Page:The truth about the railroads (IA truthaboutrailro00elli).pdf/156

Rh to make good any deficiency in revenue from the taxpayers as a whole.

The course that the commission would be driven into, and that every state commission is gradually being driven into, is to adopt a milage basis of rates. The effect of such a basis on a country of the size of the United States, with its past history of commercial development, is appalling to one interested in the growth of the country. If, in the beginning of the railroad and business development of this country, rates had been fixed arbitrarily on the basis of mileage, the States west of the Mississippi River would still be thinly populated, with few railroads and with little business of any kind. Inland cities, without access to water transportation, would not have been built up and the whole growth of the railroad and commercial system of this country would have been different. Fortunately for the growth of this country, the railroad-owners and operators did not adopt a rigid mileage basis of rates, and as a result the country has grown, agriculture has grown, diversified Rh