The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-05-27

cOuTL5
 railroad rates.
 Rebates was a matter that
 prepared for. even though he had been informed there were no longer any such thing as rebates. He insisted that the railroads should not antagonize, but that they owed something to the Government to see that conditions of prosperity continued
 President Futile was then introduced and spoke in part as follows:
 Tn attempting to speak from the railroads side of this controversy and also in behalf of the untold hundreds of thousands of individuals who are directly interested in maintaining the just value of their present and future ownership of railroad securities which form so large a share of the invest ments of our savings banks insurance and other fiduciary institutions, 1t may be said:
 As to irregular practices on the part of the railroads and their custom CTS in the matter of special favors, private car contracts. secret tariff re- bates, etc, of which, doubtless there were in the past too many instances. They were merely matters of usage growing out of and inseparable from the marvellous commercial activity and expansion of the last half of the last century and were a natural outcome of the competition that served Iue Tdplu construction and extension of new lines of railroad and they have had their ex act counterpart in every branch of commercial and business life.
 But from careful and extended in quiry as well as from wide personal knowledge, l believe that whatever of these abuses there were have been so dis posed of through the natural workings of economic conditions that their vol ume Is no longer great enough to make them an important factor either in business or social life, but If they are the so-callSd Elkins amendment to the interstate commerce law passed in 1905 provides an adequate remedy and there seems to be reasonable ground for tho prevalent belief that the Interstate Commerce Commission has for reasons best known to itself failed to use the added power 1t has for two years pos sessed under the law to suppress these irregularities, but has been willing to befog the problem by confusing the separate and distinct rate making power with that of prescribing maxi mum rates. Additional powers arc certainly unnecessary if those we now have are, as I firmly believe, sufficient to deal with these matters. As to tn" concentration of ownership of our rail- roads: While consolidation and uniti- cation of railroad control have rap
 
 the public idea of its extent and of Its adverse effect upon the nations com merce have been greatly exaggerated. It is one of the natural results Of the passage of the Interstate commerce law and of the Sherman antitrust law, and in this matter the railroads have only moved with the commercial current. But admitting that railroad central ization is the rule of the present era, no creditable evidence Is produced to show that it has unfavorably affected the general commerce of the country or increased the rates charged for its transportation. If railroad rates have been here and there recently slightly advanced 1t has not been because of consolidation or because of increased competition between the carriers. but due solely to the higher prices of la bor and material that enter into the cost of producing all forms of railroad transportation.
 "It is untrue that the officials and owners of the railroads are stin necked' in their opposition to all pub lie supervision of their rates, as it is that they favor and are building up gigantic combinations to the injury or exclusion of any other of their customers or that they have them selves become the greatest of all mo- nopolies.
 T do not believe that there is among railroad officials anywhere any real or active opposition to a proper and req sonable public supervision of their tar iffs or business methods, but I confi-