The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-12-07

The Bureau naS also made exhaustive examinations into the legal conditios under which corporate business is carried on in the various States; into all judicial decisions on the subject; and into the various systems of corpo- rate taxation in use. I call special attention to the report of the chief of the Bureau; and I earnestly ask that the Congress carefully consider the re- port and recommendations of the Com missioner on this subject
 Insurance.
 The business of insurance yitaIly affects the great mass of the people of the United States and is national and not local in it's application. It involves multitude of transactions among the people of the different States and be- tween American companies and foreign governments. I urge that Congress carefully consider whether the power of the Bureau of Corporations can not constitutionally be extended to cover Interstate transactions in insurance
 Rebate.
 Above all else, we must strive to keep the highway of commerce open to all on equal terms; and to do this it is necessary to put complete stop to all rebates. Whether the shipper or the railroad is to blame makes no differ ence; the rebate must be stopped, the abuses of the private car and private terminal-track and side-tracked system must be stopped, and the legislation of the Fifty-eighth Congress which de- clares 1t to be unlawful for any person or corporation to offer, grant, give, solicit, accept, or receive any rebate, concession or discrimination in respect of the transportation of any property in interstate or foreign commerce whereby such property shall by any device whatever be transported at a less rate than that named in the tariffs published by the carrier must be en- forced. For some time after the enact- ment of the Act to Regulate Commerce Ut remained mooted question whether. that act conferred upon the Interstate Commerce Commission the power, after it had found challenged rate un- reasonable, to declare what thereafter should, prima facie. be the reasonable maximum rate for the transportation in dispute. The Supreme Curt finally resolved that question in the negative, so that as the law now stands the Commission simply possess the bare power to denounce particular rate as unreasonable. While I am of the opinion that at present it would be undesirable, if 1t were not impractic- able, finally to clothe the Commission with general authority to fix railroad rates, I do not believe that, as a fair security to shippers, the Commission should be vested with the power,s where a given rate has been challenged and after full hearing found to be un- reasonable to decide, subject to Judicial review, what sfall-b be a reasonable rate to take It's place; the ruling of the Commission to take effect immediately, and to obtain unless and until it is re- versed by the court of review. The Government must In increasing degree supervise and regulate the workings Of the railways engaged in interstate commerce; and such increased super- vision is the only alternative to an irl- crease of the present evils on the one hand or a still more radical policy on the other. In my Judgment the most important legislative act now needed as regards the regulation of corpora tions is this act to confer on the Inter- state Commerce Commission the power to revise rates and regulatons the re- vised rate to at once go into effect, and. to stay in effect unless and until the court of review reverses it.
 Steamship companies engaged in in- terstate commerce and protected in our coastwise trade, should be held to a strict observance of the interstate com- Emerce act.
 City of Washington.
 Tn pursuing the set plan to make the city of Washington an example to other American municipalities several points should be kept in mind by the Legislators. Tn the first place, the peo- < pie of this country shpuld clearly un- derstand that no amount of industrial prosperity, and above all no leadership 1 in international industrial competitor, can in any way atone for the sapping of the vitality of those who are usually spoken of as the working classes. The farmers, the mechanics, the skilled and unskilled laborers, the small shop keep l CTS, make up the bulk of the population lof any country; and upon their well- being, generation after generation, the well-being of the country and the race depends. Rapid development in wealth ' t. -. = and industrial leadership is a good thing, but only if it goes hand in hand with improvement, and not deteriora- 1 tion, physical and moral The over- crowding of cities and the draining of country districts are unhealthy and even dangerous symptoms in our mod ern life. We should not permit over- crowding in cities. In certain Europ- can cities it is provided by law that the population of towns shall not be all lowed to exceed a very limited density for a given area, so that the increase in density must be continually pushed back into a broad zone around the center of the town, this zone having great avenues or parks within it. The death-rate statistics show ter rible increase in mortality, and espec- ially in infant mortality in overcrowd- ed tenements. The poorest families in | tenement houses live in one room, and | it appears that in these one-room ten- ements the average death rate for a number of given cities at home and abroad is about twice what it is in a two-room tenement, four times what