Michigan's Advantages In Tranportation Facilities

The great advantages possessed by the people of Michigan in the variety and the cheapness of the means of transportation between their farms, ccanufac toriep, and mines, and the great body of consumera outside the state, are these: 1. Almost the entire state has shor rail communication with the lake ports, and thus eau secure water transportation at cheap rates to the west, the east, and especially to the seaboard, f or its grain, lumber, iron, salt, fruit, and other products. 2. It is traversed by railroads intimately connected with all of the great east and west trunk Unes, and the low est rail rates to the west, the east, the southeast and the Atlantic coast and thus be obtained at all times by its shippers. 3. Lts railroad Unes are interwoven with each other to an unusual degree, and every important junction or point of contact enjoys the advantage of competition, and gets the benefit of low through rates. For some years the iverage charge lor carrying fieight of all the roads doing business in Michigan has been so low as to make them vigorous competitors during the season of navigation with the lake linea. 4. The points in Michigan at which rival railroads come in contact are so numeroua, and their lines cross each other so frequenüy, that no combirationo of the great trunk companies, and no pooling of interests on tbeir part, can prevent local competition trom making itself feit. Ihe experience of the past fully sustains th!s statement and the shippiug points of Michigan have not been without the beneflts of competition even at times when the railroads were in theory acting in entire harmony. 5. Michigan is several hundred miles nearer the seaboard than either lowa, Xebraska, Kansas, Minnesota or Dakota, and practically than Wisconsin, the other grain producing territories of the northwest, which also have cheap landH for sale in larse auantities. Wheat of the same quality will sell in New York for the same price, whether raised in Michigan or farther west, but it can be carried to New York from Michigan at a cheaper rate than from any point beyond the lakes ; therefore the farmer in this state can get for his erop a price as much higher than that which his western competitor can command as the rates of freight are in his favor. As a matter of fact it has durin;i the last few years cost the farmers of the northwest from seven to seventeen cents more per bushei to market their exported wheat than it has those of Michigan, and this difference the producers of this state have realized in the shape of better prices. What is true of wheat, the most valuable staple of this región, is also true of the other surplus products which seek an eastern, south-eastern or foreign market. 6. From nearly all the principal cities of Michigan shipments can be made on the most advantageous terms to the eastern consumers or to Atlantic ports. Many interior towns now compete with Detroit in this respect, and the tendency of railroad management is toward the multiplication of these smaller points of direct through shipment. - "Michigan and lts Resources," üsued by the State Commissioner of Immigration.