Show AN INTERSTATE OPINION One of the first complaints presented against the InterState Commerce bill came from the wool interest California It asked for a suspension of the long and short haul clause in respect to wool shipments from that quarter on the ground that under the law wool export from California to the East would be nearly if not quite impossible Against this concession some of the wool merchants hereabouts have strongly protested They have shown that in he past wool has been brought east from the Pacific coast for from fifty to sixty cents a hundred pounds while the rate from points very much farther east has been as high as from 3 to 450 a hundred pounds This is precisely what the law was intended to stop and suspension of the operation of the law for the purpose of permitting it to continue would be defiant of the very intent and spirit of the act The Pacific railroads were built largely with public money they were constructed con-structed at the cost of every citizen not for the sole benefit of the people of the Pacific Coast but for the advantage of the entire body of people in every part of the country For these corporations possessing such advantages and clothed with such privileges to use their power to injureperhaps to ruin the business of one class of individuals for the purpose pur-pose of benefiting another class is a shameless outrage which the government govern-ment was required by the most ordinary considerations of decency and justice to ippress These corporations have for years played into the hands of a sugar mono ply which has robbed the people of California and they have persistently favored certain interests like this wool interest at the cost of others The new law puts its foot on such transactions It makes compulsory something like fair dealing California may even yet get as low a rate to Philadelphia for wool as Ohio gets but to demand the sanction of the commission for a rate only onesixth as great as Ohio has to pay is both audacious ajd impudentTextile Record Re-cord |