Truth. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1901-1908, 1906-03-17
THE OPPONENT OF GOVERNMENT
ALTERNATING.

united states Senate when on Feb.
ruary % Senator Foraker of Ohio
spoke for three hours on the rate ques-
ton, says Harper's Weekly. We are
told that every seat on the Republican
side was occupied, and that Democrats
came over and sat as closely as posi-
BILE to the speaker, so that they might
not lose word There was not a
smile, we read, on any Senatorial coun-
tenance, which, on the contrary, was
fixed grim and hard under the tense
strain of following a severely legal ar
gument. No establishment, no pleas
antry, no appeal to emotion, fell from
the lips of the Ohio Senator, nor was
he anywhere interrupted by applause,
but the deep impression made by his
pellucid and cogent sentences upon the
mind OF many a colleague was I'M
doubtedly expressed by Senator Bal
ley, who remarked to Mr.. Teller, the
veteran Senator from Colorado, "If
that speech cannot be answered, the
Hepburn-Tillman bill deserves to be
defeated"
In his opening words the Ohio SEN
ator defined his personal attitude
toward the project of government rate
making for railways, which is embod-
led in the Hepburn-Tillman bill That
measure he denounced in principle and
in detail, as glaringly unconstitutional
and grossly inexpedient. He held it to
be so contrary to the spirit of our in
situations, and of such a drastic and
revolutionary character that, If not in
its immediate effect, at least in its
eventual influence as a precedent, it
would have grave and far-reaching con-
sequences. Reviewing the history of
railroad development in the United
States, Mr.. Foraker conceded the ex-
istence of certain evils in the existing
methods of railway management, evils
unavoidably incident to the upbuilding
of so vast an interest, but evils every
one of which, he said, is durable by
the Federal courts, without creating
commission of doubtful constitutions
ality. The evils complained of, he re-
minded his auditors, are, for the most
part, comprehended in three classes
excessive rates, rebates, and personal
or local determinations. OF these
evils excessive rates are the least Sc
rious, because, If we consider the coun-
try as a whole, we find that the aver
age charge for transporting freight per
ton per mile is less than it is in any
other country. More prejudicial he &C
knowledged, in their consequences, are
rebates, which have assumed many
guises, and have facilitated all kinds of
determinations between individual
shippers. For the extinguishment of
rebates, however, the Hepburn-Tillman
bill is not required. Mr. Foraker quoted
several members of the Interstate
Commerce Commission itself to prove
that the Elkins law, which invokes the
machinery of the courts alone, had
proved effective in stopping the pay
ment of personal rebates, and that in
so far as there are still examples of
such violations of the statute, they can
be stopped altogether by a rigorous en-
forcement of it's provisions. He went
on to point out that there has as yet
been no resolute attempt to execute the
Elkins law for the purpose of prevent
ing determinations as to locality, but
he insisted that a glance at it's text
would convince any fair-minded man
that the statute named affords as
broad direct, explicit, and efficient a
remedy for that kind of an evil as 1t
has been found to offer against per-
sonal determinations. That the Elkins
law has not been tested with reference
to local determinations is no fault of
the statute, but is due simply to the
fa Of that nOhOdv has seen fit tn annly