604 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



Transit Company; Arthur W. Brady, president of tlie American Electric 

 Railroad Company; W. C. Brown, president of the New York Central 

 Railroad. Over half — I believe two-thirds — of the executive committee, 

 were officials of public utility and railroad companies, or their employes, 

 or representatives of their employes. In the coming session of the legis- 

 lature there will be a strenuous effort made to pass a public utility 

 measure. You have no national organization submitting to you a form for 

 a public utility bill. When the law is passed, of course the public utilities 

 will be represented, and they will be on hand at all stages. They are 

 already canvassing every member of the legislature in the state in regard 

 to the bill. They are already drafting model bills. They are entitled 

 to a square deal; they must have it; and no fair-minded man will at- 

 tempt to formulate any other kind of a measure. Again I come back 

 to the central proposition. It is that the public must have their duly 

 accredited representatives there to follow the matter, to appear before 

 committees; and I advise the greatest of caution in regard to it. 



I want to tell you folks, in regard to this gathering of information 

 from magazines and newspapers, one or two little experiences of my own. 

 One day I went into the editorial office of one of the Eastern papers. 

 The editor was an old friend of mine, and I said to him: 



"You gentlemen are absolutely failing to give the public both sides 

 of this case. This case is being tried before the American people as 

 much as it is being tried before the commission. Why can't you give 

 both sides? I don't object to the railroads organizing and distributing 

 their information, but why can't you print the other side, when it is being 

 offered in sworn testimony." 



He said: "Thorne, I am fully conscious of that fact. I want to hear 

 the other side. Will you take lunch with me Saturday noon?" 



I agreed to it. He brought down other people — one of them, Mr. Herbert 

 Quick, one of the editors of "Farm and Fireside," formerly of this state — 

 a very prominent man, who has written several books and many maga- 

 zine articles, and is a writer for the United Press Association; also half 

 a dozen other men in Washington. I said: "I am sorry you have invited 

 these men; I wanted to talk to you alone." He replied: "You can have 

 the floor. When we get there, I am going to shut the mouth of everybody 

 else in the group and let you talk." "All right," I said; "I intend to give 

 you the other side of this question, and I want you to hear it out." He 

 introduced me to the gentlemen, and we sat down at the table. "Now," 

 he said, "Thorne has the floor, and you other fellows have got to keep 

 still." And I sailed into the proposition and talked three-quarters of an 

 hour. Herbert Quick said: "Thorne, that is a peach of a story! Why 

 don't you write it for a magazine? Just hit the high spots, and send it 

 out; the public don't know the facts that you have stated." I replied, 

 "You can't get that story into a leading magazine in the United States." 

 He smiled at me rather condescendingly, and said perhaps I didn't know 

 his acquaintanceship. One of the men at the table said: "Why, Quick, 

 you can get it into Collier's; you are writing many of their editorials 

 today; you surely can arrange that." "Yes," he replied, "I can easily, but 

 I would prefer to see it in the Saturday Evening Post, because it will 

 reach a million or two million subscribers." 



