Show I d eke Stanford Speaks CHICAGO December 2 aThe Washington Wash-ington correspondent of the Daily Telegraphs Tele-graphs interview with Senator Stanford on the pending interstate commerce bill The Senator said It will have an injurious effect on the Pacific Coast What the merchant of the Pacific slope wants like merchants in all other portions por-tions of the country is regularity ot freight rates on most of the merchan disehe deals in A difference of 2 or 3 a ton in freights has no direct effect upon prices of manufactured articles A reduction of 5 a ton for instance would make a difference of only about oneflUb of a cent in the selling price per pound of goods which the merchant knows his customers will not take into consideration it is too small to be per ceptiole and every merchant whether be buys his goods in May or September stands on me same basis so far as fluctua freights are concerned But tions of freights disturb trade and cause the loss of profits to shippers who have not had advantages of the lowest figures fig-ures Railroad managers are not enemies ene-mies of the public as demagogues would have the people believe but are studying all the time to discover how they can best serve their customers cus-tomers as well as themselves and long experience has shown that the present system of pooling is the best method of securing regularity of rates that has ever been adopted The long and short haul provision of the bill will prohibit railroads from doing I wholesale business and shippers at competing points will lose the advantage advan-tage of competition Take the farmer for example who has his crop to ship to market if he lives four miles from one road and eight from another he will haul his produce the longer distance dis-tance if the railroad there will carry it at less than half the price that will be charged by the road that is nearer Under the bill the road will be compelled com-pelled to charge him a proportionate rate for the longer distance the road will not suffer but the producer and consumer will for one gets less for his productand latter will becompelled to pay more If the investment of money in railroads is legitimate the men who are engaged in railroads should be allowed to control their property just as much as if they had invested it in a whisky mill instead |