Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-04-18
TIE WORK OF TIE RAILROAD COM
MIssIoNERs.


When the character and scope of the
powers with which the Beard is invested
are considered, it must be admitted that
the Commissioners have exhibited more
disposition to act fairly than was displayed
by those who gave them their authority.
For it is impossible to examine their
tuition without concluding that this tribunal
was created for the express purpose of
confscating private property. The people,
through the Constitution, deliberately de-
clared their purpose to deprive certain
property owners of their possessions, for
the benefit of certain other property own
ers. Those who used the railroad, in
fact, instead of those who owned it, were
to be made the benefciaries of it. A more
outrageous abuse of the popular sover-
eighty has never been committed than in
the organization of this Railroad Commits
sion, and if the Commissioners have not
as yet acted in the spirit of their instruc-
lions. it is probably fer no other reason
than that when self-respecting men are
brought face to face with the real pur-
poses of such scheme, and find that they
have been empowered to contiscate the
property of their fellow. citizens with a
stroke of the pen, they not unnaturally
shrink from the fragrant injustice and
immortality of the proposition, and en-
deavor to find a middle course which will
involve less wrong.
What the majority of the Commission
ers have succeeded in effecting is unques-
tionably most important, however They
have reduced freights upon the principal
staples to the extent above recited. Gov.
ernor Stanford frankly stated that the
railroads could not really afford this re-
duction, but that it was conceded for the
sake of bringing the matter to an issue,
and satisfying the people. Commissioners
Cone and Beerstecher recognized the
changes in the schedule as being satisfac-
tory. But because it was proposed to
adopt the existing rates on other merchan-
disc for the time being, Commissioner
Stoneman entered a protest the unreason-
able character of which is only equalled
by its brutal indecency and coarse malig.
nifty. With the instinct of a demagogue
he in this protest virtually charged his
colleagues with treachery to the people,
and even went so far as to declare that
he considered their action San out
"rage, and a violation of the letter
''and spirit of the Constitution" and
{" an act which ought to damn this
Board, and make it stink in the nos.
g trils OF every citizen of the State not in
" the interest of railroad corporations. .
The only outrage in this regard has been
perpetrated by General Stoneman. He
has from first to last shown himself to be
actuated solely by spirit of malignant
hostility to the railroads. He has made
it conspicuously apparent that his only idea
of regulation is confscation and destruction.
While he has never pointed out any speci-
fic cases wherein rational reductions OF
freight charges could be made, he has
resisted every attempt to reach sober and
equitable basis of agreement, and has
shown a purely malicious disposition to
injure and if possible break down the cor
porations.
Instead of welcoming the reduction of
20 per cent. in freight rates as a distinct
gain, he has sat back and INSTRUCTED all
action which did not go the length of reck-
less contiscation. No doubt if he had
his way he would refuse the railroads a
hearing at all, and would arbitrarily fix
their rates at points below the possibility of
earning running expenses. That is the
spirit in which he has conceived his line of
duty apparently, and we do not hesitate to
say that it is an abominable spirit. 1t is
perfectly clear that no reduction which
could have been proposed would have
suited this man, unless 1T would have been
so sweeping as to insure the ruin of the
railroads. 1t is also perfectly clear that he
is unfit to exercise such powers as have
been unfortunately intrusted to him, and
that he is capable only of representing the
blindest and most irrational hatred against
the corporations.
It seems to be the particular desire of
Commissioner Stoneman that those OF his
colleagues who seek to act fairly and
equally shall get no credit for what they
do, no matter how large may be the ben
etits accruing to the public from their ar.
rangements. In the present instance those
colleagues have done all that has been
done, and it is a great deal. They have
secured reduction upon staples which
ought to satisfy the public But since
they have not insisted at once upon other
reductions which would have crippled the
railroads, General Stoneman turns round
and blackguards them. His assump-
ton of special and peculiar virtue and in
tegrity in this connection calls for COM
ment particularly. He himself stands for
that aggregate dishonesty which seeks
to coniscate railroad property; which pro-
poses in fact to rob some men for the benefit
of Others He represents brute force
which has undertaken under pretense Of
legal forms to deprive certain men of their
rights. And this being the highly moral
and elevated plane upon which he stands,
he thinks himself entitled to apply the
most insulting epithets to his colleagues
because they are not so ready to counte-
nance the iniquity of which he is the
champion.
Tae immediate effect of Commissioner
Stoneman's course has been to postpone the
ratification of the proposed reduction, and
thus to deprive the public of the advan.
tages to be derived from the new schedule.
1t is, however, plain enough that no reduc.
ton will satisfy him so long as the railroads
are left any earning capacity whatever, and
I in his attitude at present the people nav