Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/197

Rh west of the Mississippi River and sold at much, lower prices than those named, in order to supply the denser populations located in the Eastern States and in Europe. Grain and flour are now carried from Chicago to New York over railway routes ranging from nine hundred and twelve to a thousand and forty-two miles in length, for twenty cents per hundred pounds, or only about four and a third mills per ton per mile for the shorter distance.

Dry goods, such as calicoes, Canton flannel, canvas, linen crash, ginghams, jeans, and sheetings, are taken from Boston to Vicksburg, Miss., about fifteen hundred and seventy miles, for fifty cents per hundred pounds, or a little more than six and a third mills per ton per mile. The rate on canned goods, including fish, fruits, meats, and vegetables, from San Francisco to St. Louis over rail lines from twenty-two hundred and eighty to twenty-nine hundred and fifty miles in length, is seventy-five cents per hundred pounds, or about one half of one cent per ton per mile.

These are merely examples of charges on important articles of commerce selected at random and without any intention of showing the lowest charges in existence, as will be clearly apparent when it is added that the average charge upon all freight traffic carried by rail in the United States during the year ending on June 30, 1894, was only 0·866 cent per ton per mile. The average for the States of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and the portions of New York and Pennsylvania situated west of Buffalo and Pittsburg was only 0·682 cent during the same year.

Although the immediate effect of the introduction of railway transportation must have been seen in rates very much lower than any previously available, and the consequent extension of the radii of the areas available for maketing surplus products, the present exceedingly low charges have been reached through a long and steady process during which the tendency toward lower rates has become one of the most generally recognized characteristics of railway development. While the existence of this tendency has been generally remarked, little attempt has been made to trace its extent, and even when the effort is made the investigation is found to be attended with numerous difficulties, owing to the absence of adequate records of the early period of railway development. This is especially to be regretted in view of the paramount importance of complete information regarding our railway system, at a time when its effective regulation by legislative authority is one of the problems of government attracting widest attention, and perhaps even more than others requiring in its solution the co-operation of enlightened public sentiment with ripe experience and skillful statecraft.

Fortunately, many railways have preserved data showing the