212 



CONGRESS. (INTEE-STATE COMMEECE.) 



not that of general extortion upon the country, 

 except as those discriminations and preferences, 

 to which I shall afterward refer as the real 

 grievance, increase the general cost, as perhaps 

 they do to a slight extent, by favoring some at 

 the expense of others. The competition of 

 railroads among themselves, and the abundant 

 water-ways which it ought to be the sagacious 

 policy of Congress to develop and improve, re- 

 duce the general rates of freight to a reason- 

 able price, which still goes on constantly di- 

 minishing; and the United States Railroad 

 Commissioner says in his report that ours is 

 the cheapest railroad transportation in the 

 world. 



" What is the evil, then, at which we should 

 direct legislation ? It is the evirof unjust dis- 

 crimination and undue preferences. Rates are 

 generally reasonable and on the whole gener- 

 ous to the people. But there have been, less 

 now than formerly, as and for the reasons I 

 have stated, unjust, indefensible, harassing, and 

 impolitic discriminations, which, so far as they 

 affect interstate commerce, it is our province 

 to correct. While I have less faith than some 

 in the utility of legislative restrictions, I yet 

 believe the time has arrived when, in obedience 

 to public sentiment as well as to the actual de- 

 mands of business, especially the demands of 

 our mercantile houses and middle-men, some- 

 thing can be done by statutory enactments." 



In defense of a commission, Mr. Long said : 



" A corporation may be as powerful as an 

 ancient baron, it may laugh at statutory penal- 

 ties, but it goes on its knees, it trembles with 

 terror at entire exposure. Nothing can stand 

 the illumination of the public gaze. This has 

 been the tendency in Massachusetts, and it is 

 to be remembered that the board there has 

 been made up of men from the ordinary walks 

 of life, so that the success has been more in the 

 system than in the men who work it, impor- 

 tant and vital as is the choice of these. Mr. 

 Adams, now a distinguished railroad authority, 

 was nothing of the sort when he went upon 

 that board. To-day one member sits upon it, 

 who, to his credit, was promoted as a practical 

 man, representing the railroad operatives, from 

 the cab of a locomotive. And that commis- 

 sion, of which Judge Russell is now the able 

 chairman, is a safeguard and protection to our 

 people such as mere cast-iron statutes and we 

 have them lying rust-eaten and forgotten on 

 our statute-bookcould never effect. Indeed, 

 I do not recall an instance where these statutes, 

 with their idle thunders, have been invoked, 

 while the commission is constantly called upon 

 to express its quiet but ever-obeyed influence. 



" I admit that in some States a commission 

 has not succeeded, while in more it has, thus 

 showing that in the former the conditions and 

 not the principle have been at fault. I also 

 admit that in so great a sphere as the interstate 

 commerce of the whole country this system 

 will not fulfill its work if the best men be not 

 selected to constitute the board. But in view 



of the vast importance of the trust and its 

 jurisdiction, I know and you know that public 

 sentiment will demand and find such men, who- 

 ever be the appointng power. Thank God, 

 an independent public opinion has secured a 

 hold in this country that compels, in the great 

 business interests of the people, something 

 more than favoritism or partisanship. With 

 such a choice as Adams, Cooley, Thurman, and 

 a score of others who might be named, this bill 

 would furnish a remedy that would set in mo- 

 tion the true diagnosis and cure of the railroad 

 evil. Much as I differ on many points from, 

 the distinguished chairman of our committee, 

 Judge Reagan, I would sooner, as a measure of 

 legislative relief, constitute him sole railroad 

 commissioner, responsible to Congress, than 

 merely enact his list of bristling and fulmi- 

 nating prohibitions and penalties and nothing 

 more. 



"In the one case we should at least have 

 honest and attentive regulation and oversight ; 

 in the other, only the echo of a threat as empty 

 as the dungeon of a mediaeval castle. If we 

 are to put the railroads under restraint against 

 unjust discriminations and undue preferences, 

 as I think we should, I want it to be a restraint 

 that means something and that is constantly in 

 operation. Such would certainly not be the 

 result if we merely passed a penal statute and 

 left it to execute itself in rare spasms. 



44 Consider the great value and advantage of 

 the reports to Congress and the country of a 

 commission made up of such men as 1 have 

 suggested, of the steady growth of the science 

 of remedial regulation, and of the gradual sub- 

 ordination of the railroad power to salutary 

 and beneficent obedience to the supremacy of 

 the popular will as expressed and manifested 

 by these responsible agents of the national 

 Government. 



" Compare with this elastic, self-adjusting, 

 and sufficient system the stunted and utterly 

 ineffectual method of a dormant statute, too 

 expensive and too like a boomerang for any 

 poor shipper, whose property is at the mercy 

 of the humor of the railroads, to set in motion. 

 To furnish him only that would be to give the 

 people a stone when they cry for bread, a ser- 

 pent when they ask for fish. Better to give 

 him the constant backing of a commission. I 

 believe that those who best appreciate the ne- 

 cessity of reform and most thoroughly have 

 studied the problem have little faith in Judge 

 Reagan's plan of an iron-clad statute, with 

 its overweight of prohibitions and penalties, 

 through which the railroad lawyer would drive 

 his coach- an d-six, and to which the people, es- 

 pecially the men of small means, would no more 

 resort than they would risk their fingers in a 

 chopping-machine to save a run-away nickel. 

 And yet, in order to give the people a bill, in 

 order to make sure of having every string to 

 our bow, in order to meet every aspect of the 

 case and give the railroads no rope or quarter, 

 the Committee on Commerce have united in 



