A fifteen-ton car-load of fourth class freight carried all-rail between Chicago and New York at any time during the year 1897 would have brought the railways transporting it $105.00 in gross receipts. There has been no change in the class-rates between Chicago and New York since 1897 and the same quantity of freight, classified in the same way, produces the same gross receipts now that it did in 1897.[E] The rates between Chicago and New York, as is very well known, are the basis of all rates in the region north of the James, Potomac and Ohio Rivers, and east of the Mississippi River and of a large proportion of the rates applicable to traffic originating or destined to any point in that region. Without a change in rates between Chicago and New York there could have been, during the continuance of the system of rate adjustment that has been in force since long prior to the year 1897, no general change in the rates based upon those in force between those cities. WAGES OF RAILWAY EMPLOYEES. More than forty per cent. of the gross receipts of the railways of the United States are expended in the payment of employees, the sums annually paid out for that purpose since 1897 being as follows: Amount paid to Year. employees. 1897 $465,601,581 1898 495,055,618 1899 522,967,896 1900 577,264,841 1901 610,713,701 1902 676,028,592 1903 (a)776,321,415 1904 817,598,810 1905 839,944,680 1906 (a)927,801,653 1907 1,072,386,427 --------------- Total $7,781,685,214 (a) Includes $19,000,000 estimated for Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul in 1903 and $27,000,000 for the Southern Pacific in 1906. It is a matter of common knowledge and of frequent comment that a given sum of money will now buy very much less in labor or commodities than it would in 1897. The change has been gradual but substantially continuous and the aggregate result has been enormous. The consequence of this change has worked great hardship to those whose incomes have not been adjusted to the changed purchasing power of money but fortunately the rates of wages of nearly all workmen and the prices of practically all products of labor expended upon farms or in factories or otherwise have been raised sufficiently to more or less completely offset it. The principal sufferers are those salaried employees whose salaries have not been readjusted and those whose incomes are received under contracts covering long periods of time or are derived from the marketing of commodities or services at prices more or less effectively controlled by custom or statute. Many of the owners of railway bonds are in the second class and all interstate railways are, as to the disposal of their services, in the third class.