106 WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION

and for handling sugar, $11,816,036. The propriety of including the
item sugar may be questioned, but sugaris a commodity originating in
the territory. Sugar moves largely from jobbing points to consuming
points in car load lots, so that figure would include not only the large
volume of sugar produced in the West but also it includes the sugar
which ought not to be included in this figure.
~The total of the items which I have mentioned, are $75,544,648,
from which sugar might be deducted here, leaving a total of $63,728,612
on those lines alone for those commodities alone.
This, of course, does not include, as I have said, revenue of all
the railroads, but just for those railroads I have mentioned. It
does not include the northern lines; it does not include the Burlington;
 it does not include the Western Pacific; it does not include the
Denver, Rio Grande &amp; Western and a variety of other lines in the
West who participate in the handling of this freight to a large extent.
There has been pointed out, or there will be pointed out in the
course of these hearings by representatives of agriculture, the significant
 fact that in very large measure the commodities which I have
mentioned, and in addition thereto, the other commodities produced
and going into the freight haul in western territory, are produced by
Mexican labor.
I do not have the figures which I could give with the accuracy that
perhaps other witnesses will give them as to the extent to which
Mexican labor is used, but the railroads of the country come to this
committee at this time in a spirit of broad self-interest. We are not
coming here from a Jovian standpoint as standing up and attempting
to lecture this committee on its duties to the public, or attempting to
settle the economic questions in which we have no interest.
Our interests is a dollars and cents interest. Of necessity our
interest goes out to exactly the same thing as the farmers’ interest.
In other words, we are making lumber out of his timber, and if the
forest fails it Tuins us both. In this case he is raising the crops which
we move. His crops are worthless unless we move them; and our
railroad is of immensely smaller value unless we have those crops to
make us revenue. But our interest is not confined to that.
In 1925 the Congress of the United States adopted what is known
as the Hoke Smith resolution, which was approved January 30, 1925,
and is found in 43 Statutes at Large, 801. “By the terms of the Hoke
Smith resolution the Interstate Commission was instructed to reconstruct
 the freight rates of the country in such fashion as that inequalities
 between localities, inequalities between districts, inequalities
 between commodities should be ironed out, the express purpose
of the bill being not to reduce revenues, but to attempt to get the
freight-rate structure of the country on a more scientific basis.
Mr. Scunerper. Was it not with a view of reducing agriculture
rates?
Mr. McInnis. No. The primary purpose was to reconstruct the
rate structure of the country. + The bill as originally drawn, and as it
went to the Senate, was in that form and A no special mention of
agriculture. After it got to the Senate, an amendment by way of
proviso was put on the Hoke Smith resolution which made it the duty
of the commission to take into account what Congress recognized as
the then existing depression in agriculture. That is a matter which
was mentioned a moment ago—depression in aericulture—and could