Knowledge that Transforms

The present movement of freight by water on the Lakes-to-theGulf route is the chief consideration of this chapter. Other writers have shown the decline of river traffic on the Mississippi,' and it appears to be quite well known that the important commerce of former days has disappeared. The question that is uppermost in the minds of those giving thought to transportation on the Mississippi is: Will the river again become an important waterway? The freight movement is discussed for the several sections of the route, beginning at Chicago. Table VIII shows the shipments and receipts of freight at the Port of Chicago for the calendar year I9IO. The lake commerce of the port is divided between the two harbors.2 The iron ore, which comprises approximately one-half the total weight of the shipments and receipts, is discharged almost entirely at the Calumet Harbor; while the general merchandise, the fruits and vegetables, and the lumber come largely to the Chicago Harbor. The lake commerce of Chicago should be important for several reasons. Chicago is located on the route of dense traffic between the seaboard and the West, and the broad open waterway of the

The main purpose of the original Interstate Commerce act, and of the various measures that have been passed to amend it, has been the suppression of unfair railway discrimination. The most pernicious form such discrimination formerly took was that of secret rebating. It is popularly believed, because secret rebating has been almost extirpated, that the suppression of unfair discrimination has become secondary in importance to the prevention of excessive rates. This belief is, to a large extent, unfounded. Its prevalence makes needful emphasizing of the facts that unfair discrimination continues, that it still produces baneful results, and that its suppression and prevention still are, or ought to be, the main object of government regulation of railway traffic. I would not be misunderstood as saying or implying that the condition in respect to railway discrimination is as bad as in years past. On the contrary, there has been a very marked improvement since the Hepburn act went into effect in i906. There never was a time in the history of American railways when there was so little unfair discrimination as there is now. But existing conditions fall short of being what they ought to be. There still are many evil forms of discrimination; and what is worse, many of them under existing laws cannot be stopped or prevented by either the railways or the Interstate Commerce Commission. The railways cannot stop or prevent many of them, because to do so their managers would have to make arrangements which

who has had the individual seminar. When the investigator has run the gauntlet of his instructor, and obtained some definite results, then it is good for him and for his fellow-students to lay his performance before the group and stand fire from all possible quarters. Graduate students who have had this kind of training find, when they go to Germany, that the teaching of economics there has not advanced as far as in this country. J. LAURENCE LAUGHLIN TiiE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO