EDITORIALS
What the Progressives Achieved JUST before the final vote was taken on the railroad bill on June 3, Senator La Follette made a statement in which he outlined the net results of the consideration of...
...Two features of the Wickersham draft, upon which the thumb-marks of railroad representatives were particularly plain, were those legalizing traffic agreements without giving the Interstate Commerce Commission real authority over the rates resulting from such agreements, and breaking down the anti-trust law, as it applies to railroads, to the extent of legalizing mergers...
...the bountiful earth yields enough of food...
...Whenever the La Follette amendment for a physical valuation of railroads made its appearance in the consideration of the bill, the railroad Senators hastened to throw it out...
...What is Wrong THE "treachery" of Stenographer Kerby and Inspector Glavis shows what the matter really is at Washington...
...Under a prohibition of political patronage to newspapers the metropolitan papers could not influence the election of a single System congressman in Kansas...
...On June 2 the lower branch of the Louisiana Assembly ratified the federal income tax amendment...
...but in preventing the passage of a bill that was designed to clinch still more securely the hold of the great transportation lines upon the country, and in forcing the adoption of provisions that will give a measure of relief to shippers...
...Nothing can be more certain than that the fruits of the earth are sufficient for the children of the earth...
...The legislatures of Georgia and New Jersey have postponed action...
...George W. Marble...
...How much longer will the People stand at the doors of a railway-controlled Congress, knocking vainly for admission...
...Applying to the metropolitan dailies, Mr...
...Legislation to prevent discrimination and inequality in rate-making, they may submit to, when they can't prevent its passage, but legislation to find out whether they are charging too much or too little for their services—never...
...It is not improbable that an attempt will be made there to take out of the bill what little of good was put into it in the Senate...
...But in more than half of the smaller cities and towns of Kansas there are daily and weekly papers not influenced by any one of those five reasons, yet just as active and I may say as effective in the service of Big Business through purely political motives...
...Find out where he stands...
...La Follette: Efficient regulation of railways in the public interest demands protection of the people equally against extortion and against discrimination...
...Editor, La Follette's: I have read with interest in your magazine of the 21st Mr...
...Three have rejected it...
...That it did not pass the Senate in this form was due to the determined efforts of the progressive Republicans and the Democrats...
...That one thing was reasonable rates...
...The shippers maintain an organization...
...They are usually men of large means and particularly strong in the distribution of patronage...
...But the railroad bill passed by the Senate contains no provision for the valuation of the physical property of railway companies engaged in interstate commerce...
...Patronage and Publishers HERE is a sidelight on the control of the press by organized business and politics that deserves consideration...
...I might as well pause right here to fix in the minds of Senators this one great fact—that throughout nearly forty years of struggle to secure adequate legislation Congress has wholly failed to enact a statute under which the people of this country can secure reasonable rates...
...In New York the Senate on May 17 approved the proposed amendment, and it is hoped that the House will now fall in line, in spite of the fact that it has once voted down the resolution...
...The victory for the Progressives lies not in securing a bill that adequately insures the rights of the people...
...The progressive Senators, backed by public opinion, forced Aldrich and Wickersham and the "me-too" Senators to retreat from their original position on the bill...
...The shipper demands equal rates...
...The Democratic national platform declared in favor of the valuation of railway property...
...Both of these iniquitous provisions were taken out of the bill as a direct result of the fight made upon them by Progressives...
...To afford relief against the one and to deny it as against the other is by so much a denial of the application of an accepted principle of public right and justice, a denial which can subserve no public good, but only benefit special interests...
...What About the Income Tax...
...Under the circumstances this was a victory...
...That was the beginning of the struggle and all that has been accomplished regarding rates down to this moment of time is legislation providing that Shippers may at least upon complaint Spoce rates which are . That deeply concern the consumer The interests of the shipper and the interests of the consumer are not identical...
...In the Second Kansas district a determined effort is being made to defeat a Cannon congressman for renomination...
...Reasonable rates cannot be secured without a valuation of railroad property...
...In every important town he has a newspaper whose publisher is either postmaster or holds some other federal office, or else has a promise of one...
...It shows, too, that several vicious provisions, originally included and urged with all the strength of the WICKERSHAM-ELKiNS-Railroad combination, were stricken out...
...But it falls far short of what the public interest demands...
...If such is done, it will mean that the Progressives will be forced again to battle for the public interest against the machinations of the System...
