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THE TRUTH ABOUTH THE RAILROADS

manufacturing capacity, increasing ownership of homes, well employed labor, demand for more and better transportation, and a chance for the conscientious, sober, and industrious man to improve his standing, no matter what business he may enter.

If railroad rates, as a whole, were unjust, unreasonable, wrongly discriminatory, as between individuals and localities, this condition would not exist. It has been held that the power to fix a railroad rate should be lodged with some other authority than with the railroad-owner, because railroad transportation enters into the life of the people in every way, and, therefore, the railroad-owner should not fix that price. Is it not also true that the price of producing power enters into the life of the people in every way? The price of a pair of shoes, of a coat, or of any manufactured article, depends in part upon the cost of the power used to run the machinery that made the articles in question. If the final decision to fix the actual rate to be charged by the railroad is to be given to some branch of the Federal

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