The herald., 1896-07-28
THE S. P. OF KENTUCKY

Kentucky's gift to California is the
Southern Pacific corporation. With jul
dicious foresight that states legislature
made one limitation in the powers of its
ill-begotten corporate child. The S. P.
can do no business in Kentucky. Wise
men live in Kentucky. We believe that
it will be found that strong,
patriotic men live there also, and
that this most extraordinary cor
poration, created to prey upon
California commerce and yet escape the
penalty of the crimes its rulers and
agents commit, will be disincorporated
and sent to an accounting.
Kentuckys gift TO California is like the
gift of the Greeks to Troy. The Greeks,
finding Trojan valor too hot, pretended
thatthey, by withdrawing from the siege
of Troy, would give peace, and as an eX-
ira evidence of good WILL gave Troy the
wooden horse. 1t looked innocent
enough, but its belly was full of armed
men that, coming out of the horse after
its acceptance by Troy, admitted their
Greek fellows and destroyed the people
and the city of Troy. The cruelties and
horrors of the sack and burning of Troy,
with murder and rape and fire. have not
come to California. These things seem
remote, and we certainly believe and
hope that they are outside of the possi-
hilities. At the same time property own
ers should no longer disguise from them
selves the fact that in the unfairness of
secret freight rates and favors, in the
fluctuating destroyer of enterprise of
any rates based on what the traffic will
bear in the corruption of men and of
political parties and in its contempt and
defiance of law, the great Southern Pa
cifc is making a foundation for disorder
to find a standing place. Our great re-
public is for law and order. Its citizens
respect and rely upon the law and the
public organization to enforce it for their
property and for their lives. 1t is not the
mass of citizens who show contempt or
defiance of law. Those who have done
this and who now do this are the great
corporations that conditions have Great
ed. These have grown faster than the
knowledge of the people as to how to
properly limit and control them. The
dark cloud hanging over this country to-
day is the corporation cloud of abuses,
cloud let us hope, with a silver lining.
But to come back from the clouds to the
wooden horse from Kentucky. The cor
poration withdraws from California and
retires to Kentucky only to come iato
our citadel as a wooden horse. 1t was in
nocent to look at. but its belly has poured
forth traitors, gold armed bribers and a
demon crew of law breakers. This great
corporation served by the misused tall
ents of a Nining Steve Gage or a Her.
rim, and dominated by the power of
Huntington, has violated the constitu-
ton of California, broken the plain laws
of the state and of the United States. 1t
has robbed settlers on the public lands,
producers, merchants, the government
and the state taxpayers. 1t refuses to
pay taxes when it pleases 1t refuses
the rates Of the railroad commission,
buys ne board of equalization shuts the
port OF San Francisco to competition and
prevents the growth of any shipping al
Los Angeles. 1t throttles California and
plays the part of road agent and high
wayman to the commerce of the state.
This state would have more railways.
more steamship lines and ten times its
ton if the Pacific railroad job
bers had never had land grant, a bonus
or a bond, and had never built mile of
road, bulldozed q city or county or
bribed a public man. This evil thing has
kept from this state means and men and
diminished such public morals as we
had. The subsidized Pacific Railroad
Company is the curse Of California.