206 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



I think the work that we have been doing in regard to railroads is 

 just pioneering in regard to other business. Today you have over at the 

 state house pending measures providing for the regulation of public utili- 

 ties. There is just one phase of that that somewhat embarasses me. Mr. 

 Erickson, of Wisconsin, says that he devotes 75 per cent of his time to 

 the public utilities, and the balance to the railroads. Mr. Lee, of the 

 Washington railroad commission, said that he didn't have any time at 

 all to give to the railroads since they had the public utility law in Wash- 

 ington. It will be rather &ad if I have to devote all of my time, or four- 

 fifths of it, to the public utilities — v/ouldn't you think so, Mr. Whitenton? 

 I?ut the time is coming, I sincerely hope, that Iowa will not find it nec- 

 essary to copy after Wisconsin or any other state. We have been late in 

 securing public utility regulation in this country, but we can profit by the 

 experience of other states. We can get some good ideas from the John- 

 son (California) law, and the Hughes (New York) law, and the La 

 Follette law in Wisconsin, and the Oklahoma, Ohio and Virginia laws. 

 "We can take the best results of their experience in regard to these mat- 

 ters and incorporate them in a great Iowa public utility law, wliich I 

 think will be done. There are other lines of big business going to be 

 regulated. Recently a man very prominent in one of our political parties 

 said at Chicago that monopolies are going to pass out of existence, and 

 that the business men of this country must make up their minds to that 

 fact. Do you really think that is true? Take it in your home town, 

 do you want one telephone company, or three or four? Isn't it better 

 for you to have just one telephone company, if that one is charging rea- 

 sonable rates? You don't want tv/o or three or half a dozen receivers 

 in your house in order to be able to talk to your neighbors and friends. 

 The same is true about your water works and gas works. You don't 

 want a number of rival concerns to make competition more costly and 

 make the employment of additional help necessary to give you the serv- 

 ice that one set of men would give you if there was only one company 

 there. If you live in a town which a couple of railroads to Chicago, do 

 you want half a dozen more, making the cost pile up which they have 

 to pay, and increasing the value upon which they have to pay a return? 

 You don't want that situation, and we don't want any settled rate wars; 

 we want a reasonable cost. We don't want service below cost, but we 

 want to give them a reasonable return, therefore let them combine, and 

 then we attempt to regulate them after they have combined. This thing of 

 busting the combinations is hard to carry through. A few years ago, 

 they busted the Standard Oil Company in Ohio, and drove it out of the 

 state; it has been there ever since. They drove it out of Texas; but it 

 is there yet. Hadlej^ down here, made a national reputation driving the 

 Standard Oil Company out of Missouri, and yet she is there just as much 

 today as she ever was. Last year the attorney general busted the Stand- 

 ard Oil Company, dissolved it, and drove it out of existence in the 

 United States of America; and yet the Standard Oil Company has been 

 here ever since, and her stock sold a hundred million dollars higher on 

 the market the week after she was busted. It may be possible to destroy 

 these combinations or create effective competition but by our past exper- 



