The Railroad Question Part 12

H 4 cents 2-4/5 cents 1-3/5 cents.

I 4-2/5 cents 2-2/5 cents 1-1/5 cents.

J 3-1/5 cents 2-2/5 cents 1 cent.

"When it is considered, in connection with these figures, that the four general cla.s.ses were left by the legislature under the same tariffs as had been enforced by the companies, and, as a rule, first cla.s.s is three times the rate of cla.s.s D, and third and fourth cla.s.s materially higher, the evidence seems conclusive that the rates fixed by law would produce an average materially higher than the average of the whole year, stated by Mr. Mitch.e.l.l at 2-1/2 cents. It seems also probable that, had the rates fixed by this law been applied to the whole business of the line, the interstate as well as the State traffic, it would still have produced a larger average. The latter of course is the proper test. There are little inaccuracies in the material facts as stated by Mr. Mitch.e.l.l which were pointed out at once. For example: In his tabulated statement of pa.s.senger earnings per mile, averaging the gross earnings from transportation of pa.s.sengers who paid any fare, and omitting the large number who went free, the rate is stated at 3 42-100 cents per mile; then he says: 'The law in question proposes to reduce our pa.s.senger rate twenty-five per cent.,' which would have reduced the rate to 2.57 cents per mile, while, the rate fixed by the law complained of was three cents per mile. Then Mr. Mitch.e.l.l proceeds: 'And our freight rates about the same; thus deducting from our present tariff about twenty-five per cent. of our gross earnings.' It was immediately pointed out that the law only applied to strictly State business; that is, to traffic that originated and ended in the State of Wisconsin. All other traffic was interstate commerce, and could not be controlled by State legislation. The volume of business which would be affected by the law would therefore be comparatively small--estimated at not over ten per cent., of the total traffic of the line. Hence, if the rates fixed by the law were twenty-five per cent. less than the rates the company had been in the habit of collecting (which was denied), it could not possibly have 'deducted from its present tariff' more than two and one-half per cent., instead of twenty-five per cent. as stated by Mr. Mitch.e.l.l.

"It was claimed that the facts were, that the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Company, in its efforts to bankrupt the Lake Superior and Mississippi Company, had many of its interstate rates so low that it had resulted in loss, and that its other rates had been made unreasonably high in order to recoup this loss, and that the State of Wisconsin was compelled to pay a part of the expense of the transportation of favored sections of the State of Minnesota."

All through the Granger contests the railways have weakened the force of their arguments by their misrepresentation of facts and by their extravagant predictions of ruin. The companies were continually proclaiming: 'If this or that is done, it will ruin us; it will ruin the State,' when, in fact, a road cannot be mentioned that has suffered from State legislation. Nineteen years ago no railroad manager could have written what Mr. Stickney writes to-day, and few railroad managers would write to-day what Mr. Mitch.e.l.l wrote then. And yet, such is the change which public sentiment is undergoing upon these questions, that the utterances of many of our present railroad authors will appear as absurd a few years hence as Mr. Mitch.e.l.l's letter of nineteen years ago appears to us now.

Many railroad attorneys have since been guilty of resorting to the sophistry employed by President Mitch.e.l.l in that strange letter which he addressed to the Governor of Wisconsin. Even so distinguished a gentleman as Hon. James W. McDill, now a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission, made in 1888, as a member of a railroad lobby, the following remarkable statements before the Railroad Committee of the General a.s.sembly of Iowa, in a speech opposing a proposed reduction of the pa.s.senger rate of first-cla.s.s roads from three to two cents per mile:

"The proposition, if confined to the first-cla.s.s roads of Iowa, proposes a one-third reduction of their revenues from pa.s.senger business.... We have earned in Iowa by first-cla.s.s roads annually about $13,000,000, and a reduction of one cent, or from a rate of three cents to two, will reduce their revenues about $5,000,000 a year.... Thus it is seen that it is proposed to take from the revenues of a part of the railroads of Iowa, annually, almost as much as all the railroads of Iowa have paid for taxes in nine years ($6,549,505.84)."

