58 SHOULD THE NATION OWN THE RAILWAYS? 



all real grievances of the citizens." There is probably no man in the United States bet- 

 ter aware than is Sidney Dillon that no citizen, unless he has as much wealtli as the 

 president of the Uuiun Piiciflc, can successfully contest a case of any importance in the 

 courts with one of these corporations which make a business, as a warning to other possi- 

 ble plaintiflfs, of wearing out the unfortunate plaintifT with the laws costly delays; and 

 failing in this do not hesitate to spirit away the plaintiff's witnesses, and to pack and 

 buy juries — retaining a special class of attornej's for this work — the command of great 

 corporate revenues enabling them to accomplish theireuds, and to utterly ruin nearly 

 every man having the hardihood to seek Mr. Dillon's lauded legal redress, and when 

 they have accomplished such nefarious object the entire cost is charged 1 ack to the public 

 and collected in the form of tolls upon trafHc. Laws are utterly powerless to restrain the 

 corporations, and Mr. Dillon tells us how easy it is for them to evade by pleading compli- 

 ance, when there has been no compliance, and then having the expert servants of the cor- 

 poration Swear there has been. 



With the governient operating the railways every citizen riding would pay fare 

 adding immensely to the revenues. Few have any conception of the proportion who 

 travel free, and half a century's experience renders it doubtful if the pass evil— so much 

 greater than ever was the franking privileges — can be eliminated otherwise than by na- 

 tional ownership. From the experience of the writer as an auditor of railway accounts, 

 and as an executive officer issuing passes, he is able to say that fully ten per cent. tru\el 

 free, the result being that the great mass of railway users are yearly mulcted some $30- 

 000,000 for the benefit of the favored minority, hence it is evident that if all were required 

 to pay for railway services, as they are for mail services, the rates might be reduced ten 

 per cent, or more, and the corporate revenues be no less, and the operating expenses no 

 more. In no other country — unless it be under the same system in Canada — are uine- 

 teuths of the people taxed to pay the traveling expenses of the other tenth. By what 

 right do the corporations tax the public that members of congress, legislators, judges and 

 other court officials and their families may ride free? Wliy is it that when a legislature 

 is in session that passes are as plentiful as leaves in the forest in autumn ? 



The writer, as an executive officer of a railway company having authority to issue 

 passes, has, during a session of the legislature, signed vast numbers of blank passes at the 

 request of the legislative agents of such company and under instructions of the president 

 of the corporation to furnish such lobby agents with all the passes they should ask for. 



No reports of passes issueil are made either to state or federal governments, or to con- 

 fiding share-holders, and should such reports be asked for, by state or nation, in order to 

 measure the extent of this evil, the Sidney Dillons would rush into print and tell us it 

 was a piece of impertinence for any citizen (or the public ) to enquire into the extent of 

 or the manner in which the corporation dispensed tlieir favors. Tlie only way to kill this 

 monster is to put the instruments of transportation under such control as only national 

 ownership can give. Laws and agreements between the corporations have been proven, 

 time and again, wholly ineffctive even to lessen this great and corrupting evil. 



In every conceivable way are the net revenues of the corporations depleted and 

 needless burthens imposed upon the public, but one of the worst is the system of paying 

 commissions for the diversion of traffic to particular lines, often the least direct. The 

 more common practice is to pay such commissions to agents of connecting lines where it 

 is possible to send the traffic over any one of two or more routes, and the one which may, 

 by the payment of such commission secure the carrying of the passenger (or merchan- 

 dise) may be the least desirable, and the one which would never liave been taken but for 

 the prevarications of an agent, bribed by a commission to make false representations as to 

 the desirableness of the route he selects for the confiding passenger. 



This is but one of many phases of the commission evil, another being that these 

 Bums are ultimately paid, not by the corporations, but by the users of the Riil ways, and but 

 for the payment of such commissions tlie rates might lie reduced in like amounts. Aside 

 from commissions paid for diverting passenger traffic greatsums are paid for "influencing" 

 and "routing" freight traffic, and these sums, while paid to outsiders, or so-called brok- 

 ers, are frequently divided with railway officials. When the writer was in charge of the 



