People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 March 1895 — KANSAS OIL AND THE TRUST. [ARTICLE]

KANSAS OIL AND THE TRUST.

Condltiani That fira % (EEIB 4m* •nl Cmmlm*. The only thing that prevcn|p 4te "holes tn the ground” about Nfcodesha from being veritable units of wealth for laddowners and the oil is the lack of a market. This lack is occasioned almost wholly by unjust discriminations against industries by the present freight pooling arrangements. "Build a refinery then,” says some one. But that wouldn’t alter the discriminations on freight rates. The same fate would befall our locally refined oil that befalls the locally crude oil. For instance: The operators here shipped a few barrels of oil into Oklahoma the other day. The freight was $3.10 per barrel. The Standard Oil company was shipping the same quality of oil from the Eastern fields through Chicago and Kansas City to the same point in Oklahoma and selling it for $3 a barrel. Just think of it! And when you think of it cease wondering why there is no market for oil here.

' Nearly 53,000 barrels of crude petro- . leum is above the surface of the ground here at Neodesha. and untold millions of barrels are below the surface, upon which not one dollar can ■ be realized owing to the situation indicated above. Although Neodesha is within 165 miles of Kansas City and the nearest Eastern oil fields is over 600 miles from that point, the producer of-eil at Neodesha would have to give the Kansas Cityi consumers the ell and the barrel and pay him f cents in money in order to meet the prices at which the Standard Oil company sells the Eastern product in Kansas City.— Neodesha Register. And here we are in Wichita, selling bonds and thereby mortgaging posterity, to get "honest money” to dig holes in the ground for oil, and when we get it, what good will it be to us? Just to run away and ruin the productiveness of the soil as it does at Neodesha, that is all, and be a damage rather than a blessing. We see no way of doing away with discrimination In freight ratee, except In government ownership of railways. Then we can send a barrel of ell or salt as cheaply as Vanderbilt or Rockefeller.

{ The postoffice Is in the hands of the government and the humblest citizen can get a letter to its destination Just as cheaply as the Standard Oil company. The postoffice is the moot Intricate and gigantic business in all America; yet the system is managed with the least possible friction and gives the people the cheapest and most reliable service in existence. We can see no reasons why the government should not be the commoncarrying business of the nation. It is nonsense to talk about Wichita or any other interior city, ever being built by establishing remunerative Industries of any kind, so long as these industries are at the mercies of railroad corporations that dictate the terms upon which we are to trade with the outside worfd. ' The railroad corporations in this country build up or destroy cities at will, and whenever it suits their pur- , pose, they do not hesitate to kill, muti late or destroy. The only way to prosperity in Kansas lies in government ownership of railroads. —Commoner.