Mr. McDill was a member of the Iowa Railroad Commission for several years. He may, therefore, be presumed to have known that the State of Iowa could not, and did not propose to, regulate interstate traffic, and that the thirteen million dollars railroad revenue to which he referred was derived both from interstate and State traffic; that the latter was only about one-fourth of the former, and that therefore the proposed reduction on the basis of schedule rates would have cut down the net revenue of the roads only about one million instead of five million dollars. But Mr. McDill himself states that the average rate earned by all the railroads of the United States was, for the year 1886, only 2.181 cents per pa.s.senger per mile. It certainly was not over 2-1/2 cents per mile for the first-cla.s.s roads of Iowa. Thus the proposed reduction, instead of being one cent per mile, as stated by Mr. McDill, was only one-half cent per mile; and it only applied to the local business of the first-cla.s.s roads. In other words, the bill under consideration, had it been enacted into law, would have caused a reduction of 20 per cent. on about 25 per cent. of the total revenue from pa.s.senger business of the first-cla.s.s roads, or of five per cent.

on their total income from pa.s.senger traffic in the State of Iowa. It will be noticed that Mr. McDill in his calculation made no allowance whatever for the increase of business which would have followed such a reduction. The gain from this source would probably have greatly exceeded the loss due to this small reduction in the fare. In the same address Mr. McDill made many other equally fallacious statements.

One of the most devoted advocates of the interests of railroad managers is Marshall M. Kirkman. He is the author of a number of books and pamphlets upon railway subjects, among them a pamphlet ent.i.tled "The Relation of the Railroads of the United States to the People and the Commercial and Financial Interests of the Country."

Mr. Kirkman introduces his subject with the following rather remarkable statement:

"I shall show that while the railways of the United States are designated as monopolies, they are not so in fact.

Accused of disregarding the interests of the community, I will show that they are abnormally sensitive to their obligations in this direction. While legislatures claim the right to fix rates, I shall show that the abnormal conditions under which the railway system has grown up and its chaotic nature render the exercise of such a privilege impossible. I will show that while it is a.s.sumed that rates may be fixed arbitrarily, they must, on the contrary, be based on natural causes, the compet.i.tion of carriers, their necessities and the rivalries of conflicting markets and trade centers; conditions manifestly impossible to determine or regulate in advance, and therefore beyond the control of legislation.... While a division of business (by pooling) is thought to be contrary to the interests of the people, I shall show that it is the legitimate fruit of indiscriminate railway building and offers the only escape from the conditions such practice engenders. I shall show that, while it is a.s.sumed that rates may be based progressively or otherwise on distance, the enforcement of such a principle would restrict the source of supply, and, in so far as this was the case, render great markets or centers of industry impossible."

Speaking of the importance of the railroad, Mr. Kirkman says: "Superseding every other form of inland conveyance, it determines the location of business centers, and vitalizes by its presence, or blasts by its absence." He contends that rigid and scrutinizing supervision should be exercised by the Government over the location of railroads, and that only such lines should be permitted to be built as afford reasonable grounds for profitable enterprise. "It should be," he says, "an axiom in our day that a government that permits or encourages the construction of two railways where one would suffice is, to the extent that it does this, a public nuisance." Mr. Kirkman here makes it the duty of the Government to arbitrarily meddle with railroad affairs. He would give the Government the power to determine when and where an additional railroad is needed, and to prohibit the construction of any new road that has not the Government sanction. The interests of a thousand towns might suffer for want of adequate transportation facilities, individuals and communities might be anxious to build their own lines for the development of local resources, but all railroad enterprise is doomed to a standstill until a conservative governmental commission has been entirely satisfied that a prospected road will pay and not deprive existing roads of any part of their revenue. There can be no doubt that if such a policy were ever adopted in America, few roads would be built without having first pa.s.sed the ordeal of a legal injunction, and many a prospected road, though greatly needed, would remain unbuilt because its promoters would be discouraged by the delay and cost of litigation.

But while this author is perfectly willing to trust the Government with the great responsibility of prohibiting the construction of proposed roads, he is not willing to have it exercise the power to determine what are reasonable rates. He tries to sustain his objection by the following argument: "The fixing of rates upon a railroad is as delicate a process as that of determining the pulse of a sick man. They cannot be determined abstractly, or in advance of the wants of business, but must be adjusted from hour to hour to conform to its fluctuations. Five thousand men find active employment in the United States in connection with the important duty of making rates. Each case requires particular investigation and involves, in many instances, prolonged study and research. The duty requires men of marked experience and capacity. They and men like them are the silent, unseen power that moves great enterprises of every nation. In the case of railroads we may enumerate those having official positions, but the experts from whom the official heads derive information and a.s.sistance cannot be cla.s.sified. They comprise a vast army of experienced and able men familiar with railway traffic and quick to respond to its requirements. Such a body of men could not be organized by a government, or, if organized, would rapidly deteriorate under conditions so unfavorable for their support and development. Whatever authority exercises the duty of fixing rates must take up the subject in the same methodical way and, acting through skilled agents, pursue its inquiries and determine its results with the same experience, minute care and _conscientious regard_ for the technical requirements of business that the railway companies observe.

