The CHAIRMAN. Those are the rates given by the steamship lines in the first instance to the shippers?

Mr. RANDALL. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. So that the toll, if paid by the shipowner in those cases, will in the first instance fall upon the shipper?

Mr. RANDALL. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Then, according to usual business practices, he will endeavor to unload that upon the consumer?

Mr. RANDALL. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Except that part which is unloaded upon the original producer?

Mr. RANDALL. Yes, sir; I think so.

Senator SIMMONS. I understand you to say you have heard that somebody has done that, but you have not done it yourself?

Mr. RANDALL. I have held up this whole proposition to see what is coming; to see whether this canal toll is to be repealed.

Senator SIMMONS. When we were about to take the duty off of paper it was said that the Canadian manufacturers were making contracts of that sort, but I heard afterwards that it did not amount to anything when we did take the duty off of paper.

Mr. RANDALL. I think it is within your power to get the schedules which are already printed and out now, reading in just that way. Senator SIMMONS. Mr. Randall, will you procure some of those schedules and send them to the secretary of the committee within the next few days?

Mr. RANDALL. Yes; I think I can do that.

The CHAIRMAN. We shall be glad if you will do so.

Mr. RANDALL. If you will give me the address of the secretaryThe CHAIRMAN. Just send it to the secretary of this committee. Mr. RANDALL. Would you rather have me do that than tell you where your secretary can write and get it?

The CHAIRMAN. Where can the information be obtained?

Mr. RANDALL. I think that can be got of the American-Hawaiian Line.

The CHAIRMAN. That line, you say, is quoting rates in that manner? Mr. RANDALL. That is what I understand. I have not seen any of their printed schedules, but I have been told that is so.

Senator SIMMONS. If you send that, please ask them to give the date when they published those rates, will you?

Mr. RANDALL. I do not know that they will do all these things for me, for I am a competitor, or will be.

Senator SIMMONS. What part of that lumber that you expect to bring from the Pacific coast to Boston will be that which you could not obtain somewhere on the Atlantic seaboard? What proportion? Mr. RANDALL. I could not tell you that.

Senator SIMMONS. You will bring all kinds of lumber?

Mr. RANDALL. I should think quite a large proportion-not that can not be obtained, but which at the present time is difficult to get on the Atlantic seaboard and which can be got freely on the Pacific seacoast.

Senator SIMMONS. You would agree to this proposition, would you not: If you can get that lumber on the Pacific coast, and you bring it from Oregon by virtue of the remission of tolls, it displaces the market for the lumber on the Atlantic coast, and the Government

in that case would be contributing $1.50 per thousand to replace the market of the lumber of the Atlantic coast with the lumber of the Pacific coast, would it not?

Mr. RANDALL. I think I explained that in previous statements. Senator SIMMONS. I do not think you have. If it had that effect do you think that would be good governmental policy, practically to take $1.50 out of the Treasury in order to displace a market for a product of the Atlantic coast with a product of the Pacific coast!

Mr. RANDALL. I do not think that is going to be the case.

Senator SIMMONS. If that is the case, would that be good governmental policy? Would that not be a protective tariff in our own country in favor of one section of the country and against another section?

Mr. RANDALL. I do not think I am here to say what is good Government policy. I think that is your duty, not mine. I could not answer that question. There are so many things that might lead to a discussion of

Senator SIMMONS. If you do not want to answer it I will not press it.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Randall, the gentleman who introduced this repeal measure in the House of Representatives - a Representative from one of our Southern States in offering some reasons favorable to the repeal, said that if the Southern States wanted the competition of the Northwest in the lumber trade that they should allow free tolls; but if they did not invite that competition, they should encourage the repeal. So he evidently entertained the opinion that free tolls, or rather the repeal, would give an advantage to the lumber producer in the Southern States over the lumber producer in the Northwest. Do you think it would give any such advantage?

Mr. RANDALL. I think that temporarily there would be some competition; but as we ought to provide for more than the hour, it seems to me that as this lumber on our Atlantic and Gulf side is growing scarcer every year and getting to be difficult now to get, and in many cases impossible to get at times, that it would be only a question of time when that competition would amount to nothing. I think that all the large lumber that the Gulf and Atlantic coast can provide will be taken care of and used on account of the difference in the freight rate.

