St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1893-10-04
4 BIT OF EuTILISM.

The term tutIllSm may we'll be limited
in its definitions to those efforts of peo-
pie who from selfish or philanthropic
motives embark the government Of the
state or nation or city in schemes hav-
ing for their ostenSible end the pub
lie good, sometimes real, sometimes
feigned, but which come to naught in
their encounter with the great economic
laws to which human conduct in the end
bends. A curious chapter might be
made by gathering from the statutes all
of these schemes and noting how they
slumber in the unread pages, while hui
manity goes along its usual course OBJ
livious of the existence of the law.
Passing down lower Third street any
day one sees the signs of the ticket
brokers and reads their especial an
nOuncements on their bulletin boards of
cut rates to this point and that, of cheap
fare to this or that place; and men go i'll
and out buying this cheaper transit or
selling their unused tickets, just as if
there were not on the statute book of
this puissant state an act that makes the
seller Of a partly-used ticket guilty of a
miSdemeanor, punishable with fine and
imprisonment, and the scalper of mile
age also liable to arrest, trial and severe
punishment.
Seeing this, one recalls the scenes in
the latest session of our legislature,
when lot of conductors were being
played for catspaws by their corpora
lions, and hung about the hotels and the
capitol urging the measure through i;
when the lobby was persistently work
ing members for the passage of the bill;
when money was being used to pass it
and to beat it. and when members were
coerced by railway officials to vote for
what In private they called ''our BILL"
The passage of that bill was one of the
bitter fights of the session. 1t was a
philanthropic measure in the mouths of
its promoters. The poor conductors
wanted safeguard thrown about their
regulations; begged to be protected
against the rascally conductors who
stood in with the wicked scalpers. The
dear public was constantly being gulled
by these ruthless pirates of railway
traffic. The scalpers were forgers of
tickets, counterfeIters of them. fences
for the purloiners Of tickets; FaginS,
all of them, whose suppression was de-
manded by society.
And the bill passed and was duly en-
rolled on great sheets of wide-lined
paper, and the speaker signed it, and
the president of the senate signed it,
and the chief CLERK of the house and the
secretary of the senate affixed their off,
cial signatures, and then the governor
solemnly approved it and the secretary
of state affixed the great seal of the,
state and filed it away in the vaults OF
his Office, where moth could not corrupt
it nor thieves break through and steal
it, and it became law of the great and
mighty state of Minnesota.
And months pass away since it be-.
came an august law, and the scalper
continues to scalp and the dear people
still continue to save their money by
selling to the scalpers what mileage
they do not wish to use, or by buying OF
them rides at less cost than the rail-
ways will sell them and the law, sedate
and dignified and grand, 1eposes among
the statutes, but IS trodden under foot
every day Of the year, save Sundays, on
the pavement of Third street between
Jackson and Sibley streets. The COM
mon people have written their veto
across its face: Futile: Futility; Fulfil
ism.