No government can possess the facilities for perfecting so vast and intricate an organization and at the same time render it responsive to the public good. The labor is too great and the responsibility too remote. It could not move with sufficient quickness to respond to the actual requirements of trade, and too many restrictions would necessarily govern its actions. For these and other equally important reasons governments must always be satisfied to restrict their offices in this direction."

Speaking of the men who are commonly termed railroad magnates, Mr.

Kirkman says: "They alone possess the needed administrative ability that the situation demands. They not only provide largely the capital, but they discover the fields wherein it may be used most advantageously.

They are the advance guard of all great enterprises, the natural leaders of men. They are an integral part of the country, a necessary and valuable element, without which its natural resources would avail little." This is a very strong statement in the face of the fact that but very few of the cla.s.s of men to whom Mr. Kirkman refers ever built a line of road. They have usually found it more profitable to "gobble"

roads already built than to construct new lines.

According to this author the public have no reason to complain of railroads; on the contrary, the latter have always been the victims of public persecution, and "every species of folly, every conceivable device of malice, the impossible requirements of ignorance, the selfish cunning of personal interests, the ravings of demagogues, the disappointments, envies, prejudices and jealousies of mankind have each in turn and in unison sought to injure the railway interest."

But probably the most extravagant pa.s.sage in the whole treatise is the one referring to special rates, which he calls "the foundation and b.u.t.tress of business," without which it could not be carried on. He expresses the opinion that without the continued and intelligent use of such rates "our cities would soon be as dest.i.tute of manufactories as one of the bridle paths of Afghanistan," and then continues: "The special rate of carriers is like the delicate fluid that anoints and lubricates the joints of the human body. It is an essential oil. Without it the wheels of commerce would cease and we should quickly revert to the period when the stage-coach and the overland teamster fixed the limits of commerce and the stature of cities."

The most recent and probably the most radical of Mr. Kirkman's books is "Railway Rates and Government Control." It would lead us too far from our subject to enter into a discussion of Mr. Kirkman's errors; in fact, it might prove an endless task. Suffice it to say that in discussing his subject he revels in such phrases as: "Subject too vast to be comprehended." "Acts of agrarian legislation and foolish manifestations of disappointment and hate." "The rabble will avail itself of every excuse to pa.s.s laws that would, under other circ.u.mstances, be called robberies." "Ignorance and demagogism." "Government interference, the panacea of cranks and schemers." "Only understood by the few." "These people are as sincere as they are ignorant." "Governments have no commercial sense." "Those who condemn them are not so dishonest as ignorant, and not so malicious as foolish." "Silly people." "Justice and common honesty are systematically denied [the railroads]." "Legal means of plundering them." "The intelligence and facilities of Government are but one step above the barbarian." "Those who use railroads should pay for them," etc., etc.

Mr. Kirkman's argument is in substance: Rate-making is a difficult subject. The people are too ignorant to understand it. Those who carry on the Government are for the most part fools and demagogues, and are utterly unfit to do justice to such a task. Railroad men are wise and just, and neither the people nor the Government should meddle with the railroad business. In order to place a true estimate upon Mr. Kirkman's utterances, one should remember that he is a railroad employe as well as the patentee and vendor of a number of railroad account forms which are extensively used by railroad companies.

The Chicago _Tribune_, in reviewing this last literary production of Mr.

Kirkman, says:

"The great fault of Mr. Kirkman's statements is that they are often so general in character as to be both true and false at the same time.... He does not seem to comprehend the nature of the railroad, or to perceive the danger of allowing a railroad to exercise its powers uncontrolled. He denies the State's right to interfere with any discriminations which a railway corporation chooses to adopt. He would allow railways to fix whatever charges they please for long hauls and short hauls.... Mr. Kirkman does not adduce a single fact in support of these remarkable views. He simply says: 'Railroads cannot, if they would, maintain any inequitable local tariff.' This is not argument, it is simply a.s.sertion. Every one who has learned the alphabet of this question knows that railways have been exceedingly unjust wherever compet.i.tion or the law did not restrict their powers. If this were the proper place for it we would give the author instances of this injustice by the hundred, and almost any book on the subject refers to such cases by the thousand.... When confronted with the facts substantiating such charges the author answers the argument by exclaiming: 'But how absurd! But how untrue! Our commercial morals are equal to the highest in the world....'