...The Supreme Court and the Interstate Commerce Commission declared the valuation of railroad property necessary to a deter-mination of reasonable railway rates, years prior to the passage of the Hepburn bill, enacted in 1906...
...During the next year all of the other state legislatures will have to put themselves on record...
...To quote a passage from the Congressional Record of June 2, 1910: "Mr...
...In every state there are political leaders in both parties who are expected to carry the influence of Big Business to the townships...
...Care has been exercised by those who controlled in Congress during that long period of time to prevent the enactment of legislation granting to the people the one thing which in 1870 they started out to secure...
...Judged by the results in legislation on this important subject, they do not seem to have been represented at all...
...Russell's five methods of Big Business control are comprehensive...
...Alabama, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, and South Carolina have taken favorable action...
...All the legislation enacted from the beginning to the present time will simply afford equal rates to the shippers of interstate commerce, or would enable them to secure equal rates if the machinery provided by the laws of Congress were sufficient to hear promptly and decide the complaints made by shippers who protest against unequal rates...
...Russell and you seem to have overlooked the vicious influences over the press as they are extended to the daily and weekly in the small town...
...When the bill came to the Senate from Attorney General Wickersham, it was so plainly of, by, and for the railroads— with a mere word of recognition for the public—that no progressive Republican could, in justice to himself and the people, have supported it...
...In the past seven years the public service, in some of the departments at least, has become, and still is, actually honey-combed with honesty...
...To the Progressives, too, is due the credit for securing the adoption of important amendments that give greater protection to the public and impose additional restrictions upon the railroads...
...Amendments in the public interest were inserted...
...But no amount "of pressure, either in the form of arguments by Progressives or of insistent popular demand, was sufficient to overcome the opposition of the Machine to any proposition to bring about the kind of regulation that really regulates...
...Hence we have, after forty years of struggle, no basis for determining the reasonableness of railway rates...
...Dangerous provisions were eliminated...
...Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Virginia have acted in opposition to it...
...They are able to make and in some measure enforce their demands...
...Here on this earth are for all enough of light and air, enough of room, enough of labor and enough of rest...
...The consumer is the 90,000,000 people who pay all the freight rates of the entire country...
...Postoffices and all the other kinds of patronage are given in exchange for newspaper service...
...All the people are as much entitled to fair and reasonable rates as are competing shippers to equal and nondiscriminatory rates...
...It comes from a publisher—the president of the Fort Scott Tribune-Monitor...
...AT THE present writing six states have ratified the income tax amendment to the federal constitution...
...It would throw the way open to a determination of the reasonableness of rates,—and the railroads want nothing like that to happen...
...It is not too early to get a line on your own legislator...
...So sweeping were the changes forced by the Progressives that the bill as finally passed contains hardly a provision in the form drawn up by Wickersham...
...This bill marks an advance over the law of 1906...
...Nevertheless the Congress which passed the Hepburn Act refused to provide for the valuation of railroad property...
...These editors are even more servile to the Interests than those of larger papers, and are effective in their teaching of deceptive policies and in their appeals to party, "regularity" and party "solidarity...
...The interstate commerce act of 1887 declared for reasonable rates, but omitted to provide for the valuation of railroad property, thus making the reasonable-rate provision worthless...
...Russell's "How About Our Newspapers," and your editorial comment, and am constrained to call attention to the fact that both Mr...
...It shows that substantial gains were made for the public...
...If anywhere men have less of the fruits of the eavth than they need this can only be because of some perversion actual editions C. E. Russzl No Relief for Consumer HOWEVER satisfactory the railroad bill passed by the Senate may be as the outcome of a hard-fought battle between the great railroad interests and the champions of the people, there is nothing in it to arouse enthusiasm on the part of a public that wants relief from unreasonable and extortionate rates...
...Think over what follows: Fort Scott, KansaB, May 20, 1910...
...The consumer demands reasonable rates...
...The bill will go to conference...
...President Taft recognized the importance of the valuation of railway property in his speech of acceptance, but omitted to mention it in his special message to Congress on interstate commerce...
...It strikes too deeply at the heart of the railroad problem...
...The people have no organization to present their demands...
...La Pollette's statement, in part, is printed on page 12 of this magazine...
...What the Progressives Achieved JUST before the final vote was taken on the railroad bill on June 3, Senator La Follette made a statement in which he outlined the net results of the consideration of this bill in the Senate...
Vol. 2 • June 1910 • No. 23
