Evening star., 1925-09-05
BACKGROUND OF EVENTS
BY PAUL Y. COLLINS.

President Roosevelt fought against
the mergers of railroads. President
Coolidge is reported as declaring his
policy will be to support bill TO
make the merger of all railroads com
pulsory, in accord with the plan pre-
pared by the Interstate Commerce
Commission. under the operation of
the Esch- -Cummins act. That act at
present provides only for authorizing
voluntary mergers of certain combina-
tions of roads into "a few" systems,
but it is to be amended, according TO
President Coolidge's policy, so that
after seven years following the com
missions announcement of its plan
all railroads which have not volun-
tarily compiled and merged will be
forced to do SO.
Specifically. it appears that what
was a crime 20 years ago becomes a
virtue today, and that if Roosevelt
were right in opposing mergers, Pres
ident Coolidge must be wrong. A
closer study of conditions, as shown
by the Presidents supporters, clears
away that supposed opposition of
views.
The attempted consolidation of the
Great Northern and Northern Pacific
Railroad Companies, under a holding
company, the Northern Securities Co,
during Roosevelts administration
was prevented by the Department of
Justice, which was sustained by the
Supreme Court, because at that time
the Interstate Commerce Commission
had no power to control railroads and
protect the interests of shippers, as it
possesses today. The issue at stake
then was the proposed merger 5
monopoly of power to dictate rates
and control service in the interest of
stockholders alone, and at the cost
of the public It was monopoly which
was dangerous. not the merger when
monopoly is prevented.
Today the Interstate Commerce Com
mission controls rates. controls service
of all roads in the interest of shippers,
and the abuses which were obvious
and dangerous in Roosevelt'S day
would be checked effectually by the
laws already giving control to the
commission.
In Roosevelt's autobiography page
44S) appears this paragraph
Although, under the decision of the
courts, the National Government had
power over the railways, l found, when
1 became President, that this power
was either not exercised at all or eX-
ercised with utter inefficiency. The
law against rebates was a dead letter.
All the unScrupulous railway men had
been allowed to violate it with impu-
nifty; and because of this, as was in
evitable, the scrupulous and decent
railway men had been forced to violate
it themselves, under penalty of being
beaten by their less Scrupulous rivals.
1t was not the fault of these decent
railway men. 1t was the fault of the
Government"
late how Paul Morton, the son of
Cleveland's Secretary of Agriculture
and president of the Santa Fe Rail
road, came forward volunteering to
give testimony exposing the whole in
iquitous system of rebates and other
Determinations in favor of the big
shippers. Mr.. Morton volunteered his
exposure on condition that Roosevelt
would then really put stop to the
practice. The outcome was the pas
sage of the Hepburn rate bill, which
gave the Interstate Commerce Com
mission, for the first time, real control
over the railways. From that time the
evil of special, secret rebates was 'ab-
solutely eradicated.,'
X
1t will be recalled that % to so years
ago the greatest danger confronting
the public was the increasing power of
trusts, monopolies and big business. In
a speech by Senator Cushman K. Da-
Wis, law partner of the present Secre-
tary of State, Frank b. Kellogg
Senator Davis referred to the danger
of growing monopolies:
"Feudalismi It's spirit walks
the earth and haunts the institutions
of today, in the great corporations,
with the control of national highways,
their occupation of great domains,
their power to tax, their cynical con-
tempt for law, their sorcery to debase
most gifted men to the capacity of
splendid slaves, their pollution of the
ermine of the judge and the robe of
the Senator, their aggregation in one
man of wealth so enormous as to make
Croesus seem pauper, their picked,
paid and skilled retainers, who are
summoned by the message of electric
ity and appear upon the wings of
steam. If we look into the origin of
feudalism and of the modern corpora
tions-those Dromios of history-we
find that the former originated in a
strict paternalism, which is secuted by
modern economists, and that the latter
has grown from an unrestrained free
dom of action, aggression and develop
ment, which they commend as the
very ideal of political wisdom"