The National tribune., 1907-06-06
THE PRESIDENTS MEMORIAL DAY
SPEECH.

Indianapolis on Memorial Day. Proba-
blv nothing that the President has said
in the course of his Administration has
given greater and more solid satisfac-
ton than this 1t announces a rail-
road policy in which substantially
everybody, except the gamblers and
spectators, thoroly agree. 1t receives
its highest commentator from the
business interests of the country; from
the honest conservative investors in
railroad stocks; from the men who
build and operate our lines of transport
tation.
Reduced to its most concise express
sion, the President proposes that an
appraisal of the railroads shall be made
which will put them on the same sound
business basis of the banks, the farms
and the factories. 1t will put their con-
troll in the hands of the men who
actually own them; whose money is in
vested in them and whose prosperity
depends upon their safe and sane man
agement They are to be no longer the
shuttlecocks and baubles played for by
Wall Street spectators, who are abso-
lutely without regard to the value of
the roads or their importance to the
communities which they serve. AS the
President well says, the railroads
should no more be made the playthings
of Wall Street than are the banks. in
surance companies and great manufac-
tories. They should be even less SO.
the well-being, the daily life Of more
people and to greater degree than
any bank, insurance company or fac
tory In our high civilization railroads
have become vital to our people. There
is not an hour in the day of any active,
busy man but what is affected in some
way or another by the railroads. 1t
goes without saying that the conduct
of these highly essential elements in
our lives should be controlled as nearly
as possible by those whose relations
with them are SO intimate. 1t is the
most dangerous form of tyranny to
have them managed, made, unmade, in
fiuenced this way and that by men SO
remote from the country as the Wall
Street gamblers, and SO constituencies
in their manipulations. 1t is a far more
dangerous form of Capitalization than
any political centrslizaton can be.
The system which the President pro-
poses to inaugurate will be to bring
these railroads to an absolutely busi-
ness basis, the same as every other in
dustry and interest in the country; to
agement definitely located in the hands
of the men who own them and every
thing connected with them given such
wide, certain publicity as will enable
the people to understand and correct
their operations as certainly as they can
any other great industrial system. This
will give the desired protection to those
who put their money into railroads and
whose capital assists in developing lines
of communications. 1t cannot help but
railroads themselves, since people will
much more readily put their money into
new enterprises when they understand
that these are to be properly managed
by responsible men with a reasonable
security Tor their investments. 1t will
as that of Mr.. Hartman, where, by
manipulating the stocks Of a railroad,
by Juggling with paper evidences of
valua which really represented little
value, he was enabled to get control
of a railroad, take all of it's accumu-
lated funds out of its Golfers in the
shape of dividends payable to himself
and then load the road down with tens
OF millions of dollars Indebtedness, of
which but small portion went to rep
resent the Improvements that were to
have been made by the money that he
wickedly confiscated to his own enrich
ment.
1t marks the same change in the
of the railroads as oc-
CURED when the State Governments,
and finally the United States Govern
ment, introduced a safe and sane bank
ing system. Under the old system men
of the Hartman type could start a
bank with no other capital than enough
to print some fine-looking notes, with
which they would food the country
Their methods We're the same in prin-
ciple as those of Mr.. Hartman in is
suing vast amounts of stock upon
the Chicago & Alton Railroad. The
wild cat bankers of the earlier times
issued millions of dollars of notes which
they worked off on the unwary as best
they could, accepting any discount to
get rid of them, precisely as Mr.. Har-
riman sold his stock at any prices
paying The note-holders, of course,
lost everything, and the purchasers Of
Mr.. Harriman's inflated stock would be
similarly swndled, but that the cry
goes up that innocent purchasers must
not be ruined. Consequently the roads
upon which Mr.. Hartman has issued
his inflated stock will possibly have to
carry the burden indefinitely. The
President simply proposes that this
sort of policy shall be stopped and
never be made possible again. 1t is pre-