to the experience of the human race. In the past mankind has been content to develop its great civilization near waterways. The sites of Egypt, Greece, Rome, Phoenicia and Carthage were determined by ease of transportation. Whether or not it is possible for the interior of the North American continent to be fully developed industrially by land carriage only is a question which is as yet an open one. It is safe to say that such development cannot take place without the adoption by the railways of some new transportation principles, applied for the express purpose of national welfare. And if the only alternative—the building of a national system of waterways—be resorted to, the aid of the railways must still be demanded if success is to be attained.

Rates as a deduction from the income of the farmer are even on the face of the averages quoted, considerable; but in the interior and on things produced at a close margin of profit, they are decisive of the matter of agricultural prosperity. On butter they are so inconsiderable as a proportion that the output of Dakota creameries has not infrequently gone on the market under conditions which enabled the Western butter-maker to pay his entire freight bill with the difference in his favor in the matter of quality. On eggs the burden of freight is similarly light. But on potatoes the freight is, according to the figures of the Secretary of Agriculture, 7.4 per cent of the consumer’s price, or about fifteen per cent of the farmers’ returns, as a national average. It is quite clear that the Montana or Nebraska potato grower must often find the freight, over the great distances to market, decisive of the question of profit or no profit. An acre of onions takes the labor of two or three persons a good part of the season. The cultivation is largely done with hand tools manipulated while the worker kneels and bends his body to the ground. His produce should be about a carload. If on this he pays the railways $300 freight it is a not inconsiderable contribution on the part of one gardener and one acre of land to the transportation system of the Nation.

Just what is included in these professorial and secretarial calculations is not quite clear. The word “freight” may or may not include such items as the charges for refrigeration and of refrigerator car companies, fast freight lines and the like, and until we know as to these items, we are unable to decide on the worth of the statistics. But one item of expense which through the policy of the railway companies the farmers are obliged to pay is clearly not included—I refer to the charges of the express companies.