Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 3.djvu/187

 large cities only by means of the rebates paid them by the railways. These rebates were now withdrawn and the Iowa shipper informed that since the enactment of the interstate commerce law, he must if he desired to continue in business, remove to those large and important terminal points from which, alone, it was possible to grant living rates. The business outlook in the cities of the State was gloomy. Factories and wholesale houses were closing their doors and removing to other States. Agriculture was depressed by the prospect that its future markets would be in distant cities, restricting its activity to the production of bulky staples and cutting off those miscellaneous refined products so profitably grown when populous cities are near.

Previous to this time there had been little coöperation between the rural and urban population of the State in efforts to obtain legislation controlling railroad charges. If there had been a community of interests it had not been discovered on either side. Of partisan cooperation on moral and political issues there had been many cases; but the capacity to work together for common purposes connected with their industrial interests had not been developed. It had awaited the opportunity now at hand. Leaders were not wanting. A score or more of earnest and well informed men of affairs, engaged in commercial, financial and agricultural pursuits, several of them learned in the law, now came into prominence as organizers of a movement for the solution of the difficult problem of saving important industries of the State from destruction.

Each of the chief political parties of the State furnished champions of the rights of the people of Iowa to a share in the industrial life of the country. They worked together with a patriotism rarely equalled and with results which may serve as an inspiration to legislators in the future. In the Executive chair Governor William Larrabee, in the General Assembly James G. Berryhill, on the Board of Railway Commissioners Frank T. Campbell and Spencer