The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-09-19
THE RAILROAD PROTEST.

The Southern Pacific Company has laid
the foundation for legal proceedings in the
Federal courts by which it evidently in
tends to contest the reduction in its
freight schedules which the Railroad
Commission threatens to make. 1t has
filed a protest with the commission
against its proposed action, and has
based its objection to the legality of that
action upon three grounds. These are:
First-That the chairman of the board
has a financial interest in securing the
proposed reductions which disqualifies him
from passing judgment as an official upon
the equity of existing rates.
Second-That the majority of the COM
mission, viz: the Democratic members
thereof, are disqualified from making re-
ductlons in existing freight schedules by
the pledges which they have taken, as
condition of their nomination and election
to Office.
Third-That the evidence and proofs sub
mitted to the commission, pending its in
vestigation of freight rates, and which
constitute the record upon which its de-
c1sion must be based, do not justify any
reduction whatever in the general freight
schedules of the company, and that in re-
solving to reduce rates, Notwithstanding
such proofs, the commission is depriving
the railroad company of its property with
out due process of law and IN defiance of
the Federal constitution, which guarantees
to it the equal protection of the law.
The first two objections urged by the
Southern Pacific Company against the
legality of the action taken and intended
by the Railroad Commission are puerile,
technical and illogical. They are such OBJ
jections as the appointed attorney of i'm
might be expected to urge against the
Judge who is about to sentence him to fine
and imprisonment. If they could prevail
it would follow that no citizen who was
taxpayeraand producer or who had taken
pledge or uttered an assurance of official
honesty would be qualified for the Office of
Railroad Commissioner. These objections
may therefore be dismissed from further
consideration in dealing with the powers
and duties of the Railroad Commission in
the reduction and fiXation OF freight rates.
The third objection which the Railro ad
Company has urged cannot, however, be
thus CURLY dismissed. 1t challenges
squarelv the power of the commission to
make its proposed reduction upon the
record it has permitted the Railroad Com
parry to make up. THE CALL suggested
several days ago that the commission
should possess itself of an opinion from
the Acknowledgement upon these points
before it proceeds to an ultimate decision
upon the issue of the reduction proposed.
1t will not satisfy the people of California
to have the members of the Railroad Com
mission justify an act which may prove
illegal by the shallow pretense that their
intentions were good. There is an old say
ing with reference to good intentions which
would aptly fit the fate of any member of
the Railroad Commission who employed
them to escape the consequences of an
illegal, and therefore futile. endeavor to re-
duce the burden of existing railroad sched-
ules.
The commission and every member of it
should be fully fortified by legal advice
upon the point embodied in this third
ground of protest on the part of the
Southern Pacific Company before they
finally resolve upon what the Federal
courts might determine to be an illegal eff
1OIG W accomplish q IeuuCIlOE III Lue
freight schedules of the Southern Pacific
Company. Until such legal advice is
sought, at least, the people of California
cannot be blamed for retaining a suspicion
that the proposed action of the Railroad
Commission, which has been so long de-
layed, may be Intellectual in the end, and
may have been expected by some members
of the commission so to be, AND that their
present activity may be based upon that
expectation.