Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-03-26

reasonable, and that the commission in the
Coke case assumed the power OF saying what
rates are reasonable. If our New York
contemporary wishes to uphold the idea that
rates should not be reasonable, or that the
regulative tribunal should not have
authority to decide whether they are
reasonable or not, this case gives it peg
to hang its argument upon. But when the
case is examined it will be found that the
principle of equal rates to competing
shippers is the one by which it was decided.
The commission found that railway COM
pany. in pursuit of the regular policy of
sustaining high rates by shipping coal from
its own mines at loss, paid back to the
coal mining corporation a certain sum each
year to make up losses inflicted by its rates.
The whole practice is forbidden by the Con-
stitutlon of Pennsylvania; but the COM
mission has no power to enforce State
constitutions. II therefore correctly treated
the sum paid to make up the losses through
rates as rebate, and required reduction
for independent shippers sufficient to place
them on an even basis That no effort was
made to reduce rates even to the basis of a
fair profit on bona fide railroad capital, is
shown by the fact that railroads in Ohio are
making money to-day by carrying Hooking
Valley coal at half the rate per ton per mile
fixed by the commission in the anthracite
case.
TN - hat 1ani LOTT ho u
embarked on a mistaken and radical policy
of forcing wholesale reductions of railroad
charges. This is an error on their part;
but it is produced by the presence of ine-
quality of rates, already referred to. The
Western farmers see the railroads carrying
through freight at far less than they are
charged on the local traffic. They are con-
fronted with such instance as q charge on
their shipments to the nearest market, say
100 miles, greater than the entire charge for
taking the same shipments from that mar
ket to seaboard, thousand miles. 1t may
be an erroneous deduction that the rates at
which railroads can afford to carry for other
shippers they ought to have. As the West
ern Legislators apply it, it is very grave
mistake; but it is not more violent heresy
than some which are universally promul-
gated In the corporate interest.
The truth is that railroad policy is re-
sponsible for the radical and destructive
Legislation of which so much complaint is
made. No Western Legislature has
undertaken to prescribe the price of shoes or
to enact ma ximum rates charged for trans
porting freight on the rivers or lakes.
These things affect the farmers equally with
railroad charges, but the farmers know that
the cost of clothing, shoes and water trans
portaton are fixed by the free action of CON-
petition, and are therefore practically just.
But the railroads not only maintain each its
monopoly of its local traffic, but band to-
gether to abolish competition from all
branches of railroad traffic where it ever ex-
listed. When that is the accepted railroad
policy what protection is there to the public
except in the legislative prescription of
rates? Intelligent railroad opinion has con-
ceded as principle that where they are
permitted to abolish competition by pooling
there must be governmental control OF
rates; but when Legislatures put the princi-
pie in actual practice the whole corporate
world cries out agains: the application of its
own theory.
Ifthe railroads will adopt a reform which
carries competition into each branch OF
their traffic, as freely as it exists in water
or in the production of agri-
cultural staples, they will no longer be both
cred by legislative reductions of rates.
Every one will then recognize, that rail-
way charges are fixed by natural law as un-
errlngly as the price OF barrel of -four.