e suggestions for a few years and
secure more efficiency in what we must spend, then our people could get
ahead with the process of earning something to be taxed. This would at
least be comforting to the great farming and business community.

BETTER TRANSPORTATION FACILITIES

There is a great weakness in our present railway situation bearing upon
the farmer and consumer. Everyone knows of the annual shortage of cars
during the crop-moving season. Few people, however, appreciate that this
shortage of cars often amounts to a stricture in the free flow of
commodities from the farmer to the consumer. The result is that the
farmer, in order to sell his produce, often unknown to himself makes a
sacrifice in price to local glut. The consumer is compelled at the other
end to pay an increased price for foodstuffs due to the shortage in
movement. The constant fluctuations in our grain exchanges locally or
generally from this cause are matters of public record almost monthly.
On one occasion a study was made under my administration into the effect
of car shortage in the transportation of potatoes, and we could
demonstrate by chart and figures that the margin between the farmer and
the consumer broadened 100 per cent in periods of car shortage. Nor did
the middleman make this whole margin of profit, because he was subjected
to unusual losses and destruction, and took unusual risks in awaiting a
market. The same phenomenon was proved in a large way at time of acute
shortage of movement in corn and other grains.

The usual remedy for this situation is insistence that the railways
shall provide ample rolling stock, trackage and terminals to take care
of the annual peakload. We have fallen far behind in the provision of
even normal railway equipment during the war and an additional 500,000
cars and locomotives are no doubt needed. Above a certain point,
however, this imposes upon the railways a great investment in equipment
for use during a comparatively short period of the year when many
commodities synchronize to make the peak movement. The railways
naturally wish to spread the movement over a longer period. The burden
of equipment for short time use will probably prevent their ever being
able to take entire care of the annual delays in transport and stricture
in market, although it can be greatly minimized.

There is possible help in handling the peak load by improving the
waterways from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic seaboard