Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/199

Rh traffic, are not available for the years prior to 1882, but reductions since that time are shown to have been extensive.

It should not, however, be understood that the amount paid per capita for freight transportation by rail has decreased in the proportion shown by these figures. The most obvious result of declining rates is an extension of the utility of transportation facilities, as is amply shown by the statistics of freight movement. During 1882 the total railway freight service was equal to only 39,302,209,249 ton-miles, or about seven hundred and fifty-two tons carried one mile per capita, and the decline in the average charge per ton-mile from 1·236 cent in that year to 0·878 cent in 1893 was accompanied by an increase in the volume of traffic of nearly two hundred and fifty per cent, and in the amount of transportation per capita to almost twice that of 1882. The increase in tonnage movement in proportion to population was about eighty-seven per cent, and in the aggregate sum received therefor by the railways only thirty-seven per cent.

It will not be sufficentsufficient [sic] to abandon the investigation of changes in the charges for moving freight at this stage, nor to remain satisfied with mere general averages of those charges. The more minute inquiry which deals with actual rates upon specific commodities of commercial importance affords quite as interesting and it is confidently believed equally important and significant results. The rate from Chicago to New York on grain and flour,

which are nearly always classed together for rate-making purposes, is indisputably the most important single rate that could be selected. It derives its prominence not alone from the fact that it applies to the most important agricultural and food products, when shipped from the greatest grain market in the world to its principal port of export, but also because it is the basis of all charges on grain and flour shipped from the western regions of surplus production to the Eastern States. Any modification of this rate, therefore, effects a corresponding change in the transportation charge on nearly every bushel of grain and