The CHAIRMAN. Where is the greatest supply of merchantable lumber in the Southeastern States?

Mr. RANDALL. Of the large lumber, of which I am speaking to you now, in the Gulf of Mexico. It comes through the ports of Port Arthur

The CHAIRMAN. No; I am speaking of the States which produce the lumber along the Atlantic coast.

Mr. RANDALL. Louisiana, Florida, and Alabama.

The CHAIRMAN. Those are the States which produce that? Mr. RANDALL. Yes; but in many cases there are different kinds and qualities of lumber. There are 50 or 100 kinds of lumber.

Senator BRISTOW. Mr. Randall, the illustration that Senator Simmons suggested of paying $1.50 out of the Treasury in order to enable one part of the United States to get into the market of another part

Senator SIMMONS. To displace a product of another part.

Senator BRISTOw. Yes; to displace a product. That theory would proceed upon the theory that the Government ought to make no public improvements to aid navigation so as, in that way, to aid the exchange of products between one part of the country and another. Mr. RANDALL. I think that is right. I think the Government ought not to. I think the Government has it within its power now to do a great thing to encourage American shipping, and we have heard nothing for 10 years but the American flag in foreign ports, and the American flag on American waters, and here is a chance for the Government to do something which I believe it has the right to do to encourage this American shipping, and the proof of it is that we have already started to do something. Now the Government comes in and knocks the infant on the head again, if it wants to, but I think it is hardly just. And it is not altogether a question of competition between the southern lumber and the Pacific coast lumber. This same lumber may be brought from Canada in British bottoms to Boston. It is going to be brought just the same. Do we want it brought in British bottoms from Canada, or do we want it brought in our own bottoms, in our own vessels? That is the question, in my mind.

Senator BRISTOW. That, as I understand, is the kind of lumber you refer to as very scarce in the South and which is abundant on the Pacific Coast?

Mr. RANDALL. Yes, sir.

Senator BRISTOW. And, if proper transportation facilities are offered, it will be obtained on the Pacific Coast?

Mr. RANDALL. Yes, sir.

Senator BRISTOW. From our Pacific coast?

Mr. RANDALL. Yes, sir.

Senator BRISTOW. If we handicap our own commerce through Panama, why then it will be obtained from the British Pacific coast? Mr. RANDALL. Yes, sir.

Senator BRISTOW. At the expense of the American producers on the Pacific coast?

Mr. RANDALL. Yes, sir.

Senator BRISTOW. And the exchange of commodities from the Atlantic Coast to the Pacific Coast will be handicapped in the same way?

Mr. RANDALL. Yes, sir.

Senator BRISTOW. Different kinds of lumber that are produced in the South can find a market in the West if the Panama Canal is a free waterway, like the other waterways are?

Mr. RANDALL. Yes, sir.

Senator BRISTOw. So it results in an exchange of comodities to the advantage of the producer and the consumer in both sections of the country?

Mr. RANDALL. Yes, sir. And every man who uses a can of salmon or preserved fruits, or any other product of California, is going to get those products on his table at a certain percentage cheaper without tolls. If we pay tolls he is going to pay a certain percentage more. It is going right onto that man's table in the end. It is going into his house that he builds, too.

Senator WALSH. Is there any lumber coming to New England from the Northwest through the Soo Canal, Northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota?

Mr. RANDALL. I think not. I do not know that it comes that way. There is some Canadian spruce that comes into the United States, and there has been very large quantities of Canadian white pine that goes through the United States in transit to foreign countries. Senator WALSH. That region was at one time a great producer of lumber, was it not?

Mr. RANDALL. I really do not know that. I would like to answer if I did.

The CHAIRMAN. That is all.

Mr. RANDALL. Let me say one thing more. I only want to say this: If it is absolutely a question of honor to this country to rescind this present law, I am not here, gentlemen, to selfishly ask that we shall do a thing that shall be against our honor and dignity, and I would uphold it at personal sacrifice. But, if that is not necessary, and I am not capable of judging that point, it seems to me a shame that these new industries should be in any way discouraged.

