The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-10-23

 CHANDELIERS
 POSITION
W ants Public Utilities Com mission to Safeguard Pub lie Interests


 meeting of the Connecticut Business
 Mems Association at Waterbury, Il Thursday on the operations of the
 New York, New Haven & Hartford l Railroad company in this state and
 the desirability of a public utilities
 commission. He said in part:
 l I may perhaps be permitted to say 1 g. word on behalf of the overshadow- ing corporation in the state of Con-
 necticut, with which from one cause 1 of another, I find myself in this state | of periodic controversy. At no time
 has anyone ever heard me, publicly or privately, express a feeling of hos 1 tility to the New York, New Haven & liHartford railroad. As a member of l the General Assembly I have some l Legislation has been mistaken one,
 but the broad lines of it's general pol I icy have commanded my admiration | from the time when I first began to
 take note of it's tendencies. I stated | on the floor of the House, and am
 glad to re-state now, that, as a citi-
 zen of Connecticut, I am proud of l that corporation As a citizen of the | state, ann ambitious for the realiZa- | ton of it's ambitions. I share in the
 pride of the consummation, at last ID sight, of President Mellen's states
 manlike dream of an all-New Eng l land railroad system, one great unified I network of transportation lines ex-
 tending from New York to Eastport, l Me. I see in it the possibility of new l and consolidated terminals in the city | of Boston. I see the possibility of 1 through sleeping cars the year around from Maine to New York. I see the.
 ordination and expedition of freight traffic. And, turning our eyes in the other direction, there arises the vii sion, soon to be realized in fact, of
 a massive steel span flung across Hell Gate to Long Island linking Connec- ticut with the Great Pennsylvania
 system, which has thrust a tube be- meath the bed rock and slime of the North and East rivers and bored un- der the streets of Manhattan to the gateway of a metropolis term1nal-a marvel of modern ingenuity and .enter- prise. All 1honor to the president, di- rectors, engineers, officials and attor- neys who have worked out the com- prehensive scheme of transportation for the service of the state of Con- to fruition. Think you that the bus mess men of Connecticut wish to in jure that property? Think you that any commission created under the au- thority of the General Assembly could survive a. year, if it aimed unjustly to hamper or restrict or impede that corporation2
 Why then, say you, do we need any regulation? Why cannot we trust the enlightened self-interest of the cor operation itself to care for the best in- terests of the state? Edward D. Rob bins, chief counsel for that corporation presented bafore the special joint com mittee on public utilities, of which Il was a meraber remarkably strong, temperate and convincing argument along these very lines, an argument that is not to be whistled away by demagogy. But at the conclusion of the series of hearings I was still of the opinion that supervision through power delegated to a small board Of experts was better than direct regula- ton by an unwieldly bicameraI as- Sembly.
 We need supervision primarily on account of New England's peculiar position of industrial isolation. A speaker at the recent convention Of the Connecticut Valley Waterways As sociation at Hartford characterized Connecticut as being "bottled up," with the neck of the bottle at New York city. This is not strictly true, because of the Ontario & Western outlet. But Connecticut is today, as indeed is all New England, maintain ing herself in the industrial world against tremendous odds. She goes to the iron mines and coal fields of Pennsylvania, or the Middle West,i and ships her fuel and raw materials shun- l dreds and in some instances thousands of miles across the steep grades Of parallel ranges of mountains and hills | She turns out this material in the | form of finished product and reships I it back to the markets of the country | over substantially the same route. l She holds this artificial supremacy l through her brains, capital and skill | ed labor. Every one of these routes | ing at New Haven. Even the water | has been gradually l brought into the control of that com | pany With a few negligible excep- tions, it may te fairly said that the l industrial life and death of every | every merchant that is dependent upon a manufacturer, leV- cry employee that works in the fac | tory of a manufacturer, every farm | CT that depends for his market on l the payroll of manufacturer, noee9 the whole fabric of our industrial and | commercial life, hangs on the will Of the small group of men who sit upon | the directorate of one corporation. That corporation possesses charter | rights of the broadest character-in | deed it may be literally said that there is almost nothing which it may | not do under that instrument. Trans portation is the artery through which we draw our industrial life blood, and the hand of a benevolent despot1sm at | all times rests lightly at our throat. Without any efficient machinery or | state regulation, this does not appeal to me as a comfortable economic sit uation.
 I said in the debate in the House, and have no reason to change my views since that time, that nothing but the character of the directorate of the road stands between the state 1f Connecticut and the abuses, due to reckless financing, which has scan' lalized the country and retarded 1n- lustries Tn other parts of the land. No man knows whether corporate de- 7elopment is in it's infancy, Or it's maturity, or it's old age. Great and 1 dramatic movements have taken place n the railroad world in the last de- ,ade. Some have happened in New : One morning the president ' if the Boston & Maine railroad woke ID and found that Charles s. Mellen owned a controlling interest in his and some morning MT. Mel en may wake up, in turn, and find hat another group of capitalists whose interests are not New England <. interests and whose ambitions are not lis ambitions. has gained control of lis property. If that time~eVer comes, l ioes not Connecticut wish to be in l | position to have something to say clfI l