The St. Louis Republic., 1903-03-19
WORLD'S-19O4-FAIR.
WORLDS FAIR RATES.


The decision in the case Of Wabash Railroad vs..
Wasserman. delivered by the Circuit Court recently
in the suit involving the right of ticket broker to sell
nontransferabe tickets is full Of interest to the whole
community. The issues involved were, first has a
railroad company a legal right to issue ticket upon
Its face nontransferabe? ard second has the original
purchaser Of such ticket right to sell the same? The
ticket broker defendant IN the maintained that
such tickets were not valid, and, second, that even
IL they were valid in form and the condition as to
nonassignability binding, still the Wabash Railroad
Company had entered into conspiracy with sundry
other railroads to fix and maintain rates and to elm
mate competition in direct disobedience of the State
antitrust law and the Federal (Sherman) antitrust
law.
OF the first objection the court made short work,
holding in conformity with opinion Of the Supreme
Court of the United States that tickets sold
duced rates, containing condition making them non
transferable perfectly valid, and that the orig
inal purchaser had right to sell assign the
This decision must meet with the approval of all fair
minded persons, since the ticket is, the court says,
q personal contract one provision of which is that
only the person originally entering into the contract
shall have the benefit,
In regard to the second objection the court found
that the testimony clearly showed that there
pool combination of the railroad companies in con-
raventon of the trust laws either Of the State the
United states; tnat eacn company nXed and MAIN
tanned its rate separately and without control
the part of any other company, Of any pool or
sociation.
This decision is of special interest at this partcu-
lar time because Of the pendency of the bill in the
General Assembly affecting the same matter. This
BILL to which The Republic has had occasion to refer
heretofore prohibits sale of nonassignable tickets
and thus enacts In statute form what is already the
law upon principle and precedent; but the measure
goes further and in addition to forbidding the whole
sale infracton Of contracts which has been going on
under the practice of scaping nontransferable tick
cts imposes the railroad companies the duty
redeeming all unused portions of such tickets from
the original purchaser and fixes the penalty in case of
their refusal to do
This is entirely as it should be- The argument ad-
vanced by the ticket broker that unless traveller can
dispose of his ticket by sale he may be subjected to
loss and Inconvenience is fully met by this provision
which establishes constant market unused trans
portaton at fixed rates without any risk the part
the purchaser Of being elected from the train If
covered to be sailing under false pretenses 1t re-
moves the temptation from the original purchaser to
break his contract with the railroad company.
In the past numerous abuses have arisen out Of
this vicious practice Thousands Of persons have been
induced to break valid contracts and sell to the in
nocent travelling public void and valueless railroad
ticket Thousands also of purchasers Of cheap tick
cts have been deceived into the notion that there
no wrong in falsely mpersonating the original pur-
chaser, and so the traffic has been kept up the bro
kers buying cheap and selling high the travelling pub
lie being led into all sorts Of deception and subterfuge
and many being abruptly elected from trains when
the deception discovered.
Thus it appears that both the public morals and
the public policy will be conserved by the proposed
enactment The interests Of the Worlds Fair imper-
ativeiy demand that This measure, essential to
large attendance at the Exposition, should become
law The people Of the State are specially interested
in this matter. 1t is essentially. far as Missouri
ans are concerned, State measure, since the people
s3 the city Of St Louis have direct interest therein