Connecticut western news., 1908-09-17
PARTISAN TALKS
 ON VARIOUS MAT TIERS
WHlMPERING OF THE RAILROADS

and Electric Roads Enormous Prof.
 itszPennsyIvania Road Controls
 Coal Output.
 There is. now appearing in each issue O. Farm and Preside, an open, broad z aged and bipartisan talk on politics and existing conditions throughout the United States, written by the we'll known journalist Alfred Henry Lewis. These talks treat matters so fairly, so concisely and so clearly that they have attracted the attention of thousands of the better class of readers-the thinking people. The extract which we here with present from one of his latest articles interestingly discusses the coal situation and explains why prices on that commodity have been extraordinarily increased and maintained at the high level. He says:
 "Though we must not consider candi- dates, there be other topics, political and pressing, in full discussion of which we may unbuckle. Our interests in these, whether we be Democrats or Republicans or Populists or what you will, are one and the same. They travel side by side, and are common to us all There be those who have said that the public hates wealth, and the rich ones who have it. This, permit me to urge, is rank misstatement. The public does not hate wealth, but only the robber wealth that plunders it. The public no more hates gold than it hates a gun. It is when the gold or the gun is aimed at the public's destruction that the pop ular eye begins to sparkle and the popu- lar anger to stir.
 While there arises no popular condem- nation of mere wealth, however, there does exist popular suspicion, addressed to big companies-public service and trade. And even your most confirmed corporationist must admit that this att titude of distrust has much to keep it in countenance. With public-service cor porations-halfw water-paying forty per cent where they should by law pay but four, with poisons sold as medicines, with peculiar beef, with food adultera- tions. with rebates and the pike-greedy monopolles spawned of them-with all these. I say, on daily exhibition all about us, 1t would be strange indeed if the people proved both blind and deaf to the invidiousI lesson thereby taught.
 Take the railroads, just now detract- ing from the gaietY of nations by notch ing up freight rates. and whimpering over suggestions to reduce passenger figures to two cents a mile. Street rail- ways, with comparatively a more ex- pensive equipment and larger force, everywhere make money at one half a cent mile; but-and hear them tell it the great trunk lines. if they are not lnulched. must have at least their three cents mile from every traveller, or sink fainting into the arms of a re- ceiver. 1 More often than once,. it has been flung at me that "the country couldn t get along without the railroads" '" and all with the idea of justifying these self-sufficient corporations in patroniz- ing Uncle Sam. 1 Wasting no space replying to this con- ceit, must no less humbly submit that as usual-there are two ends to the alley, and that the railroads, couldn't get along without the country. During the decade last past the railroads have received from the people something over | ST 7,000, 100000. Also, the operating ex- penses of the roads receiving it were un- der $11 ,500, 1000, ,000, leaving profit lin ing the railroad pocket of more than $5, ,500, ,000,t0 One would imagine that such 8 showing ought to provoke, some tenderness on the part of the railroad toward goose that laid so golden an egg.
 To the holders of railroad bonds, the public during those ten years has paid interest to the resounding tune of $2, ,60O,- 000, ,000. and to shareholders in dividends $1, 500, 900, ,000. Conditions so rich as to require eleven figures in their exhibition should set the railroads to doffing their hats to the public, not demanding that the public doff its hat to them. Like wise, whimpering and whining and scold1ng would seem to be vastly out of place.
 Turn your eyes toward the Atlantic seaboard, and contemplate railroad soft coal situation. What follows, while regional as story, has its parallel in other railroad corners of the national earth. Speaking broadly, in the section named there are four coal fields. One is tapped by the Pennsylvania, one by the Ra1tiTuOrn and Ohio oua Inv tho Cboco-