WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION 107

agriculture be relieved by according to agricultural products, including
livestock, the lowest rate schedule, or the lowest rate structure which
would be consistent with maintenance of an efficient transportation
plant and system. So that the proviso is what touches the farmer.
The resolution in chief, originally, was aimed at ironing out the
disparities which were recognized to exist in the large freight rate
structure of the country. The bill, no doubt, is scientific in its
purpose. Whether it is scientifically possible to accomplish the purpose
 at which it aims becomes increasingly more doubtful. Elaborate
hearings have been had, and elaborate hearings are now being had
by the Interstate Commerce Commission. It has divided the traffic
of the country into a considerable number of classifications, and this
general Hoke Smith provision has come to be spoken of as ex parte
17,000 and as to each of those parts separate hearings have been had.
The CrairmMAN. You do not mean the proposal regarding prospective
 grouping or merging of railroads is still another question?
Mr. McInnis. I am not talking about consolidation; I am talking
about freight rates.
The CuarrMaN. Have they put the railroads into groups for the
question of freight rates?
Mr. McInnis. They have divided commodities into groups, such
as iron and steel. Another one is cement, another one is grain, and
so on. They started out scientifically, but a large number of those
groups are still under investigation. Those investigations have
proved to be very elaborate things. Records in those cases are running
 as high as 75,000 typewritten pages of testimony with 50,000 or
60,000 exhibits, and appendixes attached—impossible for anvbody
to examine, I might say parenthetically.
The Hoke Smith resolution, as I said, was probably scientific in
its purpose. Whether it is scientifically possible of accomplishment
is a very different thing. What will be the result, and how long the
delay will be to accomplish that result, is a very different thing. It
is pretty sure that whatever may be done will so disturb existing
conditions that it will take a good many years to iron them out to
where a state of rest—of equilibriuin—will have been reached.
But we discover that the Hoke Smith resolution threatens the
railroads of the country with things that were not anticipated at the
time it was passed. A thing which we contend could not properly
be interpreted into the resolution at this time. Nevertheless, the
threat is a very definite and a very present one.
The Interstate Commerce Commission in contruing the Hoke
Smith resolution said, or attempted to define, or by inference did
define what it meant by the lowest rates—let me get the exact
language—“the lowest rates applicable to the products of agriculture
including livestock that might be consistent with the maintenance of
the transportation system ”’—and made this declaration:
In view of the existing depression in agriculture—
This is the statute—
in view of the existing depression in agriculture, the commission is hereby
directed to effect with the least practical delay such lawful changes in the rate
structure of the country as will promote the freedom of movement by common
carrier of the products of agriculture. including livestock.