The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1894-03-18
cALpwEL1,s ARBITRARY ORDER.

Judge Caldwell has made an order
| which in effect sustains discrimination
enforced by a Traffic Trust, that in
dividual officials of the roads, whose in
terests he thus serves, have acknowl-
edged, themselves, to be wrong and in
defensible. The idea seems to be that
the enormous, disapproportionate and
unwarrantable fixed charges with which
the corporations in question have loaded
themselves, shall be met by the COM
munities which they serve. without ref
erence to what is charged for like
services elsewhere, and in spite of all
equity or justice. In this receivership
business, federal judges, being secure
from any personal accountability, su-
perior to all demands Of the people and
hedged about by the power guaranteed
in judgments for contempt, are taking
just that course which will force for the
protected corporations fearful reckon
ing. Congress, itself, has been impelled
to pass resolution OF inquiry touching
the edicts of federal judges, and the
people have looked on in open-eyed
wonder at the conflicting orders that
have been made with reference to the
affairs, operating expenses and admin
iStration of the Union Pacific. Judge
Caldwell presumably knows as little of
the tonnage, absolute or comparative,
of Wichita, of the discrimination en-
forced by the Missouri river basing line
combine against the whole people of the
entire interior of great state, or how
the development of Kansas has been re-
tarded at the dictation of east
ern roads, through terminal agreements,
as the clerk or bailiff of his
court. He could not know in the alb
sence of hearing from some other side
than his own receivers. Upon the other
hand, not only the supreme court of this
state, practically, as practically have two
boards of expert commissioners, of diverse
political parties, after months of patient
hearing, unanimously awarded that
which he now annuls, if he is quoted
correctly by the Topeka Capital, whose
article is published elser:here. Follow
ing his order, which the Capital says he
bases on the ground of superior jurisdic-
ton, the Santa Fe goes one step farther
and announces that they will even with
draw rate awarded and put in force
before the management placed the road
in the hands of the court.
The people of Kansas are paying an
nually, promptly and faithfully the in
terest on millions upon millions of dol
roads, which have been by outside di-
rectorships burthened with obligations
far beyond their earning power, and
two to three times their original cost or
present value; they have done this to
that extent that the state has more
miles of road than any state save one in
the Union; in the mean time the prop
erty of said people, owing to the muta-
tIous of human affairs, have shrunken in |
value more than one-half, with no court |
or other power to prevent the disaster of !
such natural process; and, now, no court |
nor legislative body, or human author
ity whatever, can preserve railways, or |
any other investments, from a like |
shrinkage, no matter what obliga- |
cations past arrangements may have i
contracted or pledged. Judge Caldwell's
order is far reaching, and unfortunately |
it reaches out in the interest of the spec
ulating investor rather than for the pro-
lection of a million and half of very
enterprising people whose money, very
largely, built the roads, not only, but
who are now authoritatively command
ed to make good the unwarranted obi
cations assumed in the name of these
roads thus built, by agents who have no
interest in the state or its people outside
a speculative one in the road bed and its
incumbent securities, and the power of
said people to make good such debts
through any tratfic-rate tribute they may