William Larrabee

“ It has been reserved to railroad managers to demonstrate to the public that a power has been allowed to grow up which has assumed the right to counteract the dispensations of Providence, to enrich the slothful, to impoverish the industrious, to curtail the profits of remunerative industries and revive by bounties those languishing for want of vitality, to humble proud and self-reliant marts of trade and to build up cities in the desert. It will scarcely be claimed even by railroad managers that their policy of thus arbitrarily regulating commerce originated in philanthropic motives. ”

“ It is a humiliating spectacle to see the self-debased railroad officials confessing their own guilt by refusing to testify before the Interstate Commerce Commission on the ground that they would thereby criminate themselves. Congress should have sufficient respect for this commission and for itself to provide a way to punish such recusant witnesses who are willing to degrade themselves in so base a manner. Whether the law will eventually be respected by all depends upon the vigilance and courage of the people. ”

“ It is difficult to understand how a free and enlightened community could so long and so patiently bear railroad despotism. Individual discrimination might, under the veil of secrecy, long escape notice, but that a system of open and widespread discrimination affecting every non-competitive and even many a competitive point in the State, doing visible and irreparable injury to thousands of shippers, and infringing upon the rights of millions, should long be borne by a free and enlightened people, is a strange phenomenon of democratic endurance. ”

“ Do railway investments form the only property in the land which requires the protection of the law? Are we to understand these judgments and their indorsers to mean that because railroad property will depreciate if certain principles of justice prevail, therefore justice is to be set aside for the benefit of railway property? If the magnitude of interests involved is to be of weight in deciding such questions, let us put against 'the hundreds of millions' of railway property on the one side the thousands of millions of private property on the other. ”

“ In the exercise of this gigantic power we have seen an East India Company created, which is in itself a sovereignty, which has subverted empires and set up new dynasties, and has not only made war, but war against its legitimate sovereign! ”

“ In a country of 'magnificent distances' like ours the cost of transportation is one of the foremost factors affecting the capacity for progress; and the artificial enhancement of freight and passenger rates due to this false capitalization has been a far more serious bar to our material development than public opinion has yet realized. The hundreds of millions of wealth so suddenly accumulated by our railroad monarchs is the measure of this iniquitous taxation, this perverted distribution of wealth. ”

“ Being absolutely uncontrolled in his action, he finds it an easy matter, by temporarily diverting business from his line, by the increase of operating expenses and by repressing growing industries, and in many other ways, to curtail the business of his road and diminish its revenues. He can court losses in a thousand different ways discernible neither to the courts nor the general public. In short, it is in the power of any railroad manager to manipulate such a trial in his own interest, and, if determined, to obtain a verdict against any tariff not of his own making. ”

“ Had Judge Brewer taken the pains to read on, he would have found in section 2 of the Bill of Rights the following:
"All political power is inherent in the people; government is instituted for the protection, security and benefit of the people."
It is strange that the learned Judge failed to see the difference between "men," the creatures of God, "by nature free and equal," and "possessing certain inalienable rights," and corporations, the creatures of man, having no rights except those which the State sees fit to give them. ”

“ Shall we restrain corporation management within proper limits and make corporations serve the public welfare, or shall we let the abuses go on until the people, under the lead of another Jackson, demand emphatically the application of some remedy, for better or for worse? Perhaps Government ownership, perhaps something else. Nations, like individuals, should profit by the experience of the past. ”

“ The repeal of the Interstate Commerce Law, or the adoption of such amendments as are demanded by railroad men, would be interpreted by them as an abandonment of all its principles and would inaugurate an era of unprecedented railroad oppression. History ever repeats itself. Unchecked license will always lead to arrogance and despotism, and any power which is long permitted to defy the state will in time control it. ”

“ They looked upon the railroads as the source of their prosperity and upon railroad managers as high-minded philanthropists and public benefactors, with whom to quarrel would be an act of sordid ingratitude, and they paid but little attention to the means employed by them to exact an undue share of their earnings. Railroad men did whatever they could to foster through their emissaries this misplaced adoration. ”

“ To protect the rights of the ordinary shipper against the favorite of the railway would so hamper the operations of trade, it has been repeated times without number, as to take away the independence of the railways and destroy the freedom of competition. Yet, after years of argument that Government has no constitutional power to interfere with the railways, and of demonstration that all such interference must be ill-advised and injurious, the railway logic comes to the surprising climax of appealing to legislation for the aid of the law in upholding their efforts to prevent competition. ”

“ But what must be a passenger's surprise when he finds that the judge who to-morrow is to preside at the trial of a case in which the railroad company is a party to-day accepts free transportation at its hands. A judge may scorn the charge that he is influenced by a railroad pass, but his fellow-passenger who has paid his fare cannot understand why the railroad company should give passes to one class of people and refuse them to others, if it does not consider one more than others to be in a position to reciprocate its favors. ”

“ The people of the United States are engaged in the solution of the railroad problem. The main question to be determined is: Shall the railroads be owned and operated as public or as private property? Shall these great arteries of commerce be owned and controlled by a few persons for their own private use and gain, or shall they be made highways to be kept under strict government control and to be open for the use of all for a fixed, equal and reasonable compensation? ”