Scarcely an a.s.sertion can be taken without qualification.

The author fairly revels in half-truths.... The book may have its merits, but they are too modest to reveal themselves."

It is a failing of mankind to take for truth without further investigation any a.s.sertion that has often been reiterated. Most people are p.r.o.ne to believe that an a.s.sertion made by a thousand hearsay witnesses is true, overlooking the possibility of their drawing from a common false source. But it is surprising that an author like Prof.

Arthur T. Hadley should fall into such an error. In his otherwise excellent work, "Railroad Transportation, Its History and Its Laws," Mr.

Hadley bases a number of his deductions upon false premises advanced by railroad managers, and arrives at conclusions which appear strange when their source is considered. In the chapter on railroad legislation Professor Hadley says: "But a more powerful force than the authority of the courts was working against the Granger system of regulation. The laws of trade could not be violated with impunity. The effects were most sharply felt in Wisconsin. The law reducing railroad rates to the basis which compet.i.tive points enjoyed left nothing to pay fixed charges. In the second year of its operation, no Wisconsin road paid a dividend; only four paid interest on their bonds. Railroad construction had come to a standstill. Even the facilities of existing roads could not be kept up. Foreign capital refused to invest in Wisconsin; the development of the State was sharply checked; the very men who had most favored the law found themselves heavy losers.... By the time the Supreme Court published the Granger decisions, the fight had been settled, not by const.i.tutional limitations, but by industrial ones."

These statements are either utterly untrue or greatly misleading. Mr.

Hadley ought to know that the railroad companies in the Granger States never complied with the letter, much less with the spirit of the law.

Whenever they made an apparent effort to live up to it they only did so to make it odious. Rates were never reduced by the legislature to the basis previously enjoyed by compet.i.tive points, but merely to the average charge which had obtained before the pa.s.sage of the law. As a rule the railroad revenues increased. If any companies failed to earn enough to pay fixed charges it was simply because they were determined not to do so. A non-payment of dividends did not injure the managers, but simply other stockholders of the road. A permanent establishment of the principle of non-discrimination, on the other hand, would have benefited stockholders, while prejudicing the speculative interest which managers had in the roads. Railroad construction came, after the financial panic of 1873, to a practical standstill throughout the United States; and if the Granger States did not get their share of the very small total increase during the five years following the panic, it was due solely to a conspiracy on the part of the railroad managers to misrepresent and pervert the legislation of these States. The laws, as has already been stated, were finally repealed, not because the people had tired of them or regarded them unwise or unjust, but because it was hoped that the commissioner system would prove more efficient. It was offered as a compromise measure and was accepted as such by the railroad managers, who, in their eagerness to rid themselves of the restrictions imposed by the Granger laws, gave every a.s.surance of complete submission to the requirements of the proposed legislation.

Mr. Hadley even goes so far as to defend railroad pools. "Unluckily," he says, "we place these combinations outside of the protection of the law, and by giving them this precarious and almost illegal character we tempt them to seek present gain, even at the sacrifice of their own future interests. We regard them, and we let them regard themselves, as a means of momentary profit and speculation, instead of recognizing them as responsible public agencies of lasting influence and importance." We can partially account for this author's defense of pooling when we are informed that he accepts it as an axiom that "combination does not produce arbitrary results any more than compet.i.tion produces beneficent ones." Referring to railroad profits, Mr. Hadley says: "The statement that corporations make too much money is scarcely borne out by the facts. The average return of the railroads of this country is only four per cent., the bondholders receiving an average of four and a half per cent., the stockholders of two and a half per cent. True, much of the stock is water, not representing any capital actually expended; but, even making allowance for this, it is hardly probable that the roads are earning more than five per cent. on the total investment. This a.s.sumes an average cost of $45,000 per mile, implying that about half of the stock and one-sixth of the bonds are water." Mr. Hadley would probably have come much nearer the truth if he had a.s.sumed three-fourths of the stock and one-fourth of the bonds to be water. Even Mr. Poor, who certainly cannot be accused by railroad men of being inimical to their interests, places the average cost of the railroads of this country no higher than at $30,000 per mile; and this estimate, it should be remembered, includes the value of the large donations made to railroad companies by the public. With a full understanding of all the circ.u.mstances, Mr. Poor said of railroad investments several years ago that if the water were taken out of them no cla.s.s of investments in this country would pay as well. In the face of this statement Mr. Hadley would do well to revise his figures.

