EDITORIALS
Monopoly Rebates IT HAS BEEN a long and uphill fight in this country to force the railroads to stop giving rebates to the favored— and usually the most powerful—shippers. Stringent anti-rebating...
...Mr...
...Seven states—Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Maryland—still have this question pending in their legislatures...
...As a matter of fact, The Federal could get no allowance at all...
...Kahn is saying, impressively, is not compatible with a "republican form of government...
...I am sorry to say that has been done, but so long as I have voice or breath I shall protest against it with all of the energy and vigor that I can command...
...Kahn, following his own convictions and his own logic as laid down so emphatically in the case of Arizona, will ask the voters of his district to peelect him as their representative on the following campaign issue: "Let Congress exclude our great and glorious State of California from the Union, unless she fixes her government to suit the Money Power—and Mr...
...Lenroot...
...Applause...
...JULIUS KAHN of California is speaking in the House of Representatives...
...Mr...
...Then I want to ask the gentleman this question, as to whether he believes the constitutional provision in our Federal Constitution of guaranteeing a republican form of government is not a continuing duty on Congress...
...It did so, however, against the protest of Commissioners Knapp and Prouty...
...Perhaps it may be thought a trifle inconsiderate for the Gentleman from Wisconsin to have put the Gentleman from California into so much embarrassment...
...If we interpret the latest decision of the new Commerce Court rightly, we are forced to the conclusion that we have the railroad rebate still with us, and in a most pernicious form...
...And on March 23, the Commerce Court, through Chief Justice Knapp, enjoined the Commission from enforcing its order...
...I thought, however, the gentleman was also referring to the initiative and referendum...
...Lenroot...
...Yet Senator Bailey (Democrat) and others in the national Congress let no opportunity pass by to speak sneeringly of these "populistic fallacies...
...Stringent anti-rebating legislation was secured...
...Direct legislation, Mr...
...PERHAPS THE HIGH PRICES of beef in the Illinois trust are due to the high price of senators...
...This was on December 5, 1910...
...Kahn will accept his compassion in the spirit in which he offers it...
...Applause...
...Meanwhile the new Commerce Court was established...
...Prosecutions and convictions for violations of this law, we have noted with satisfaction, have been growing less and less frequent...
...Mr...
...Baker...
...To overreach the action of Congress merely by JUDICIAL CONSTRUCTION, is a blow at the integrity of our governmental system...
...Thus at a stroke, this newest tribunal gives a great monopoly a loophele through which to evade the anti-rebating law and sanctions a practice which is more than likely to place this country once more in the grip of the vicious rebate...
...Forward NOW THAT Florida has just come into line for the initiative and referendum, we are reminded of the headway these great instruments of representative government have been making in recent years...
...But still further embarrassment awaited the Gentleman from California...
...Kahn...
...I think it is...
...Mr...
...It is restricted and hampered in its operations on behalf of fair dealing to the public by the railroads...
...Now is this new Commerce Court— a tribunal that was viewed with alarm and suspicion even at its inception by the friends of real regulation—is it to emasculate still further the powers of the Commission, without protest, without relief...
...I want to ask the gentleman this: If his State of California shall adopt that constitutional amendment, whether he believes it will then be the duty of Congress to exclude California from the Union because it has not a republican from of government...
...But has it...
...And Justice Harlan, in his opinion, quotes the words of President Taft—then judge of the court of appeals of the Sixth circuit—that the decision was that "contracts in restraint of interstate transportation were within the statute, WHETHER THE RESTRAINT WOULD BE REGARDED AS REASONABLE at common law or not...
...Chief Justice Knapp holds to the views of Commissioner Knapp...
...Mr...
...Seven states—Colorado, California, Washington, Wyoming, North Dakota, Nebcaska and Florida—have within the last six months decided, through their legislatures, to submit constitutional amendments for direct legislation to the voters...
...Sugar from the huge refineries at Brooklyn had to be transported three miles across the harbor to the railroad terminals in New Jersey, before it could be sent on its way into the country...
