Arizona republican., 1907-10-03

nearly four -fifths of the total mileage of the country. All the most import ant railroads are no longer state roads, but instruments of interstate com merce. Probably S5 per cent of their business is interstate business. It is the nation alone which can with wis dom, justice, and effectiveness exercise over these interstate railroads the thorough and complete supervision which should be exercised. One of the chief. and probably the chief. of the domestic causes for the adoption of the constitution was the need to con- fer upon the nation exclusive control over interstate commerce. But this grant of power is worthless unless it is held to confer thoroughgoing and complete control over practically the sole instrumentalities of interstate commerce-the interstate railroads. The railroads themselves have been shortsighted in the rancor- ous bitterness which they have shown against the resumption by the nation of this long neglected power. Great capitalists who pride themselves up- on their extreme conservatism, often believe they are acting in the interests of property when following course so shortsighted as to be really an as sault upon property. They have shown extreme unwisdom in their violent opposition to the assumption of com- plete control over the railroads by the Federal government. The American people will not tolerate the liappy-gO- lucky system of no control over the great interestate railroads, with the insolent and manifold abuses which have so generally accompanied il. The control must exist somewhere: and unless it is by thorough going and rad ical law placed upon the statute books of the nation. it will be exercised in ever increasing measure by the sev- 'cIal- states The same considerations which made the founders of the com stitution deem t imperative that the nation should have complete control of interstate commerce apply with peculiar force to the control of inter state railroads at the present day; and the arguments of Madison of Vir- ginia. Pinckney of South Carolina. and Hamilton and Jay of New York, in their essence apply now as they ap- piled one hundred and twenty years ago.
 The national convention which framed the constitution, and in which almost all the most eminent Of the first generation of American statesmen sat, embodied the theory of the in strument in a resolution, to the effect that the national government should have power in cases where the sepa- rate states were incompetent to act with full efficiency. and where the harmony of tine United States would be interrupted by the exercise of such individual legislation. The interstate railroad situation is exactly a case in point. There will of course, be local matters affecting railroads which can best be dealt with by local authority, but as national commercial agents the big interstate railroad ought to be completely subject to national author ity. only thus can We secure their complete subjection to and control by. a single sovereign, representing the whole people. and capable both of protecting the public and of seeing that the railroads neither inflict nor endure injustice.
 Personally l firmly believe that there should be national legislation to control all industrial corporations dO- ing an interstate business. including the control of the output of their se- curities. but as to these the necessity