The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-08-04
THE NORTH CAROLINA "CoPRO-

The InsiAe Facts Alsut The Incident u x A a.A lts Res.its.
 and the Atlantic Coast Line. begin. sssnsers in North Caroline the rate; - judge has declared to be unconstitu. tional. This is called "compromise. It I! Is. in fact. sn abject surrender bS along ths line for ooyesnor Glenn. The because of the failure isu of the Federsi government to assure to them the equal forcemsnt of of tho the 'c court:s :1'e dsoTee. .A'
 The wrong and injustice of this en- forced compromise" are manifest. M ssser sner.ms cou4 o9.hs nys he ssDis
 to be unconstitutional, the railroads will be- quite unable to recover the money lost through the sale of tickets will have been taken not only without due process of law. but without the authority of any law whatever, for an unconstitutional statute Is not law. that followed by Judge Lacombe when he directed the Consolidated Gas Con- pany to pay into court moneys col the eiehty-cent rate prescribed by the new law. Judge Pritchard directed the North Carolina railroads to sell tick" cts with coupons attached represent. rate and the new statutory rate. Had the law then been upheld by the Su- preme Court. the excess charge would coupons. That would have been just to both parties.
 It is generally believed that the fear of political conseQuences deterred the to enforce the docre0s of Judge Pritchards court Governor Glenn was full of fight and truculent utterance. He b the ns snsa aJssa of
 Apparently 1t did not occur to the administration to ''can bis bluff He threatened to summon the Legislature roads or to disintegrate them by. the permitted to execute this threat the f9s anH ne n15x ,S would have rested squarely upon his the prosperity of North Carolina to the s sasa have roads of which the charters were for feited? Could these disconnected links have been lawfully leased on fav9ra, m,ra, North Carolina needs all the transpor- tation facilities 1t can get It is poor State, 1t has . large illiterate white Sf and msa1rs tation facilities. Kansas has twice the railway mileage of North Carolina, and nearly three times as much wealth. siists sos @ Sofd Of osns Kansas ss and % to muss up its corporations and its business interests very much as Gov genn is s SSns wa were soon apparent. One result was a memorable newspaper article by. MT. William A. White inqniring, Wnats insly @ vivid portrayal of the destruc- tive results of Populist administration opened the eyes even of the kansans. There wss 2 speedy return ,,noto,s to sanity; nSd hairy calamity howlers. and since that time they have been indulging in the solid joys of growing richer and pay ing of mortgages: u,., ., in North Carolina. Probably Governor Glenn himself is 2 sensible man; at any rate, he is mighty clever in fight: have gone very far with his policy of forcibly constraining the railroads to obey an unconstitutional statute before sundry alarming conseauenoes o woula his feiiow citizens. But instead of giving him rope, the administration chose to surrender G completely bnm,,t ln its ating enough. from the national and political point of view it is much more than humiliating. A great crop of de- side 1t is exultingly declared that State rights have been vindicated. and Fed eraI Interference rebuked. The simple truth that a State has no right to enact and enforce an unconstftutional statute has been obscured. Nobody seems to pay much attention to the fact that a Federal judge has been forced to see his orders contemptuous- iy disreEarded because the Federal ex- ecutive has left him in the lurch.
 Judge Pritchard might with reason and propriety, though doubtless at some personal inconvenience, resign his office, indicating in his letter of resig- nation that he found 1t incompatible with his self respect longer to hold nermftted him to be affronted in this fashion because of apprehension about the political effect on enforcing his orders.