The Price of Living in the Desert

Every city, town and hamlet in the Columbia basin should be aroused over the hearing in the Astoria rate case to begin in Portland next Monday. There ought to be representatives from every locality and delegates from every farmers’ organization to give testimony. There is violation of every law of transportation in the present rate arrangement. In spite of the known law that cost of haul is a most important factor in fixing rates, that law is absolutely overlooked in the present rates. Thus, a locomotive will haul but eight loaded cars from the Columbia basin over the mountains to Puget Sound points, and will haul one hundred cars down the Columbia to Portland and Astoria. It is an enormous difference in the cost of haul, but the freight rates are 90 cents a ton higher to Astoria than to Tacoma and Seattle. It is a discrimination in violation of every traffic maxim, natural or moral. The increased charge caused by dragging loaded cars of wheat over the Cascade mountains to Puget Sound has to be paid by the producers of the Columbia basin. If, instead of being artificially fixed by man, the rates were regulated by the cost of haul, the charge down the Columbia would be far lower, and the producers of the region would get the benefit.