STATEMENT OF MR. HENRY J. ALLEN, OF WICHITA, KANS.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, it is not my purpose in the very brief time I will borrow from you to attempt to discuss the interpretation of the treaty or to cover that phase of the situation or any part of it, but merely to discuss some of the phases of it from the standpoint of its economic values.

Out in Kansas we are not a people given to the study of international diplomacy. We do not pretend to be wise in respect to that. I think we have acquiesced in a good many diplomatic improvidences rather than to show our ignorance touching the ponderous terminology of international diplomacy, but the practical sense gathered from the difficulties of our situation, the building of an inland commerce where the distances are long and the cost of transportation is great, have given us a rather practical knowledge, particularly touching the point of freight rate transportation; and when, to use a western term of business, when "our leg is being pulled" in reference to any freight rate proposition.

We were very much delighted in the Middle West, as of course was the entire country, at the inception of this great enterprise; and we were again very much delighted when the President, in his Mount Vernon speech, applauded the Congress for its passage of the law exempting American coastwise vessels from tolls and prohibiting the passing through the canal of railroad-owned ships. Studying it purely from the standpoint of the people who have had opportunity to observe what railroad discrimination could do to them, we were delighted at this apparent evidence that the Nation anticipated a change in its policy for the protection of the benefits to the people of general water transportation. We have observed the expenditure of more than $300,000,000 for waterway benefits on the Mississippi River and its tributaries, and we have observed that the railroads, by a process of unfair discrimination, have been allowed to drive from all the natural magnificent waterways of the country every vestige of commerce that might be dignified by the term.

Out in the West you might think that this would not touch us, but it does. Where I live we are 500 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, and we hailed with pleasure what we supposed to be the new policy of the Government for giving to the country all the benefits of deep-water transportation, as it might apply to interstate commerce, because we have always believed that we had the right to the benefit that belongs to us naturally, from the reason that we are 500 miles nearer the Gulf of Mexico than St. Paul is, or than Portland is. Therefore, when following this expression of a new policy there was an attempt made-I think a successful one, I think by the Senator from Kansas-of introducing into rate making a phase whereby the Interstate Commerce Commission could create a joint water and railway rate, we realized that at last there had come to us a tremendous impetus-a tremendous advantage, from water transportation.

You are doubtless all familiar with the fact that we have, outside of our generous expenditure of money on the Mississippi River and other inland waterways, done nothing to protect commerce upon those waterways. If I may be allowed the liberty of a personal allusion, a personal example, I am a newspaper man. I buy large quantities of white paper. I pay 20 cents per 100 pounds freight on white paper from the vicinity of Niagra Falls down to Kansas City, which is, theoretically, a deep-water point--although no vessel ever landed at Kansas City-but the railroads have been allowed to make at Kansas City a special rate to meet the so-called deep-water competition, hence for the distance of 800 miles I pay the railroads 20 cents per hundred for hauling white paper. For hauling that white paper 150 miles farther into the inland I pay 22 cents more. I pay 2 cents more for hauling it 150 miles than I pay for hauling it 900 miles. Why? Because the railroads have been allowed to reduce the freight rate at Kansas City to meet deep-water transportation. Fortunately it has not been an injustice to deep-water transportation in Kansas City, because they had killed river commerce before Kansas City got her dream of getting money.

Senator THORNTON. Let me ask you a question, please. You said you got your paper from in the neighborhood of Niagara Falls? Mr. ALLEN. Yes, sir.

Senator THORNTON. You mean you got it from Canada?

Mr. ALLEN. No; from the American side.

Senator THORNTON. I am glad to know that.

Mr. ALLEN. I think in recent months we have gotten some from Canada.

Senator BRISTOW. That rate of 20 cents from the region of Niagara Falls to Kansas City on paper is made by the railroads, of course, to prevent water transportation from existing?

Mr. ALLEN. Having by that process of discrimination been enabled to drive river transportation out of business, it is to prevent it ever being reestablished, and that is why the railroad traffic agents with much glibness declare the making of river points the basic points, and the terminology came from the original purpose of operation of allowing the railroads to kill river commerce.

Senator SIMMONS. Let me ask you a question which just occurs to my mind. I do not know whether it is pertinent to this or not. You get your paper from around Niagara Falls. Where do you sell your finished product, in the interior?

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