The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1899-09-28
LIFE ARTERIES
OF THE REPUBLIC
road Commissioners by Justice
Walter Clark.
Why Railroad OmciaIs Have Prefer
red to Keep Rates High Even at .
Comparative Loss-Usurpati0n
by Federal judiciary.

xeO 10 AeeP H0teS H18n Even AT =
Comparative Loss-Usurpation
by Federal Judiciary.
The following is the speech of Justice
Walter Clark, Of the supreme court, de-
livered by invitation before the national
convention Of railroad commissioners at
Denver, COL, ON Thursday last:
Gentlemen of the Convention:
appreciate the compliment Of being
requested to address the eleventh an
nual convention of your honorable body,
composed Of the Interstate commission
and the railroad commissioners of "a
states. There are few men to whom
more important interests are conf1ded
than you, upon whom rest peoples
hopes for the regulation of the great
transportation business of this country.
Upon your success In the discharge of
that duty awaits the public decision
whether we shall rest content with this
form Of regulation, or whether, slowly 1t
may be, or suddenly it may be, but in
either event reluctantly, the people shall
be forced to take over the ownership Of
railroads as the sole solution Of one Of
the greatest problems which now vex
the public minds.
Your conventions have, l believe, with
one exception, been held in the city Of
Washington. Appropriate, as for many
reasons that city is for your gatherings,
and pleasant as it is for any assem-
for this occasion you have selected the
capital of the Centennial state, the center
Of the wild and breezy West. Here the
air is purer. You are at a higher eleva
tion and can take broader and more
comprehensive view of men and affairs.
1t would look as If you were at the very
center and hub of the universe, for, as
Proctor Knott said Of the zenith city of
the unsalted seas" the sky fits down at
the same distance all around us. At
any rate, you are at the center of the
great country which stretches from the
Mississippi to the Pacific-a section
which embraces two-thirds of this
Union, though many men east Of the
Mississippi have never suspected it.
Political parties are 80 little alive to it
that all our presidents save one have
come from the one-third of the Union
that lies east of the Mississippi, and that
one lived on the very bank of the river
at Baton Rouge. Two of the three great
parties in 1896. combined in the nomina-
ton of candidate from west of the
great river, and the probabilities are
year.
The mountain barriers which once di-
vided this immediate section from the
Golden Slope of the Pacific are like
exist no longer-for we
Have ridden our iron stations down
to drink, .s ar rv
Through the canyons to the waters of
the West"
Steel rails of commerce have riveted
state to state by bands that can never
be burst asunder. Beneath the tread of
the iron horse mountains have vanished,
and rivers ceased to exist.
A LESSON FROM ROME.
From the golden milestone in the Ro-
man forum radiated those magnificent
roads which to this day tell how Rome
built for the ages. Along them poured
the tide of the republics and the en-
pire's commerce; over them tramped her
legions, and as the god Terminus sue
cessively removed further and further
the limits of her domains, these mag
nificent viaducts carried to the remotest
verges the arts, the literature, the laws,
the civilization that was Roman. In
deed, her roads made possible the vast
extent of her dominion, and bound to-
gether for so many centuries so many
countries in that Roman peace which
created and maintained the civilization
and the learning without which hu-
manity would not occupy the advanced
stage that it does today.
Suppose for 2 moment. that those Ro-
man roads, the arteries of the empire, |
had been owned by private companies of
millionaires; that not wheel could roll |
nor a man move along them, nor even
the legions except on terms dictated by
the corporations; would not those cor
porations have had the empire by the |
throat? Would they not have appointed
consuls and pro-consuls, every senator.
every general and every Judge? They |
would have been the government.
A greater than Rome is before you.
In these United States the 10000 miles |
of iron way are no less the arteries of |
the republic. Along them pours a tide |
Of travel, Of freight, of wealth far be-
yond what the Roman ways, even those |
nearest the capital, ever witnessed. In
deed, though our railway system dates |
back only 70 years, over any one of our |
many great through lines the volume |
OF freight and travel exceeds that of the |
entire world century ago. It is need
less to say that the control Of this i'm
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