ssing at Niagara
Falls and feeding the Lackawanna and Erie to New York; running to
Boston through Vermont, etc., and also to Montreal; and the Alden
line of steamers carrying cattle to England, as a healthy competition
with our pooling trunk lines east from Chicago, is of enormous
value to Chicago and all the shippers, cattle-dealers, grain-raises,
farmers, and merchants of half a dozen States in the Northwest.
Any interference with its competitive activity will harm millions
of Western people, tending as it will to increase cost of transportation
and re-establish trunk line pooling monopoly.

"So the competition of the Canadian transcontinental at the Red
River and at the '500' ensures cheaper freights for all Minnesota
and Dakota, and the effect extends clear down into Nebraska and
Iowa. So, too, the Canadian road's rates at its Pacific terminal
--Victoria--are exercising a most beneficent and ameliorating
influence on the charges of the enormously subsidized Northern
Pacific, forcing down to a reasonable rate Pacific Coast; and as
it climbs down from its extortionate schedule of charges the Union
and Central and Southern and Santa Fe Pacifics will be forced to
do likewise. I'd give something handsome to have had the opportunity
to reply for thirty minutes to Senator Gorman, to present the other
side of the question from the American standpoint. On one point
I am in agreement with you, viz.: that the British flag should be
removed from this continent. This territory along our northern
border should be incorporated into the American Union. It is
ridiculous that Uncle Sam should allow a foreign power to hold it.
We have as much need for it and right to it as England has for
Scotland. If we had a respectable navy and a supply of fortification
guns the problem would be easy of solution, and won't be until then.

"Each day convinces me more and stronger that if we lose this
election McKinley--will be the cause. They make the party say in
its platform 'Rather than surrender any part of our protective
system, the whiskey, tobacco, and oleomargarine excises shall be
repealed.' The Democrats are making much capital out of this.
The tax on lumber and on salt are parts of our 'protective system.'
Now the Mc. plank discloses that rather than reduce the tax on
lumber, the Rep. party will repeal the tax on oleo butter. How
many farmers' votes will that give us? Rather than allow any
lowering of the high taxes on cloth