Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1906-09-11
Not Yet An Issue.
Milwaukee News

that ne CONSIDERS puDllc own
ership the ultimate solution of the rail
way problem as an issue in the con-
gressional campaign, republican poll
ticians and organs are likely to dis
cover that they are trying to get away
with red hot stove. Public ownership
has seased to be boyle with which the
voters may be frightened. Indeed,
wherever they have been given oppor
tunity to pass upon the question of the
public assuming the ownership of its
utilities they have spoken decisively
against private monopoly.
Mr. Bryan has not raised the ques-
ton as an tissue" He has merely re-
iterated his opinion that public owner
ship must follow the experiment at
regulating the railways, as public own
ership has followed in many munich
palities the unsuccessful efforts to
regulate municipal service corporations.
He has not committed the democratic
party to public ownership, although the
democratic party has committed itself
quite thoroughly to public ownership in
the cities in its advocacy of municipal
ownership. is quite generally con-
coded, however, even by the advocates
of public ownership that the time is not
ripe for pressing it as an issue in ma
tional politics. The government own
ership of railways is more an academic
question than material for a political
issue. Mr.. Bryan so discussed it. The
expedience of his discussing a question
accidentally in a speech that was to
serve as keynote, of course, is open
to question, but it presents no issue
and will not until it shall be given place
in the Democratic platform.
Even Mr.. Bryan's agitated critics are
coming to see that they are not obliged
to throw up their hats for public own
ership on land bag and baggage in the
republican party. The New York
Evening Posts points out that Thurs
day nights speech deserves to. be taken
as showing what is on Mr.. Bryan's
mind, rather than what he would ac-
tually do if he became president. Gold
democrats who are supporting him this
year do so on the theory that his be-
liefs on the money question would not
affect the practical conduct of his adj
ministration. If the next convention
refuses to indorse government owner
ship, that question will remain in much
the same status. Meanwhile, the coun-
try watches the republicans point with
pride to their own execution of the pol
icy first embodied in Bryan's platform
of 1896, the enlargement of the power
of the interstate commerce commits
sion."
Nothing would be gained by bringing
government ownership of railways for
ward as a party policy at this time.
1t is a development which appears to
be inevitable, but when it shall come
it is more likely to come as the rate
law has come as the result of the crys-
talized sentiment of the people rather
than as the distinctive policy of any po-
litical party If regulation as a policy
thall prove delusive, inevitably the pub
lie ownership sentiment will crystalline
in demand for the government to take
over the railways. Then government
ownership of the railways will become
a question that will have to be met and
considered with view to all its details.
Then Mr.. Bryans suggestion that the
national government own the trunk
lines and the state governments the
branch lines will be discussed on its
merits.
When he first suggested it two years
ago The Daily News stated and it has
since seen no reason to change its opin-
ion that it would be impractical to d.
vide the ownarship between state and
nation, as impractical as it would be to
have the national government in like
manner divide its jurisdiction and res
possibilities in carrying and distribu-
ting the mails, with the several state
governments. If Capitalization of pow
er in the federal government would
justify resort to such an expedient, it
would forbid the national government
from taking any step at all. If the ma
tional government can not be trusted
to manage all the railways it surely
could not be trusted to own and oper-
ate the principal routes of Interstate
communication. But this is a matter
of detail not necessarily vital to the
principle of government ownership,
which when conditions are ripe will
find application to the most practical
end, without permitting difference over
detail to defeat the principle itself.