The herald., 1896-07-29
GIFT TO. CALI.
FORNIA

body of employees of the Southern Pacific
company. Here in Los Angeles
nearly all of the Southern Pacific force
are popular, and respected. What the
people object to is the general-cinch-
monopolistic- -special-privilege pol
icy of the owners or other controllers of
the road.
To use a public franchise involving the
power of eminent domain, granted from
the whole people, for public service, to
build up one man, or business, and
break down another; to make business
active In one town for and with the OBJ
ject of killing it In another, as in the case
of setting up Port Costa to injure Stock
ton-is defeating the whole purpose of
the people in granting the franchise.
When a common carrier gives secret
privileges to favored persons or charges
less for freight for a similar service to
one man than to another, it assumes
power that has for its logical limit the
absolute control of the district it serves.
If this continues. the Standard Oil COM
pany is the type of what every enter
prise, business and production must
sooner or later become. Under this sys-
tenn the orange business to the east
could be placed in the hands of single
firm or corporation, just as the oil busi-
ness In the United States has been placed
In the hands of the Standard Oil COM
pany by the special rates of the common
carriers granted to that corporation.
The preliminary steps in this line to
monopolize the orange trade. 1t is
claimed, have already been taken, and
secret rebate, said to amount to $40
car to Chicago, Is now given to certain
shipping firms. This handicap upon the
producers exchanges needs only to be
increased to put them beyond the power
of doing business at all.
Let us suppose the car rate on oranges
to be $3.50 to Chicago. and that stand
ard orange shippers company gets re-
bate of $3.50 on every car they ship. There
can then be but one result. The standard
orange company will monopolize the
orange business, just as the Standard
Oil company monopolizes the oil busi-
ness in the United States. One business
and production after another thus mo-
nopolized, it remains only for few great
companies, or trusts. to get together to
own and control the country. This is
clearly the tendency. 1t is the only
logical outcome of this perversion of
justice. Does any sensible person sup
pose that our Huntingtons, Rockefellers,
Carnegies and Hannas will stop short of
complete control, or of compulsion, to
prevent it? Does any reasonable man
think that such system can be imposed
on the American people without revolu-
ton? Is it possible that the thin thread
of technicality-perver law can hold
off the sword of resentmnt of great and
intelligent people?
Anarchy Is lurking in the shadow of
every one of the great trust and trans
portation abusers of justice. 1t is they
who create the conditions that make
disorder possible. No one of them all
has violated law, broken down justice,
corrupted public officers and dimin-
ished the confidence of the people in
their government as has the Southern
Pacific of Kentucky. 1t has bought,
bullied or betrayed public officers
everywhere into shameless perversion
of justice. 1t has by its rates, based on
what the traffic will bear" taken the
profit from business and left merchant
and producers little or nothing to coun-
terbalance unfavorable markets. The
result of its discoura gements to enter
prise and its constant tendency to build
up monopolies, which it can more easily
deal with, has been and is the stagna-
ton of every place and section it ex-
clusively controls.
When we go into the improper influ-
ences of the Southern Pacific with as
SCISSORS and boards of equalization to
defeat a fair payment toward the sup
port of law and order, upon the main
tenance of which its security and life de-
pends, and it's refusal for years to pay
any taxes at all in defiance OF law and
justice, we are astonished as much at
the blindness of its own bosses as at the
tolerance of the people in submitting to
such wrong. Its land system has been
unfair and cruel to settlers, even to the
extent of being implicated in the mur-
der of many of these in Mussel Slough
by a gang of hired assassins. Its debts
to the government have not been paid,
yet vast fortunes have been filched from
it by the giant quartet. Its construc-
ton companies inside deals have taken
these to an inside ring. 1t has been, in
deed, a debauch in robbery in which It
is hard to say whether individuals, the
government or the railroad itself has
been most injured. The material inter
ests of the country and of California in
particular, have been greatly damaged
by the wicked policy pursued. But how
ever great these losses have been they
are as nothing compared to the moral
morass into which the railroad rulers
have plunged our whole public busi-
ness.
The time has come for conservative
men, home owners and patriotic citi-
zens to rise for the defense of them
selves, their homes and their country
and bring this giant of evil to an ac-
counting. The judgment and the pen
atty should be the same, neither more
nor less than as though these multi
millionaires were plain, poor men. The
security of property and of life requires
an end of their abuses The integrity
of free institutions demands absolute
Justice. Corporations must obey the
law if they and the republic live.
SILVER CIRCULATION