We find, however, in Prof. Hadley's book also eminently sound views, like the following: "If the object of a railroad manager is simply to pay as large a dividend as possible for the current year, he can best do it by squeezing his local tariff, of which he is sure, and securing through traffic at the expense of other roads by specially low rates; that is, by a policy of heavy discrimination. But the permanent effect of such a policy is to destroy the local trade, which gives a road its best and surest custom, and to build up a trade which can go by another route whenever it pleases. The permanent effect of such a policy is ruinous to the railroad as well as the local shipper." And he continues: "By securing publicity of management you do much to prevent the permanent interests of the railroads from being sacrificed to temporary ones. By protecting the permanent interests of the public you enlist the stockholders and the best cla.s.s of railroad managers on the side of sound policy."

Edward Atkinson, in an essay ent.i.tled "The Railway, the Farmer and the Public," endeavors to prove that the farmers have no cause for complaining against the railroad, because rates of transportation have been greatly reduced during the past twenty years. Speaking of the reductions made in freight rates in the State of New York, he says: "Had the rate of 1870 been charged on the tariff of 1883 the sum would have been at 1.7016 cents on 9,286,216,628 tons, carried one mile, $158,014,262; the actual charge was $83,464,919, making a difference of $74,549,343 saved on one year's traffic on the lines reported in New York." It either did not occur to Mr. Atkinson, or, if it did occur to him, he failed to mention it, that these freight reductions were forced upon the railroads chiefly by water compet.i.tion, and that if the railroad companies had not saved these seventy-four million dollars for the people, the ca.n.a.l lines, always subject to compet.i.tion, would have saved a large part of it. With equal propriety might it be said that the railroads, by meeting ca.n.a.l compet.i.tion, saved for themselves in the year mentioned a goodly share of their gross earnings. Such reasoning is absurd, and it is high time that the bubble of an argument so often used by railroad advocates be p.r.i.c.ked. As Mr. Atkinson has introduced the farmer, let us apply his rule to him. There was a time when the farmer sold his corn for a dollar a bushel. To-day he sells it for thirty cents. He therefore saves to the people of this country, on 2,000,000,000 bushels, the enormous sum of $1,400,000,000. There is scarcely an industry in existence to which this argument does not apply with equal force. Mr. Atkinson virtually admits that railroads charge all the traffic will bear when he says: "The charge which can be put upon the wheat of Dakota or Iowa for moving it to market is fixed by the price at which East Indian wheat can be sold in Market Lane." He is opposed to the Interstate Commerce Law, which he regards as "obnoxious measures of national interference and futile attempts to control this great work." He would rely chiefly upon the publicity of accounts made by railway officers, as secured by the private publication of Poor's Railway Manual, for all needed regulation, but concedes the establishment of a figurehead commission, concluding his remarks upon the subject as follows: "A commission which may bring public opinion to bear upon railway corporations may well be established, and there the work of the legislator may well cease." When we consider the powerful agencies employed by railroads to create public sentiment in their favor we can well understand the inefficiency of such a milk-and-water method of control.

One of the most radical books ever published at the instigation of railroad managers appeared in 1888, under the t.i.tle "The People and the Railways." Its author is Appleton Morgan, who attempts to "allay the animosity towards the railway interests" as shown in Mr. James F.

Hudson's book, "The Railways and the Republic." The means which Mr.

Morgan chooses are not well calculated to accomplish his purpose, for the ma.s.ses of the people prefer in such a controversy arguments to ridicule and sarcasm, weapons of literary warfare to which this author resorts altogether too freely. Mr. Morgan's opinion as to the benefits of centralized wealth and trade combinations differs greatly from that held by the great majority of the American people. He says: "The fact, the truth is, that (however it may be in other countries) the acc.u.mulation of wealth and centralization of commerce in great combinations has never, in the United States, been a source of oppression or of poverty to the non-capitalist or wage-worker." There is scarcely an evil in railroad management which Mr. Morgan does not defend. Pools, construction companies, rebates, discriminations and over-capitalization all find favor in Mr. Morgan's eye. "Rebates and discriminations," he says, "are neither peculiar to railways nor dangerous to the 'Republic.' They are as necessary and as harmless to the farmer as is the chromo which the seamstress or the shop girl gets with her quarter-pound of tea from the small tea merchant, and no more dangerous to the latter than are the aforesaid chromos to the small recipients." Pools and combinations receive an unusually large share of Mr. Morgan's attention. A few selections from his effusions in their favor may be given here, viz.:

