The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-03-04
By LINCOLN STEPHENS.

l the System. Men like Mccall and Lit- | tlefieid and Lodge don't take bribes. | But bribery is not essential to the System. Most people seem to think 1t ix. but scandal and drinks and poker and sll the sights and sounds of the | good old days at Springfield, H.. are l but the signs of the beginning of po- | lticaI corruption. By and by reformers correct those evils. By and by legis- l Iatures come to represent normally the | businesses that have spent money and | wears to corrupt them. Everybody hates bribery The Presidents of rail- roads themselves deplore 1t: some of 1 them have told me so. All they want is to have our representatives repre- sent their railroads, and take their view Of business legislation. And Messrs. Lodge and Mccall and Little field took the railroads view; they stood on the side of the men who rep resent Business. Big Business with capital R inE all of us might mean. Big business is making some of us very rich and many of us prosperous" 1t Is making alT of us mighty mean Big ilusiness was the source of the corrup-
 ton of. the men and the government
 of every city and State that have studied. and when those gentlemen from New England spoke up for the rail-
 roads Gas corrupt" politicians from
 other States dared not dol those gem
 tlemeu were speaking In defence of that business which is one of the sources of the corruption of the men
 and of the government of at least one
 of the New England States Politely.
 honestly. exceiiently. Messrs. Lodge,
 Mccall and Litt1efiefd represented the system.
 And. so far as the system is estab-
 fished here, that is the way if is serv~ ed--politely, honestly" most excellent ly. Oh, the House gets scared be-
 fore elections. but even then it Is not bribed "The House is too big to buy" I hear. As in State legislatures. the System. having the Senate, leaves the lower branch to be handled by the discipline of party organization or
 checked up" by the Senate. And. as for the Senate. Senator Aldrich said Che told a colleague who told mel that there were in that body only some half dozen men who took money. So we are through with bribery at last: when we came to Washington we rose to high CT plane.
 But we are not above business. And we should be above business. I can hear the good business man exclaim: ''Why?" And I think I can answer him: Our government should be above all of us. It is sovereign and it should dominate all other interests. not abso- lutely, but geniaIly and justly and f. nally. If we clash. either as individ- uals or as interests. and if the laws and the courts in the course of their routine, cannot and do not judge fairly between us. we should appeal to the representatives of all of us here and in our States. for better laws and bet ter enforcement of laws. Even the railroads should be free to come here to get laws or to prevent legislation but-and here is the point--the rail- roads should find here not representa- tives of railroads. but representatives of all of us. At this very moment. the hired counsel Of railroads should be free Go come here to ask that the Hepburn Deliver bill be not passed. But that isn't what I see. The specta- cle. as I see it-and it is spectacle --is this:
 We. the people of the United States, are the petitioners. We are coming here asking through the President that that bill be passed so as to relieve us from certain abuses practiced every- where by our chartered common car- riers. the railroads. And the represen- tatiyes of those railroads and their allied corporations, sit here enthron- cd; and they decide upon our case
 They may decide in our favor but the intolerable fact of it all is--thev decide. They rule; they may be good rulers; but they rule.
 Take the rate bill, which we have fol- lowed through the House. Maybe 1t should be defeated: maybe it is bad to let government commission fix the prices of transportation. But somebody must The railroads have failed to do 1t properly; they have failed purposely and intelligently. And they have failed because. having corrupted our politics they have dominated our government; and because. having put themselves above government control. they have been unable to subject themselves and their agents to self-control. Tn brief, they have abused their power, and they are abusing their power now, over men and over cities of men,
 Among the petitions before Congress is one from the City of Danville." Vir- ginia. which illustrates this pretty well. The Southern Railway Is the EUfnmon carrier down there and Samuel Spen- eer it's President, is the man who man. aged the railroads fight till Futile" appeared. Danville was all right up to 1886; 1t had two railroads in com petition But in that year the South eru Railroad purchased the Virginia Midland, aud" says the petition, "de- prived Danviffe of the competing line and of it's equal freight rate advan- tages." Danville had some spirit how ever and in 1890 it subscribed a large sum to help build a new competing railroad Then" says the petition, l after operating few years as an