108 IOWA DEPARTMENT OP^ AGRICULTURE. 



The fundamental fact of railroad rates, which cannot be too often 

 repeated, is that a railway is a public highway, performing service under 

 the license and control of the state. By "state" I do not use it in the 

 limited sense, as the State of Iowa, but by "state" I mean by the sover- 

 eign power — that indefinable something that is the ultimate sovereign 

 of all civil governments. A public highway is a thing on which one man 

 has as good a right as another man. The man who owns a building 

 that costs a million dollars, fronting on a street of Des Moines, has no 

 more rights on the streets of Des Moines than the man who owns 

 nothing. So, one man has the same rights, and should be treated 

 exactly the same as another man on the great steel highways on which 

 the commerce of this country is carried and must be carried. This has 

 always been the theory of railways. You know that the history of rail- 

 ways only 'extends over a little more than half a century. When I was a 

 boy there was hardly a railway in the United States; and I may mention 

 as a matter of curiosity here,, that the first steam railways that were 

 built in the United States were built for the purpose of carrying passen- 

 gers, just the same as our electric lines are built today. There was no 

 more idea or conception of moving freight across tlie continent by rail- 

 ways than there is of moving freight across the continent by electric 

 lines today. You read the early prospectuses of the railroads of Massa- 

 chusetts, and they all build up on the question of passenger business — how 

 many passengers they carried, and how much they could get for carrying 

 them; and it was eight or ten years, if I recollect right, after the Balti- 

 more & Ohio road was started before they ever carried as much as 5,000 

 pounds of freight in a single year. The railroads were then new. When 

 they began to build in this country we were all in favor of railroads. 

 We would go to the legislature and we would vote them anything they 

 asked. "Only build us a railroad. We don't care what you ask. That's 

 all we want." 



Most of the early charters in this western country — in these so-called 

 granger states — give in terms to the directors of the corporation the 

 absolute power to make such rates as they saw fit. The people — the 

 people in all new countries — are improvident. They want something, and 

 they want it awfully bad, and they don't stop to criticise very carefully 

 what kind of a contract they make. Now, these railroads came into 

 existence under these conditions. The philosophy of it, which has since 

 been reasoned out and argued out and decided by the courts, wasn't 

 thought of, wasn't understood. Everybody thought that the railroad was 

 like any other owner of property — that they owned the railroads. It was 

 their property; they could carry freight for one man at one price and 

 for another man at another price. This wasn't doubted for a great many 

 years, and so it grew up — the railroads came into existence and grew 

 up without any legislative power for the control of rates. As long as 

 there was no objection — as long as there were no competitive lines — there 

 was no discrimination, as a rule, between individuals. If there was any 

 discrimination, it was a discrimination in favor of some relative or some 

 friend, which, of course, is a most unjustifiable discrimination; but I am 

 simply repeating history. But as soon as there came two railroads com- 



