DEERING SOUTHWESTERN RAILWAY. The Deering Southwestern Railway Company is owned by the International Harvester Company and is operated in connection with the mill of its subsidiary corporation, the Wisconsin Lumber Company, at Deering, Mo. The officers of the Deering Southwestern are officers of other industrial or terminal lines owned by the Harvester Company. The tap line was incorporated in 1903, and has issued capital stock to the amount of 400,000. There have been one or two amendments to its charter, authorizing the building of extensions.

The Deering Southwestern, as in operation on the date of the hearing, connected with the Frisco at a point known as Deering Junction, and extended in a southwesterly direction for about 11 miles to Converse. It had 5 locomotives, 1 passenger car, 1 combination car, 1 caboose, 22 freight cars, and 66 logging cars. The lumber company itself owned a number of miles of unincorporated logging spurs connecting with the tap line, together with 1 small locomotive and a log loader.

Since the hearing extensions have been completed and put in operation, as the Commission is advised, so that its line now extends from Deering eastward a distance of nearly 14 miles, crossing the Frisco at Blazer and ending at Caruthersville, on the Mississippi River, where a junction is effected with another branch of the Frisco. The original line from Deering to Converse has been extended to Hornersville, a point on the Cotton Belt. The aggregate length of the tracks as thus extended is about 31 miles. Citizens of the town of Caruthersville donated the land for the terminals at that point.

The line as operated at the date of the hearing reached no towns and served no industries other than the proprietary company. The track as extended reaches several towns; and it is claimed that more or less outside tonnage is being developed.

The mill of the lumber company at Deering is about half a mile from the track of the Frisco; and the lumber company also has two small mills down in the timber. The logs are loaded by the lumber company and moved by it to the junction of the spurs with the main track of the tap line; from that point they are taken by the tap line to the mill, at a rate of $1 per 1,000 feet, which is equivalent to 1 cent per 100 pounds, charged up against the lumber company. At the time of the hearing the tap line switched the lumber to the Frisco at Deering Junction. But with the extension of the track the plan contemplated was the delivery by the tap line of the lumber of the proprietary company at Blazer, 7 miles east of the mill. We are given to understand that the operating conditions of the branch of the Frisco connecting with this tap line at Deering Junction are such as to make it no longer practicable to receive the lumber at that point.

At the time of the hearing it was admitted that practically the entire tonnage of the tap line was supplied by the controlling interests, and no passengers were carried. It has subsequently opened a passenger service between Caruthersville and Hornersville; but no figures are given of record. The tap line files annual reports with the Commission and keeps its accounts in accordance with the method prescribed by the Commission.

The only rates published by the Frisco in which the tap line participates apply on lumber and forest products, and the allowance out of those rates to the tap line is uniformly 2 cents per 100 pounds. This is the same as the so-called local rate which it publishes from the mill to the junction point, a distance of one-half mile.

For its service in hauling the products of the mill of the control-ling company to the Frisco at Blazer, a distance of 7 miles, we fix 1-1/2 cents as the maximum division that may lawfully be paid to this tap line out of the rate; we fix the same maximum as the division that may lawfully be paid by the Cotton Belt on traffic delivered to it at Hornersville.