Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 July 1873 — Cheap Transportation. [ARTICLE]

Cheap Transportation.

We learn from the Eastern papers that Senator Wiudoni, of Minnesota, who is prosecuting Ills researches as chairman of tlio Senate Gommitteeon Transportation, lias been making some deliverance concerning the great problem of cheaper transportation. He lias expressed tlio opinion that there never has been until now a time when any route could hope to receive government aid, and that lie did not know that any such aid would bo given, but that there were 12,000,000 of people in the West determined to have a route to the East. Senator Windom is at fault as to tho demands of the- Western people. They are not clamoring so much for cheap transportation “to the East” as they arc fur the shortest, cheapest and quickest route from their wheat and corn fields to tidewater. A route by water, in a latitude where vessels are frozen fast in their harbors during six months of the year, will not answer for the people of the West, ltailway transportation for grain is too expensive, and the tlrno will never come when grain can be grown at a profit and shipped a thousand miles by rail to find a market. Benator Windom and liis committee will find, if they open their eves and exercise (heir common sense, that tlio problem of cheap trainqtortation for Western grain can only he solved by means of water communication with the ocean over our Western rivers. To this complexion must it come at last. The Mississippi river and its tributaries are nature’s great highways for cheap transportation, and nil tho log-rolling and lobbying which may be done in the interests of tlio proposed Northern routes can not change tlio stubborn fact.—Lafayette Courier.