Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1906-12-06
tons which would inure to the benefit
of the public as whole.

of the public as whole.
Corporations.
The present congress has taken long
strides in the direction of securing
proper supervision and control by the
national government over corporations
engaged in interstate business, and the
enormous majority of corporations of
any size are engaged in interstate bust
ness. The passage of the railway rate
bill and only to less degree the pas
sage of the pure food bill and the pro.
vision for Increasing and rendering
more effective national control over the
beef packing industry mark an impor-
tant advance in the proper direction.
In the short session it will perhaps be
difficult to do much further along this
line, and it may be best to wait until
the laws have been in operation for a
number of months before endeavoring
to Increase their scope, because only op-
Grafton will show with exactness their
merits and their shortcomings and thus
give opportunity to define what fur
Their remedial legislation is needed.
Yet, in my judgment, it will in the end
be advisable in connection with the
packing house inspection law to pro-
vide for putting date on the label
and for charging the cost of inspection
to the packers. All these laws have
already justified their enactment. The
interstate commerce law, for instance,
has rather amusingly falsified the pre-
dictions both of those who asserted
that it would ruin the railroads and of
those who asserted that it did not go
far enough and would accomplish
nothing. During the last FIVE months
the railroads have shown increased
earnings and some of them unusual
dividends, while during the same pc
Rod the mere taking effect of the law
has produced an unprecedented, a
hitherto unheard of, number of yolun-
tary reductions in freights and fares
by the railroads. Since the founding
OF the commission there has never been
time of equal length in which any
thing like so many reduced tariffs have
been put into effect. On Aug. q, for
instance, two days before the new law
went into effect, the commission re-
ceived notices of over 5000 separate
tariffs which represented reductions
from previous rates.
1t must not be supposed, however.
that with the passage of these laws it
will be possible to stop progress along
the line of increasing the power Of TIE
national government over the use Of
capital in Interstate commerce. For
example, there will ultimately be need
of enlarging the powers of the inter-
state commerce commission along sew
eral different lines, SO as to give it n
larger and more efficient control over
the railroads.
Legislation the Proper Antidote.
1t cannot too often be repeated that
experience has conclusively shown the
impossibility of securing by the actions
of nearly half hundred different state
legislatures anything but ineffective
chaos in the way Of dealing with the
great corporations which do not op-
crate exclusively within the limits of
any one state. In some method, wheth-
er by national license law or in other
fashion, we must exercise, and that at
an early date, a far more complete
control than at present over these
great corporations-a control that will,
among other things, prevent the evils
of excessive DISQUALIFICATION and
that will compel the disclosure by each
big corporation of it's stockholders and
of its properties and business, whether
owned directly or through subsidiary
or affiliated corporations. This will
tend to put a stop to the securing of
inordinate profits by favored individu-
ais at the expense whether of the gen.
eral public, the stockholders or the
wageworkers. Our effort should be not
SO much to prevent consolidation as
such, but so to supervise and control
1T as to see that it results in no harm
to the people. The reactionary or
ultra conservative apologists for the
misuse of wealth assaiI the effort to
secure such control as step toward
socialism. AS matter of fact, it is
these reactionaries and ultra conserya-
tiyes who are themselves most potent
III luCIedSlHS SOClillSllC ICell0g. one
Of the most efficient methods of avert
ing the consequences of dangerous
agitation which is so per cent wrong
is to remedy the 20 per cent Of evil
as to which the agitation is we'll found
ed. The best way to avert the very
undesirable move for the governmental
ownership of railways is to secure by
the government, on behalf of the peo-
pie as whole, such adequate control
and regulation of the great interstate
common carriers as will do away with
the evils which give rise to the agita-
ton against them. So the proper an
tidote to the dangerous and wicked
agitation against the men of wealth as
such is to secure by proper legislation
and executive action the abolition of the
grave abuses which actually do obtain
in connection with the business use Of
wealth under our present system, or,
rather, no system, of failure to exer-
else any adequate control at ALL Some