Take also grain. Every
reader of advertisements knows where the great flour mills of the
country are located. And they probably know also that these great mills
are not located in the sections where the grain of the United States is
raised. There are staggering quantities of grain, thousands of
trainloads, hauled uselessly long distances, and then in the form of
flour hauled back again long distances to the states and sections where
the grain was raised--a burdening of the railroads which is of no
benefit to the communities where the grain originated, nor to any one
else except the monopolistic mills and the railroads. The railroads can
always do a big business without helping the business of the country at
all; they can always be engaged in just such useless hauling. On meat
and grain and perhaps on cotton, too, the transportation burden could be
reduced by more than half, by the preparation of the product for use
before it is shipped. If a coal community mined coal in Pennsylvania,
and then sent it by railway to Michigan or Wisconsin to be screened, and
then hauled it back again to Pennsylvania for use, it would not be much
sillier than the hauling of Texas beef alive to Chicago, there to be
killed, and then shipped back dead to Texas; or the hauling of Kansas
grain to Minnesota, there to be ground in the mills and hauled back
again as flour.
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