"These pools are the legitimate and necessary results of the rechartering over and over again of railway companies to transact business between the same points by paralleling each other. So long as the people in their legislatures will thus charter parallel lines serving identical points--thus dividing territory they once granted entire--it is not exactly clear how they can complain if the lines built (by money invested, if not on the good faith of the people, at least in reliance upon an undivided business) combine to save themselves from bankruptcy." And again: "Against the inequality of their own rates and the hardship of the long and short haul (in other words, against the discrimination of nature and of physical laws) no less than against the peril of bankruptcy and the consequent speculative tendency of their stocks (after which may come the wrecking, the watering, and the vast individual fortunes), the railways of this republic have endeavored, by establishment of pool commissions, to defend both the public and themselves.... The honest administration of railways for all interests, the payment of their fixed charges, the solvency of their securities, the faithful and valuable performance of their duties as carriers, can be conserved in but one way--by living tariffs, such as the pools once guaranteed."

In the following pa.s.sage this author denies to the State the right to regulate rates: "Granting that they [the railroads] must carry freights for the public in such a way as not to injure either the public or the freight in the carrying, most emphatically (it seems to me) it does not follow that they must add to the value of the freights they carry by charging only such rates as the public or the owners of the freight insist on."

But Mr. Morgan's indignation rises to the highest pitch in his discussion of the Interstate Commerce Act. He fears that it will cause the downfall of our liberties and sees in the background the Venetian Bridge of Sighs and the French Bastille. He asks: "Why should for any public reasons--for any reason of public safety--the Interstate Commerce Law have come to stay?" He then berates the act as follows: "To begin with, the present act abounds in punishments for and prohibitions against an industry chartered by the people, but nowhere extends to that industry a morsel of approval or protection. It bristles with penalties, legal, equitable, penal, and as for contempt, against railway companies, but nowhere alludes to any possible case in which a railway company might, by accident, be in the right, and the patron, customer, pa.s.senger or shipper in the wrong.... The const.i.tutions of civilized nations, for the last few centuries at least, have provided that not even guilt should be punished except by due process of law, and have uniformly refused to set even that due process in motion except upon a complaint of grievance. But the Interstate Commerce Law denies the one and does away with the necessity for the other. That statute provides that the commission it creates shall proceed 'in such manner and by such means as it shall deem proper,' or 'on its own motion,' and that 'no complaint shall at any time be dismissed because of the absence of direct damage to the complainant.' Even the Venetian council often provided for a certain and described hole in the wall through which the anonymous bringers of charges should thrust their accusations. Even the court of star chamber was known to dismiss inquisitions when it found that no wrong had been done. But the statute of interstate commerce appears to issue _lettres de cachet_ against anything in the shape of a railway company--to scatter them broadcast, and to invite any one who happens to have leisure to fill them out, by inserting the name of a railway company. It says to the bystander: 'Drop us a postal card, or mention to any of our commissioners, or to a mutual friend, the name of any railway company of which you may have heard, and so give us jurisdiction to inquire if that company may have by chance omitted to dot an i or cross a t in its ledgers, or whether any one of its hundreds of thousands of agents--in the rush of a day's business, or in a shipper's hurry to catch a train--may have named a rate not on the schedule then being prepared at headquarters, or charged a sixpence less than some other agent 250 miles down the line may have accepted a week ago for what might turn out to be a fraction more mileage service in the same general direction. No particular form is necessary. Drop in to luncheon with our commission any day between twelve and one, and mention the name of a railway company. The railway company may have done you no damage, nor grieved you in any way; just mention the railroad, and we will take jurisdiction of its private (or quasi-public) affairs. Or, if you don't happen to have time to mention it, we will take jurisdiction anyhow, 'of our own motion,' of any railway company whose name we find in the Official Gazette. It really does not matter which; any one will do."

This is a fair example of the literature on the Interstate Commerce Law paid for by railroad men.

Mr. Stickney, although a railroad president, takes an entirely different view of the situation. He considers the law inadequate to bring about the reforms needed. He says: "This enormous business is now in the control of several hundred petty chieftains, who are practically independent sovereigns, exercising functions and prerogatives in defiance of the laws, and practically denying their amenability to the laws of the country. If the Government would seek to bring them to terms and compel them to recognize and obey the laws, it must use the means necessary to accomplish the end. It must have executive officers sufficient in number as well as armed with an adequate power and dignity to command their respect.... The power conferred upon them [the Interstate Commerce Commission] to enforce their judicial orders is the power 'to scold.' The penalties of the law which the courts are in power to impose are certainly severe, but the law has been operated for about four years without any convictions, and yet no well-informed person is ignorant of the fact that the law has not been obeyed. The president of a large system is said to have remarked that 'if all who had offended against the law were convicted there would not be jails enough in the United States to hold them.' It is evident that the Government has not provided adequate machinery for enforcing the law."

