CONGRESS. (INTER-STATE COMMERCE.) 



211 



fire his gun with a louder report on a small 

 charge of powder, than the railroad system of 

 the country. But for the purpose of this de- 

 bate I do not believe it is profitable to call that 

 system either an angel of beneficence or a mon- 

 ster of iniquity. We all know that it has de- 

 veloped our country, turned the wilderness to 

 a garden, peopled our great territorial domain 

 into flourishing States, belted the republic to- 

 gether, cheapened transportation, and, best of 

 all, laid at the feet of the poorest citizen, by 

 means of mutual and prosperous exchange, the 

 products, whether of shop or farm, of every 

 section of the Union. On the other hand, we 

 all know that it has been the raw material, if 

 that term shall offend no sensitive ear, of wild 

 and ruinous speculation, and that the red blood 

 of its stocks has often been watered till in 

 too many cases it has only swashed a bloated 

 corpse, offensive to the nose and damaging to 

 health. 



"But the question before us is not a ques- 

 tion of speculation in railroad investments or of 

 watered stocks. Be the evils that thence arise 

 as grievous as the plagues of Egypt, they are 

 not for us to remedy. Thanks to our Federal 

 Constitution of blessed memory, they lie with- 

 in the jurisdiction of the States which create 

 railroad corporations and regulate their exist- 

 ence and financial operation. 



"Nor is it a question directly of political 

 power or of local monopolization; nor is it 

 ours to attempt any Utopian scheme of level- 

 ing the inequalities of human fortune. These 

 exist by natural laws, which are practically be- 

 yond our legislative and artificial control. 



"It is certainly a good rule in legislation 

 to let alone as much as possible, not to con- 

 tend against but to co-operate with natural 

 laws especially the laws of competition and 

 to leave them to work out their own results 

 till the necessity of interference is plain. I 

 take it we are not here to make a raid on rail- 

 roads simply because, as a sort of public insti- 

 tution, they are accessible and easy of assault, 

 any more than on 'any of the great private 

 businesses of the country, which often quite as 

 sharply affect the pockets of the people and 

 even more brutally burden them. Indeed, in 

 this whole matter of the railroad hearing, 

 which for two months during the winter we 

 had before our committee, what struck me more 

 than anything else, was not only the entire ab- 

 sence of any outcry against the railroads from 

 the people at large, but also the limited com- 

 plaint from anybody else. 



" There has been complaint, and, let me say, 

 just complaint, especially in former years, but 

 it has generally come from the middle-men of 

 commerce, who stand between the producer 

 and the consumer, and who, having to share 

 profits with the railroad carrier, naturally and 

 properly incline to reduce as much as possible 

 his charges, in order, as he flings back, to in- 

 crease their own. 

 "The statistics show a steadily improving 



diminution of rates in the interest of the peo- 

 ple. Look at some of the figures. The $6,- 

 000,000,000 or more invested in the 125,000 

 miles of railroads in the United States pay 

 only about 3 per cent, per annum to their 

 stockholders. The rate of freight ten years 

 ago was 2 cents per ton per mile. This year, 

 under what is charged as the enormities of the 

 railroad monopoly, it has come down to les* 

 than 1 cent per ton per mile. We were told 

 that in Belgium and France it is nearly twice 

 that, and in England still more. Under the 

 operation of natural laws evils have tended to 

 cure themselves, rates have come down, dis- 

 criminations have lessened. This has happened 

 because it is found with public institutions as 

 with individuals, that the nearer the approach 

 to square and fair dealing the better it pays in 

 the long run, although human selfishness and 

 corporate soullessness both learn the lesson 

 slowly and reluctantly. There are no saints 

 running our railroads. On the contrary, there 

 is there, as everywhere else, a body of selfish, 

 timid as capital subject to legislation is always 

 timid but prudent men, and in obedience to 

 their own interest, if to nothing else, they are 

 wisely more and more consulting, and more 

 and more meeting every year, the public de- 

 mand, and doing more justice to the public. 



" As Edward Atkinson, a good statistical au- 

 thority, says, the voluntary reduction in rail- 

 road rates in the last twelve years, not forced 

 by law but resulting from natural causes, is 

 greater than the whole sum of the public debt. 

 The development of the West, the value of its 

 herds and farms and crops, the rescue of its 

 corn from voluntary commission to the flames 

 and its transfer to the remunerative markets 

 of the world, are due to the cheap transporta- 

 tion of the railroads ; a cheapness for the great 

 realms of the Western people which has been 

 secured somewhat, indeed, at the cost of local 

 high rates, especially in the East, but, in the 

 main, has aided in the distribution and cheap- 

 ening of food for all the people who buy it, 

 and who, in exchange for it, find a market for 

 their own manufactured products. Our rail- 

 roads, says the United States Railroad Com- 

 missioner, employ nearly 2,000,000 persons in 

 their operation and construction, thus furnish- 

 ing vast employment to labor. We were told 

 that they cost less per mile for construction, 

 even with the tariff on railroad iron and steel 

 rails, than those of any of the great European 

 countries ; about one fourth of those of Eng- 

 land, and one third of those of France. A 

 barrel of flour is hauled from Chicago to New 

 York, 1,000 miles, for 30 cents. If a man eats 

 one pound a day, the transportation charge for 

 him is less than $1 a year. The freight on 

 meat from Chicago to New York is 32 cents 

 per 100 pounds. If a man eats one pound a 

 day, its transportation costs him $1.20 a year, 

 or about one day's wages for the transportation 

 of his year's bread and meat. 



" In other words, Mr. Speaker, the evil is 



