Waterbury evening Democrat., 1907-02-05

lBURY EVENING DEl British empire; they built the iron highways just as government had al- ways built the dirt and water high ways. Ill other countries instead of building these iron highways gov ernment adopted the policy of creat- ing public corporations as arms or agencies of government to build and operate them as public highways.
 They could not be built except as public highways, as government roads, because the necessary land could not be acquired to build them as private roads. Any individual could build railroad as private road, as can be done now if the land can be obtained by private pur- chase. The trouble is that the owner of any strip of land on the route could stop the building of the road by refusing to sell his land. And this brings us right to the point of the matter. Government may take land against the will of the owner by its eminent domain power, for public highways, or any other public or gov ernment use. But land cannot be taken by government for any private use.
 "Fasten that in your mind-that only government can take private property away from the owner, and that 1t can take it only for a public use, such as for public highway and the like-and you have the key to why our iron roads just like our dirt and water roads had to be and were built not as private roads but as public highways; that is to say, high ways over which all had the right to have themselves and their goods car ried on the very same terms to all, no more and no less to any one. In order that these iron roads could be built at all they had therefore to be built as public highways. To enable corporations to build them they had to be built as public highways, and to that end government had to con fer on such corporations the right to use the governments power of emi- nent domain to take land"
 After calling attention to some court decisions fixing the status of railroads as public and not private highways, Judge Gaynor said:
 You therefore perceive that the corporations, or rather the individ- uals who control the corporations which run them, can not do with them as they will. They are mere trustees or agencies of government. Every free pass issued, every favor in freight rates granted, is in de- fiance of the law, yea, of the very law of the being of these iron high ways and of the corporations run ming them. Some people are under the delusion that recent statutes made these things unlawful. Not at all; they were unlawful from the be- ginning. The fact that these iron roads were public highways, just like the dirt roads that ran along side of them, became so far forgotten by some people that they thought it was meddlesomeness to interfere with the management of them. Do they not own them, and may not one do as he likes with his own?' they asked. This is an old and arrogant question, but 1t was never true of the ownership of private property, even, let alone being, true of public highways or public property"
 Judge Gaynor then spoke of the long neglect of government to super wise and control the management of the railroads, with the result that the individuals in control of the rail- road corporations throughout the country came to do as they liked with the roads, and said:
 Just think for a minute of these public highways of the country, open to all on absolutely equal terms by the very law of their being, being used to enable some men, few men, to destroy their business rivals, drive them out of business and beggar them and their families, by means of favoritism in freight rates. It is the basest crime of our day and genera tion. I do not have to stop and re- mind intelligent people that if can get my freight carried at rate so much lower than yours that I am thereby enabled to ruinously under sell you in the market and that you must quit; you are ruined ard I am left without rival, with monopoly, to dictate prices and do as will.
 About 1870 went through the oil region of Pennsylvania after com- ing home from school. There saw wilderness of derricks spread out over the country and engines pump ing oil from wells. Hundreds of peo- pie owned such wells and were pro- ducing oil. In about five years all of these wells had passed into the own ership or control of one man or set of men. All the others had failed and joined those unfortunates who fall by the wayside in the struggle for existence. And why and how? Were these few men able to dig wells or pump oil. or refine 1t, any better than the hundreds of others? Not at all. Then how did they ruin and drive every one out but themselves? Why, they went to the few powerful indi- viduals who controlled the railroads, the public highways, and conspired with them. breathed with them, and got them to carry their oil to market for say $1 barrel while every one else was charged $2 and more bar rel. More than that, they got these railroad autocrats and deflers of law