Mr. Stickney is correct in his statement that adequate machinery for enforcement of the law has not been provided, but he does not give sufficient credit to the law or the commission. While much work remains to be done, much progress has been made.

He is of the opinion that the public welfare would be furthered if the National Government a.s.sumed the sole control of railroads. He gives his reasons for the change which he proposes, as follows:

"There are many reasons besides these in the interest of uniformity which make it desirable to transfer the entire control of this important matter to the regulation of the Nation. First, because of its const.i.tution and more extended sessions, Congress is able to consider the subject with greater deliberation, and therefore with more intelligence, than can a legislature composed of members who, as a rule, hold their office for but one short session of about sixty days' duration. There would also be removed from local legislation a fruitful source of corruption, which is gradually sapping the foundations of public morality.... In the second place, the problem of regulating railway tolls and managing railways is essentially and practically indivisible, by State lines or otherwise, and therefore it is not clear but that whenever the question may come before the courts it may be held that the authority of Congress to deal with interstate traffic carries with it, as a necessary and inseparable part of the subject, to regulate the traffic which is now a.s.sumed to be controlled by the several States.

The courts have held that the States have authority to regulate strictly State traffic in the absence of Congressional action, but their decisions do not preclude the doctrine that Congress may have exclusive jurisdiction whenever it may choose to exercise the authority. There is a line of reasoning which would lead to that conclusion. It may be that many will not care to follow the lead of the writer as to the measure of aggregate net revenue which railway companies are ent.i.tled to collect in tolls, but it is evident that before the tolls can be intelligently determined some measure of such aggregate revenue must be ascertained. The question would then arise, what proportion must be levied upon State and interstate traffic respectively? If the State should refuse to levy its share (and how could such share be ascertained?), then more than its share would have to be levied on interstate traffic, and thus the State by indirection would be able to do what the Const.i.tution prohibits. Of course, when the Const.i.tution was adopted railways and railway traffic were unknown. But it was a similar question which brought the thirteen original States together into one nation, under the present Const.i.tution. At least the first movement toward amending the original Articles of Confederation was to give Congress enlarged power over the subject of commerce."

In reply to this it may be said that it will be an unfortunate day for the States when they surrender the power to control their home affairs.

Differences between State and interstate rates could easily be adjusted by the National and State commissions and by the courts. It certainly ought not to be difficult for such tribunals to see that a rate which is made higher or lower, as it may be for State or interstate traffic, is wrong.

Mr. Stickney has fallen into the error common to railroad men in believing that lower rates of transportation will not prevail in the future. There are many reasons why it is probable that they will be lower. Present rates are highly profitable on well located lines.

Labor-saving inventions will increase, and roads will be built and operated more cheaply. Lines will be located with lower grades, lighter curvature and more directness. Business will increase largely, and the ratio of expenses will decrease. Steel will be improved in quality and will be subst.i.tuted for iron. A heavier rail and more permanent roadway will be used. Rates of interest will rule lower, and there will be much more economy in superintending. Extravagant salaries to favorites will be reduced, and sinecures and parasites will be cut off from the payrolls. Lower wages are inevitable as our population becomes more dense.

A very interesting and instructive author upon railroad subjects is Charles Francis Adams, Jr., ex-president of the Union Pacific Railroad and formerly a member of the Board of Railroad Commissioners of the State of Ma.s.sachusetts. After twenty years' constant a.s.sociation with railroad men, Mr. Adams should certainly know the character of his quondam colleagues. In his book, "Railroads, Their Origin and Problems,"

