The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-05-19
or the dry goods business Is injurious,

or the dry goods business is injurious, such business will be prohibited and the prohibition will prevail
 The power to prohibit involves the
 power to restrain or to regulate or to control. The law has exactly as much
 right and the same right to regulate news
 paper advertising rates or hotel rates or
 coal rates or food rates as 1t has to
 regulate railroad rates water rates or gas rates or interest rates.
 A street railway, in the eye of a legal philosopher Is no more truly public
 utility" than a barber shop or a hotel or 0 shoe store or an insurance office.
 If municipality has the right to regu- late wagons that run on rails 1t can also
 regulate wagons that do not run on rails. If the law can permit the buyers of water or gas or transportation or tele-
 phone service to arbitrarily fix the prices
 that they will pay for the several services 1t can also permit the buyers to fix the prices they will pay for food and fuel
 and clothing and newspaper and jewelry
 and farm products.
 The melancholy fact Is that the present agitators for the regulation of rates by
 law are essentially though impersonallO dishonest. They want other people regu- lated while they themselves desire to do as they please.
 They want done to others what they are not willing to have done to them selves.
 | The farmer or merchant who wants the | earnings of railroads restricted to little | or nothing in good years, to say nothing of the bad years, is equally willing to pocket his own 100 per cent per annum l profit
 The merchant who Is frantic with grief I if the gas company in his town makes | 10 per cent thinks 1t entirely right if his | own business nets him 50 per cent or 800 | per cent.
 Where municipality has given an | individual or an association of individuals i the right to carry on a certain business for a certain length of time, with no re- served right to fix rates. 1t Is as dis honest to lay violent hands on It's earn- | ing power as 1t would be to break open
 its cash box and take its money. | On such terms not a dollar of capital
 could ever have been secured for public | Improvements such as arc commonly
 called public utilities"
 Who would invest in a water plant, or
 a street railway, or a gas plant, or a tele-
 phone plant, with the understanding that
 the buyers could determine what they
 should pay?
 | If such theory is to prevail, who will
 invest In such property hereafter Any man who will do it needs a guardian. | S through court to determine their reason ableness. No professional man thinks he ought ordinarily to have his fees fixed in court. No real estate owner thinks he ought to have his rents determined ar- | bitarily by his tenants or their repre- | sentaItives.
 | It is all very fine to make @ certain | class of business men sweat blood, but
 1t Is not so fine when the persecution | spreads and the joyful spectator him | self becomes the victim.
 President Roosevelt and Governor Folk
 are among those eminent gentlemen who | have catered too much to this spirit of
 selfish disregard of the rights of one set | of business men by another set. It Is
 not supposable that they wish to par alyze business in any particular direc- l ton or that they deliberately contemplate
 an approval of unfairness and dishonesty. l It Is only that an overtrained political 1 ear will often hear things that are not so
 and recognize demands that are unworthy.
 The special session of the Missouri lesls- | lature now assembled Is as unnecessary | as any such convocation ever was in all l history. The corporations which it is proposed to regulate are making less
 money than the people engaged in any ] other branch of legitimate business. They
 are taking the maximum of risk and
 are getting the minimum of gain. They l are dlredOy SuDJect to llure Specldl itW > | than any other lines of business. They
 are in fact, the under dog in the busi-
 ness world. This Is probably why the 1 powerful politicians take so much pains
 to hsten to any degree of popular clamor | against them
 But 1t Is not right and 1t is not even | eXpedient.
 The state of Missouri has not yet secured
 q tenth part of the public utility" money
 it wants and needs and must have. Most Of the proposed laws are not only unnecessary and unjust, but they are