The news-democrat. (Providence, R.I.) 1906-1909, 1907-05-24

doing something for the more equitable enjoyment
by the people OF those great modern highways.
True for many years it sufficient protec-
ton for those engaged in unjust practices to prate
about the danger to the widow and orphan stock
holders, and there was bit of comedy in the fact
that those who were apparently so socitous OF the
widow and orphan forgot all about both when it
came to wreckng railroads financially for the bene-
ht of themselves and their fellow conspirators in
Wall street.
The interstate commerce act was a step, of
course, towards more equitable conditions but that
law not enacted until its need was over proved.
More than decade before Miss Tarbe began her
attack on the Standard Oil company and its iniqui-
tous bargains with railroads, another writer had
clearly set forth the main points of an exhaustive
indictment against the Rockefeller combination.
Nearly quarter of a century ago, when Henry {.
Clark, citizen of Providence, desired the right to
have coal carried the railways built in this
state under permission of the legislature at the
same rates as non-residents were having it carried,
he was told by the legislators that he ought to be
able to run his own business without their assist
ance.
This view of the matter was not new for about
the time two members of the judiciary COM
mittee of the state senate of Pennsylvania emphati-
cally disagreed with Jeremiah s. Blacks conten-
ton, in speech before the committee that 'the
management of the railroads was not matter of
business to be conducted like private enterprise
merely for the profit of the directors or stock
holders"
At that time there was provision in the con-
sitution OF Pennsylvania prohibiting railroads from
engaging in coal mining. 1t was practically dead
letter, however, and we know it not resurrect-
ed until recently.
Judge Black, before he began his railroad
fight, had been attorney general of the United
States and had led in unearthing frauds attempted
through pretended Mexican grants in California
which saved hundreds of millions of dollars worth
of land to settlers His views, though founded on
admitted principles of law, deemed too radi-
cal He maintained that if the state had, in express
terms authorized railroads to impose unreasonable
tolls taxes upon the people for the use OF their
own roads the grant would be void that to give
the corporations power such as that would be to
give it the public highway private property and
TO arm a body of mere adventures with the police
authority of the commonwealth and to convert rail-
road managers from public servants into public
robbers. You might well say" he added, that
the legislature could sell the state out and out
Judge Black then showed that in public grant,
whether of land money franchises, nothing
passes by construction, no ambiguous phrase car
ries with it anything TO swell the dimensions OF the
gift.
How we'll time has proved the worth of those
views every intelligent man will realize. The state
of Pennsylvania was deaf to his arguments, how
ever and for years. with its neighbor, New Jersey,
became the victim of railroad greed and political
corruption. There is the satisfaction that an
enlightened sense of public decency has made it
dangerous to discriminate or to use public fran
chises for highway robbery