Southern Comfort

Mississippi's waspish John Rankin waggled his white mane with satisfaction. Said he to the House of Representatives last week: "This regulation is ... the first thing that has brought justice in freight rates to the people of the South and West in the last 50 years." Editorialized the Atlanta Journal: "It has been a long and valiant fight [which] has resulted in a triumph for justice and fair play."

Both were talking about the Interstate Commerce Commission's latest directive to U.S. railroads, ordering them, to file uniform freight rates on rail shipments of manufactured goods to all parts of the U.S. east of the Rockies by Jan. 1. Southerners have long complained that freight rates have been stacked against the South; e.g., it is 20% cheaper to ship some goods from Chicago to New York (890 miles) than from Atlanta to New York (868 miles). By removing these differentials, ICC's order--following a 1947 Supreme Court decision holding such rates discriminatory--will save Southern businessmen an estimated $20 million a year.

With the long fight won, a few skeptical Southerners wondered if the victory might not be a mixed blessing. Since it will bring reductions on rates charged for some 20,000 items, all manufactured goods, some businessmen and farmers feared that the railroads would try to recapture their lost revenue by establishing uniform, but higher, rates on such commodities as cotton, tobacco, coal and chemicals, which make up most of all railroad shipments out of the South.

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