The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-11-01

Stdl6 EdllEOduS5 ana III procuring I6u- eral statutes that railroad employees may have limited hours of labor and may recover for damages without re- gard to their own negligence.
 He now wants federal statutes by which all the traffic of railroads, with in as we'll as between States, shall be under federal control, regulation and restraint; by which all industrial cor poratlons doing an interstate busi- ness (and there are none which do not), shall be obliged to take a fed eral license or charter. and so be sub ject to federal control, regulation and restraint; by which federal income tax and Q federal inheritance tax shaI be imposed, not at all for the reason of raising revenue, Chat is not even mentioned by him) but for the purpose of reducing swollen for tunes" "-advocating an inheritance tax on certain indefinite portions of in- definitely large fortunes, of 100 per cent; in plain English. conhsoation of such portions.
 Had it been abused? (the rate mak- ing power). Nobody claimed that it had been. MT. Roosevelt explicitly stated that railroad rates in this country were reasonable. He sought for the power to fix rates on the supposed groundbthat such power could be used as a club to compel the railroads to abandon relating. This whole matter of rebating, so far as it effects the general public, has been grossly exaggerated. Even now President Mellen says: "The pub lie cry has been against discrimina- ton, yet those who have to handle the business of railroads, know, that in private 1t is the one strenuous ef- fort on the part of the public to se- cure that very thing" Relating was a question between the wholesale shipper-the intermediary-and the carrier It did not affect the con sumer. The price to him was, would have been, the same.
 Not only did President Roosevelt admit that railroad rates were req sonable, but every thinking man knew such to be the fact, and know that the railroads had, of their own accord, and in the proper develop ment of their business, been reducing rates all through their history, so that railroad rates were lower in this country than in any other country, | Without State intervention, the rail- roads voluntarily reduced their rates per ton per mile, from 3.64S cents in 1863, to O.76S cents in 1908; a re- duction amounting, on the basis of the business for 1903, and for that year, to the enormous sum of $4,9S7, 04O,622.
 In 1903 the owners of the railroad 4 stocks and bonds received d return of only 3.74 per cent of the estimated l total cost.
 The rates of the railways are gov erned by economic laws, to which their managers must conform and which they cannot ignore, For during all this period the natural tendency of the railway manager was to main tain such rates as the expanding traf- fic would bear, and clearly any appre- ciably lower rate would have wiped OuI 1llOSCNlCl tlAC AlAetA ottA 1OA the profit of the owners.
 But especially consider how Con- necticut, and all New England, de- pend for their salvation on the prac- tice of this theory of rates Vice President Byrnes told this club last winter that the Consolidated railroad hauls the raw material for New Eng land manufacturers thousand miles more Nor less, at bare cost. Otherwise our manufacturers could not compete with those nearer the base of raw ma terial
 Not only does New England bring her raw material from afar, but it must sell It's manufactured product far off. We must have here the low rate fpr the long distance haul, or we perish.
 Now the admitted fact is, that where railroad rates are fixed by the State, this correct theory of rates will not be successfully applied. The State will not pay for the necessary ability There Is not the sharp spur of personal interest There Is want ing entirely the sense of protecting the locality.
 So state rates tend to rigidity. Grad ually, insensibly, the fact of distance controls. Under state rate making New England manufacturing will slowly but surely be wiped out
 Now President Roosevelt is alone re- sponsible for raising this railroad rate question. It was not plank in the Re- publican platform. In the senate it did not command a majority of the Repub- licans in the senate committee. A mil nority of the Republicans and the Democrats combined, and this Roose- veltian measure was entrusted to the Democrat, Senator Tillman. The over whelming popularity of President Roosevelt iammed it through. Now what has been the result? It is patent to everybody. From the instant
 1t appeared likely that the power to | fix rates was to be taken from the railroads and put into the hands of | commissioners in the interest of the shlppers-com every one of
 whom could be removed at once by MT. Roosevelt for what he might deem "ineflciency or neglect"-the value of railroad properties began to decline and their credit to disappear.
 In the meantime the business of the country was enormously increasing, | and just at the time when the rail- roads needed capital by the hundreds of millions to equip themselves for the