174 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



" Now to illustrate the necessity of this. The 

 sworn testimony before the Committee on 

 C'ommerce of the Forty-fourth Congress shows 

 that freight from the city of I'ittsburg, to be 

 Bent to Philadelphia, in tin- same State, could 

 be phced on 1 1 10 Ohio River and M-nt down the 

 Ohio River live hundred and forty miles to the 

 city of Cincinnati, where there are competing 

 lines of railroad, and from there sent back 

 through 1'ittstiurg to Philadelphia cheaper 

 than it could be sent directly from Pittsburg 

 to Philadelphia. 



A year ago last winter the commercial 

 bodies of New York and Philadelphia stated 

 hetoro our committee that they could ship ar- 

 ticles of commerce from Philadelphia and New 

 York to the city of Boston, and from there 

 ship them to the West cheaper than they could 

 send them directly from those cities to the 

 West. My friend from Nevada here [Mr. Dag- 

 gett] has the evidence, which, if he has the 

 opportunity, he will present to the House, 

 showing that a car-load of freight sent from 

 Omaha to the West will be charged more if it 

 stops at the Palisades, in Nevada, than if it 

 went to San Francisco and was brought back. 

 Freights could be taken from Omaha to San 

 Francisco on through rates, and back to the 

 Palisades on way rates, as cheap or cheaper 

 than they could be taken from Omaha directly 

 to the Palisades. 



44 1 could go on and multiply instances of this 

 kind to an indefinite extent, showing the ne- 

 cessity of limiting the power o*f these corpora- 

 tions to discriminate in favor of one locality or 

 business, and against another locality or busi- 

 ness, to enrich one town or city, and impov- 

 erish another town or city. 



44 When these corporations were created it 

 was for the purpose of furnishing conveniences 

 of transportation to all the people, and not as 

 instruments of oppression to any. 



44 These are all the provisions of the proposed 

 bill except one. We require these railroads to 

 print and post np their schedule rates of freight. 

 They say they do that now. If they do, then 

 they pay no respect to their schedules. It was 

 denied by the President of the New York Cen- 

 tral Railroad, and by the President of the Erie 

 Railroad, in writing over their Own signatures, 

 in answer to an inquiry of the Chamber of 

 Commerce of the city of New York, that they 

 discriminated in rates or made any special rates, 

 and immediately succeeding that denial proof 

 was made before the committee of the New 

 York Legislature engaged in the investigation 

 of the subject that six thousand special con- 

 tracts had been made by the New York Cen- 

 tral Railroad in one year preceding that time 

 that many instances of special rates, of dis- 

 criminations. 



" I am speaking now of the railroads them- 

 selves, not the stockholders, for these fare but 

 little better than the other people of this coun- 

 try. It is the managers, the officers, who profit 

 by the wrongs inflicted upon the people and 



the stockholders. One of the modes of doing 

 this is by the organization of corporations 

 within corporations, rings within rings, to con- 

 trol particular branches of commerce in their 

 own interest, and then to exercise the power 

 of discrimination ae between men and places, 

 to secure a monopoly in the particular trade. 

 But I pass from that branch to the subject. 



44 These are the provisions of the bill sim- 

 ple, ensily understood, incontrovertible, on ac- 

 count of the practical truth which underlies 

 and supports each of them. We propose to 

 remedy these evils. We propose three reme- 

 dies: first, a civil action in behalf of the party 

 aggrieved by 9. violation of the provisions of 

 this bill, with triple damages in case of recov- 

 ery ; second, a qui tarn action a civil suit to 

 be brought and conducted by a public officer 

 where the litigants are unable to combat the 

 power of these vast corporations; and on the 

 successful prosecution of such suit the penalty 

 is to be not less than $1,000. In addition to 

 this we propose by the bill which I advocate to 

 allow a criminal remedy by indictment against 

 the officers and agents of the corporations vio- 

 lating the law, with a penalty of $1,000. These 

 measures do not involve imprisonment; they 

 involve pecuniary liability only ; but they have 

 been intentionally made sufficiently vigorous to 

 prevent a willful violation of the law. 



" But if these simple provisions of the bill, 

 with these remedies so easily understood, were 

 adopted, and nothing more, the measure would 

 not meet the expectations of the public. I 

 looked to the action of the various States to 

 see why it was that State legislation of a some- 

 what similar character had been ineffectual. 

 I found that suits often failed for want of evi- 

 dence. When one of the officers of these cor- 

 porations was summoned before the tribunals 

 of justice and put upon the stand as a witness, 

 he declined to testify. When asked for his 

 reasons, he would say he could not testify 

 without criminating himself; and so he was 

 permitted to stand aside. To overcome this 

 difficulty, to open the mouths of these gentle- 

 men who know what they are doing, we pro- 

 pose to compel them to testify in civil suits in 

 which they are parties, with the reservation 

 that their testimony shall not be used against 

 them in criminal proceedings. This is not an 

 unusual, but in such cases a necessary remedy. 



"Again, in States where equitable powers 

 were not given, in the trial of civil causes of 

 this kind it often became necessary to get facts 

 from the books, papers, and documents of these 

 corporations, and when they declined to sur- 

 render them the court was powerless to enforce 

 their production. To overcome this difficulty 

 we provide that the courts trying civil cases 

 under this bill shall have equitable as well as 

 legal powers, and may compel the production 

 of books and papers, may compel discovery as 

 in any other proceeding in equity. Thus we 

 provide for opening the mouths, for opening 

 the books, papers, and documents of these cor- 