“ Not to speak of those newspaper editors who, for some consideration or another, defend every policy and every practice inaugurated or approved by railroad authorities, there has always been a school of literati who felt it their duty to enlighten, from a railroad standpoint, their fellow-men by book or pamphlet upon the transportation question, to correct what they supposed to be false impressions, and to round up with an apology or defense for the railroad manager, who is invariably represented by them as the most abused and at the same time most patriotic and most progressive man of the age. ”

“ Will the people profit by their experience, or will they be indifferent to the danger which surrounds them, until nothing short of a political upheaval can restore to them these rights of sovereignty, of which they have so insidiously been deprived?
Human gratitude is such that even high-minded men who, through the influence of the railroad interest, have been placed upon the Federal bench, find it impossible to divest themselves of all bias when called upon to decide a case in which their benefactors are interested. ”

“ The railroad, therefore, can rightfully do nothing which the State itself [Pg 369] might not do if it performed this public service through its own agents instead of delegating it to corporations which it has created. The large shipper is entitled to no advantage over his smaller rival in respect of rates or accommodations, for the compensation exacted in every case should be measured by the same standard. To allow any exceptions to this fundamental rule is to subvert the principle upon which free institutions depend and substitute arbitrary caprice for equality of right. ”

“ The consequences of the other theory are as different, both to the corporate property and to the public, as can be imagined. When a railroad is properly managed and earning dividends, a policy of development is adopted, having for its end the natural expansion of the property in harmony with the growth of the country, the needs of business and the desires of the people. The fruits of such a policy may not be apparent at once, but they inevitably come, and, when they are reaped, are enjoyed and appreciated by all. ”

“ The railway company which discriminates between competitive and non-competitive points forgets that its line is a common highway for all points tributary to it; that all have equal rights, and that the only differences in tariff which the principles of the common law permit are those which arise from a difference of service and cost. All other differences that railroad companies may make are unjust discriminations in violation of their charter and expose them to a forfeiture of the franchises conferred upon them. ”

“ The dry-goods merchant might as well boast of having clad the public as the railroad manager of having built up farming communities by selling to them transportation.
And yet the American people have never ceased to be mindful of the conveniences afforded to them by this modern mode of transportation. On the contrary, they have been but too prone to credit railroad men with being benefactors, when they were but beneficiaries, and this liberality of spirit made them overlook, or at least tolerate, the abuses which grew proportionately with the wealth and power of the companies. ”

“ The virtual ruler of the United States is public opinion. It is the power that controls the legislative as well as the executive and judicial departments of the Government. Enactments of legislatures and of Congress and decisions of the courts, even of the Supreme Court of the United States, not in harmony with an intelligent and determined public opinion, cannot endure, and executives not in accord with the masses of the people cannot long retain public confidence or official authority. ”

“ That the chief executive of a State should be influenced in the discharge of his official duties by such favors as passes, the freedom of the dining- and sleeping-car, by the free use of a special car, or even a special train, one is loath to believe; yet it is a fact, and especially during political campaigns, that such favors are frequently offered to, and accepted by, the highest executive officers, and it is equally true that many of these officers often connive at the continued and defiant violations of law by railroad officials. ”

“ So fast has the railroad system expanded in the most highly civilized countries that it soon outgrew in nearly all of them the laws originally adopted for railroad control. In time an almost universal demand arose for reform, and the most progressive governments were not slow in heeding it. For the past fifteen years there has been a decided drift on the European continent toward state ownership of railroads, or to such strict control of the transportation business as virtually deprives the operating companies of the power to do injustice to the public. ”

“ How to collect the tax necessary to sustain the road is simply a question of public policy, and it cannot be collected in any case except with the expressed permission of the State. If a company is permitted by the State to operate a railroad it should only be permitted to collect such tolls as are just and reasonable, and what is just and reasonable should be determined by the sovereign State, and not by the operating company. The railroads of the United States collect from our people in round numbers a transportation tax of eleven hundred million dollars annually. ”

“ There is every reason for believing that a commission vested with the right to fix local rates, to require full and complete reports from railroad companies, and to make proper regulations for their control, aided by penal legislation to compel compliance with their orders, will be a sufficient aid to the State in exercising such control over the companies operating lines within its borders as its dignity and the welfare of its people demand. ”

“ A schedule finally must be considered reasonable if it enables the company for which it is prescribed to earn under efficient and economical management sufficient to maintain its road in proper condition and a fair rate of interest upon a fair valuation of its road. Property is never worth more than what it can be duplicated for, and railroad property is no exception to the rule. If there has been a depreciation in the property of a company, it should not demand dividends upon values which no longer exist. Nor can the same returns be conceded to railroad property as to private capital. ”

“ Where such discrimination obtains, every shipper is in the power of the railroad corporation. It makes of independent citizens of a free country fawning parasites and obsequious sycophants who accept favors from railroad managers and in return do their bidding, however humiliating this may be. The shipper, realizing that the manager's displeasure or good will toward him finds practical expression in his daily freight bills, finally loses, like the serf, all self-esteem in his efforts to propitiate an overbearing master. ”

“ The railroad, gradually developed by active minds of the past, and greatly improved by the inventions of hundreds of men in the humbler walks of life, is the common inheritance of all mankind, though no class of people have derived greater benefits from it than railroad constructors, managers and manipulators. Railroad managers are no more entitled to [Pg 127] the special gratitude of the public for dispensing railroad transportation at much more than remunerative rates than is the Western Union monopoly for maintaining among us an expensive and inefficient telegraph service. ”