The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-08-20
TAFT SPEAKS AT COLUMBUS

TAFT SPEAKS AT COLUMBUS
 Continued from Seventh Page.) tered securities as their best source of profit would have reason to complain. Amendments Against Purchase of stock
 in Competing Lines and Against
 Common Directors.
 A much used means of eliminating competition among interstate lines serving the same territory is the ac- quisition by one company of the stock In another and the election of direc- tors to represent that stock. This pro- cess is facilitated by the uncontrolled power td issue securities beyond the needs of the company for it's legitimate business and would be curbed by the restriction proposed. The evil ought further to be directly restrained by making it unlawful for an interstate railway to acquire stock in a compet- ing line. This is a simpler remedy of meeting the evil than by recourse to the anti-trust law under the Northern Securities case. In addition to this, competing lines should be prohibited frcm having common directors or of f1cers.
 Proposed Amendments Plainly COnsti-
 tutionaI.
 These suggestions of additional legis- lation in respect to the supervision and control of interstate railways have been made by the interstate commerce com mission and I heartily concur in them. They are plainly within the federal jurisdiction under the interstate com n.erce clause. I do not think that in order to accomplish a good which the federal government with it's greater resources and wider geographical reach can bring about more quickly and ef- ficiently the constitutional limits upon federal action should be blurred out or ar undoubted federal power should be expanded by doubtful construction in- to a field which really belongs to the State. But the right of congress to take any action, not confiscatory in the most rigid control of interstate commerce cannot be denied.
 Suggested by Hartman Consultations. Rate Bill and Proposed Amendments
 The measures taken and proposed are radical perhaps, viewed from the standpoint of the laissez faire doctrin- are whose ideas have been allowed to prevail in respect of railroad manage ment down to the present; but no one can read the report of the commission or the history of the sunion of the Southern Pacific and Union Pacific sys- tens with the Illinois Central system without trembling at the enormous power that one man, by the uncontroll- ed use of the stock and bond issuing power of interstate railways under State charters, has acquired in respect of vital part of the country's busi- ness and without looking for some means of remedying such a dangerous tendency which, if not stopped, will lead to the absorption of all the rail- roads of the country into one hand
 Not sociaIistic, Hut the Opposite.
 The contention on behalf of the rail- roads, already noticed, that such super- vision as the Rate Bill and these sug- gested amendments afford, is socialis- tic and tends to government ownership, is utterly without basis. Efficient reg ulation is the very antidote and pre- ventative of socialism and government ownership. The railroads, until now, have been permitted to wield without any real control the enormously i'm rortant franchise of furnishing trans portation to the entire country They have constructed 230,0O0 miles of road In certain respects they have done a marvellous work and have afforded transportation at cheaper rate, per ton, per mile and per passenger, than in any country in the world. They, however many of them, shamelessly violated the trust obligation they have been under to the public of furnishing equal facilities at the same price to all shippers. The watering of stock and bonds and the over-capital- ization of some of them for the profit of their managers have prevented the needed improvement of theirrailroads in construction and quipment. The tre- mendous demand for increased facili- ties due to the enormous growth of business shows the inadequacy of their equipment and construction. While they might not have been expected to meet in full such an extraordinary demand, the obligations some of them have as- sLmed in the form of stocks and bonds leave no doubt that, had the money they represented been put into the reads in good faith, the shortage of cars and equipment and inadequacy of read-bed and track would not be so great. They discharge a public function. They have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. The remedy for the evils must be radical to be effective. If it is not so, then we may certainly ex- pect that the movement toward gov- ernment ownership will become for idable one than cannot be stayed.
 Objections to Government Ownership.