Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 14).djvu/206

 maintain high local freight rates on manufactured products and high-class traffic, keep Western farm products from reaching the seaboard as cheaply as now? We can prevent Western grain and provisions from passing across the State of New York, and the present railroad policy is rapidly doing it; but the only effect will be to send the traffic through Canada and by rail routes to Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Newport News, Charleston, and especially New Orleans and Galveston. That will greatly harm this city, but what good will it do to the New York State farmer?

"The true market for a large part of this State's farm products must be local and the demand must come from the creation, development, and prosperity of local industries throughout the State, and these, in turn, depend upon cheap freight rates such as the Erie Canal will insure. Those cheap rates will enable the important cities of central New York to obtain iron ore, and coal as cheaply as the lake ports and the Pennsylvania towns now obtain those raw materials, and will give the manufacturers of those cities a considerable advan-