The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1922-02-04
THE STATE MUST LIVE


For about forty years we have had
governmental regulation of railroads,
during all which time the lawyers and
other parasites have been milking the
national cow, while one locality, or in
dustry, tugged on her horns and some
other locality, or industry, tugged on
her tail.
The national cow is the sum and
total of our national production, only
to be reduced by all such contests.
We justly complain that big finan-
ciers have robbed the railroads, and
thus robbed US, so to correct an evil
we rob the railroads, and thus rob
ourselves.
We all agree that one who robs the
railroads robs the public, if that one
has an Office on Wall street, but if he
lives in Cabbage Bottom opinions di-
vide on how to bestow honors upon
him.
At all times, for forty years past,
our Interstate Commerce Commission
has been composed of experts, and we
have spent many millions for more ex-
perts and data to aid them.
The public had supposed that if it's
regulation of railroads was ever to
succeed it must be done by experts.
But few days ago, a senator arises
L. L.
ate and tells US that we have been on
the wrong track, and that we have had
too many experts employed in this
work of rate making; and to express
to that august body, and thus to the
world, protest against an outrage
committed by our trained experts upon
man at Cocoa, Florida, because this
victim of oppression, as the result of
our experts work, had been obliged to
pay $500 freight, per car, from Cocoa
to New York on his oranges, while he
only paid s40O freight on car of his
automobiles shipped to him there from
Detroit. Hence the outrage.
This outrage and the dignity of that
Senate, which gave ear to the sena-
tors complaint, remind me only by
contrast of by-gone days in the his
tory of that body, in whose keeping
rests the fate of the greatest nation
in the world. Amy nation on the globe
could be made to pause, and most of
them to tremble by it's DEGREES. In
it's keeping, too, rests the fate and
destiny of ten million helpless people
in remote parts of the world, to whom
even our language is unknown. They
may welter under oppression with no
voice, or vote, to raise in protest
They cannot escape what of justice, or
injustice we measure out to them. Our
Senate must at times look across ev-
cry ocean to catch view of the sup
plicating, who, in grief turn their
faces to it.
Is our Senate to be thus diverted by
the man of Cocoa, or Cocoanut, when
we pay our millions to provide that
such complaints may be passed upor
by those whose expert knowledge and
honorable lives afford all such theil
best hope for real justice?
| Thus, too, I am reminded by con.
trast of still older days: when Ed
mund Burke was heard to voice the
griefs of the helpless millions of In
dia, and in the name of those remots
people to invoke, before the house o.
lords, retribution upon Warren Hast
ings. Across twenty centuries il
waited to US the thunderings of Cicero
| against Verres, the oppressor of ST
cily.
These are some of the legacie
! which other nations, and other times
: have left to inspire the emulation o
; all who through future ages ma
champion the cause of the oppressed.
: Sic transit gloria mundi!
If gentlemen from Cocoa and Cocoa
nut are permitted to fill our Congress
ional Record with local complaint
, about small adjustments in freigh
! rates, / fear that its pages will offe
no boon, or legacy, to those who com
after us.
| 1t would require many years OF har
, work, and much data, for you or me t
, know the exact merits, or demerit:
of the claim of the man from Cocoa
, but my mind does suggest that ther
may be no merit in it.
If you should charge me $40 to TAX
me to Leesburg in your car, and afte
we arrived there and you were read