he says of them: "Lawlessness and violence among themselves [_i. e._, the various railroad systems], the continual effort of each member to protect itself and to secure the advantage over others, have, as they usually do, bred a general spirit of distrust, bad faith and cunning, until railroad officials have become hardly better than a race of horse-jockeys on a large scale. There are notable exceptions to this statement, but, taken as a whole, the tone among them is indisputably low. There is none of that steady confidence in each other, that easy good faith, that _esprit du corps_, upon which alone system and order can rest. On the contrary, the leading idea in the mind of the active railroad agent is that some one is always cheating him, or that he is never getting his share in something. If he enters into an agreement, his life is pa.s.sed in watching the other parties to it, lest by some cunning device they keep it in form and break it in spirit. Peace is with him always a condition of semi-warfare, while honor for its own sake and good faith apart from self-interest are, in a business point of view, symptoms of youth and a defective education." And again, in an address delivered before the Commercial Club of Boston in December, 1888, Mr. Adams expressed his opinion concerning the average railroad manager of to-day as follows: "That the general railroad situation of the country is at present unsatisfactory is apparent. Stockholders are complaining; directors are bewildered; bankers are frightened. Yet that the Interstate Commerce Act is in the main responsible for all these results, remains to be proved. In my opinion, the difficulty is far more deep-seated and radical. In plain words, it does not lie in any act of legislation, State or National; and it does lie in the covetousness, want of good faith and low moral tone of those in whose hands the management of the railroad system now is; in a word, in the absence among men of any high standard of commercial honor. These are strong words, and yet, as the result of a personal experience stretching over nearly twenty years, I make bold to say they are not so strong as the occasion would justify. The railroad system of this country, especially of the regions west of Chicago, is to-day managed on principles which--unless a change of heart occurs, and that soon--must inevitably lead to financial disaster of the most serious kind. There is among the lines composing that system an utter disregard of those fundamental ideas of truth, fair play and fair dealing which lies at the foundation, not only of the Christian faith, but of civilization itself. With them there is but one rule--that, many years ago, put by Wordsworth into the mouth of Rob Roy:

"'The simple rule, the good old plan, That he shall take who has the power, And he shall keep who can.'"

As regards the causes of the Granger movement, Mr. Adams says, in the work above mentioned: "That it [the Granger episode] did not originate without cause has already been pointed out. It is quite safe to go further, and to say that the movement was a necessary one, and through its results has made a solution of the railroad problem possible in this country. At the time that movement took shape the railroad corporations were in fact rapidly a.s.suming a position which could not be tolerated.

Corporations, owning and operating the highways of commerce, claimed for themselves a species of immunity from the control of the law-making power. When laws were pa.s.sed with a view to their regulation they received them in a way which was at once arrogant and singularly injudicious. The officers entrusted with the execution of those laws they contemptuously ignored. Sheltering themselves behind the Dartmouth College decision, they practically undertook to set even public opinion at defiance. Indeed, there can be no doubt that those representing these corporations had at this juncture not only become fully educated up to the idea that the gross inequalities and ruinous discriminations to which in their business they were accustomed were necessary incidents to it which afforded no just ground of complaint to any one, but they also thought that any attempt to rectify them was a gross outrage on the elementary principles both of common sense and of const.i.tutional law. In other words, they had thoroughly got it into their heads that they, as common carriers, were in no way bound to afford equal facilities to all, and, indeed, that it was in the last degree absurd and unreasonable to expect them to do so. The Granger method was probably as good a method of approaching men in this frame of mind as could have been devised."

Speaking of the educational value of railroad compet.i.tion, Mr. Adams says: "Undoubtedly the fierce struggles between rival corporations which marked the history of railroad development, both here and in England, were very prominent factors in the work of forcing the systems of the two countries up to their present degree of efficiency. Railroad compet.i.tion has been a great educator for railroad men. It has not only taught them how much they could do, but also how very cheaply they could do it. Under the strong stimulus of rivalry they have done not only what they declared were impossibilities, but what they really believed to be such."

Mr. Adams has, from his long a.s.sociation with railroad managers, imbibed one heresy which is in strange discord with the general soundness of his opinions. He holds that the railroad system was left to develop upon a false basis, inasmuch as the American people relied for protecting the community from abuses upon general laws authorizing the freest possible railroad construction everywhere and by any one. It can therefore not be surprising that Mr. Adams is an advocate of the legalized pool. He is of the opinion that secret combinations among railroads, inasmuch as they always have existed, always will exist as long as the railroad system continues as it now is. Hence he proposes to legalize a practice which the law cannot prevent, and by so doing to enable the railroads to confederate themselves in a manner which shall be at once both public and responsible. The reply might be made that there are many other conspiracies which the law cannot always prevent, but that this is no reason why conspiracies should be legalized. If pools and other railroad abuses had, since the beginning of the railroad era, been treated as crimes and misdemeanors, and punished as such by the imposition of heavy fines, few people would to-day be ready to offer apologies for them. If the time shall ever come when pools must be legalized it will be time for railroad control equivalent to Government ownership.