...For a representative to feel "sorry" for his party and the people of his State as he sees them running riderless along the path of progress is to stir the sympathies of all men who are moved by political catastrophes...
...We are asked to read INTO THE ACT, BY WAY OF JUDICIAL LEGISLATION, AN EXCEPTION THAT IS NOT PLACED THERE BY THE LAWMAKING BRANCH OF THE GOVERNMENT...
...A congressman who is made to declare in debate that his poor, deluded countrymen back home are running themselves into anarchy, is in no enviable position...
...Our free institutions are indeed threatened when it is possible for great interests—failing to sway law-making bodies to their ends—to turn confidently to the courts for what they want...
...Yes...
...Years ago, the Sugar Trust made an arrangement with the railroads at New York for "cartage" and "lighterage" allowances...
...Judicial Usurpation" JUSTICE HARLAN has filed his written opinion in the Standard Oil case...
...The allowances made by the railroads amounted to 60 cents per hundred pounds on sugar destined to points east of Pittsburg and 84 cents on sugar destined beyond Pittsburg...
...Mr...
...The railroad lobby has succeeded in preventing legislation by Congress that would clothe the Interstate Commerce Commission with the fullest powers of regulation...
...Kahn...
...The court has now read into the act of Congress words which are not to be found there, and has thereby done that which it adjudged in 1896 and 1898 could not be done WITHOUT VIOLATING THE CONSTITUTION...
...So it appealed to the Interstate Commerce Commission to order the railroads to stop the discrimination...
...They did, and I am sorry for that...
...Kahn...
...I think it probable that the recall is not unrepub-lican...
...He is opposing the admission of Arizona into the Union because its people saw fit to put into its new constitution the initiative, referendum and recall...
...Eight states—Oregon, Oklahoma, Nevada, Missouri, Montana, South Dakota, Arkansas, Maine, and Arizona, the near-state—have already put direct legislation in some form into their constitutions...
...That is up to the Courts and the Congress...
...Is it not a fact that in the last Republican platform adopted in September by the Republicans of California they adopted the initiative, referendum and recall...
...Why not cheaper senators and lower cost of living?—Milwaukee Journal...
...And coal, for example, is transported by water from Buffalo to Duluth, 985 miles, for 30 cents a ton...
...But another company, the Federal Sugar Refining Company, could not get these "allowances" from the railroads for similar lightering...
...Two states—Kansas and Illinois —were thwarted by small majorities of their legislatures...
...It would lead to anarchy...
...The Interstate Commerce Commission was forced to defend its order...
...Commissioner Knapp was elevated from the Commission to the Chief Justiceship of the Court...
...This the Commission did...
...This work was done by a company controlled by Henry 0. Havemeyer of the Sugar Trust...
...Then I want to ask the gentleman whether his state of California has not proposed a constitutional amendment to be submitted to the people for the recall of judges...
...This, too, with the sanction of the court of last resort in railroad regulation...
...He says, "To say that the act (Sherman anti-Trust law) excludes agreements which are not in UNREASONABLE restraint of trade * * * is substantially leaving the question of unreasonableness to the companies themselves...
...We wonder if the constituents of Mr...
...I think the initiative is undoubtedly unrepublican...
...Kahn's Compassion HON...
...Mr...
...Perhaps I may add that I believe the initiative would ultimately lead to the destruction of all government...
...We wonder, too, if Mr...
...Eighty-four cents a hundred pounds for carrying this sugar only three miles...
...The federal refineries were three or four times as far from the railroad terminals as were those of the Trust, and the allowance granted them for lightering, it would seem, should be even greater than that granted the Trust...
...It appeared that this pernicious form of discrimination had at last ceased...
...The Sugar Trust took the case to the Commerce Court...
...Justice Harlan has protested, in terms that must sink deep into the minds of all citizens, against making our high courts the refuge of plutocracy...
...Clearly these "allowances" represent something more than the cost of lightering the sugar across the harbor...
...Kahn...
...Lenroot...
...Just one more question...
...It is even more vigorous than his oral opinion in its denunciation of judicial usurpation of the legislative function...
...Kahn...
Vol. 3 • June 1911 • No. 22
