MORE CONSPIRING AGAINST JUSTICE

...These editorials are open, coarse attacks upon government regulation which in any manner imposes restraints on rate advances...

...And the Commission should be spared the indecent and scandalous dogging and harrying to which they were subjected for months by organized attack through the newspapers and through insulting letters and communications at the instigation of the railroads...

...This Commission has more than once declared that "IT IS AN IMPOSSIBILITY TO DETERMINE THE REASONABLENESS OF RAILWAY RATES without having FIRST ASCERTAINED THE FAIR VALUE OF RAILROAD PROPERTY...

...Certain it is that the financial statements presented by the railroads were flatly contradicted by the admissions of their high officials and chief witnesses on cross-examination...

...Perhaps there were other cogent reasons why the Commission denied the application for a general increase...

...Special, front-page articles "doped out" from New York and written over to give local setting and color are appearing "spontaneously" in leading papers over the country...

...It is proper at this time to suggest to the railroads and their press that if the Supreme Court and the Interstate Commerce Commission were right in these declarations, then certainly no sweeping changes will be made in railroad rates until the fundamental basis for rate making has been settled...

...Whether this was the reasoning of the Interstate Commerce Commission in the rate case recently decided in official classification territory is not known...

...At least this is the logic of their position...

...But the Supreme Court of the United States has held that...

...A review of that testimony cannot fail to subject them to the grave suspicion of having padded their accounts in preparation for the trial of the case...

...Every case should be tried out upon the evidence presented...

...The Interstate Commerce Commission for more than a decade appealed to Congress at every session for authority, and for the necessary appropriation, to enable it to ascertain the "fair value" of the property of the interstate railroads "used for the convenience of the public...

...Regarding the merits of any inquiry now pending I have absolutely nothing to say...

...As a basis for ascertaining whether existing rates are too high or too low, the federal government is now expending millions of the people's money to determine the fair value of railroad property...

...To require evidence as a basis for raising rates, the corporation press regards as an unwarranted interference with the railroads and a malicious assault upon business prosperity...

...If a railroad corporation has bonded its property for an amount that exceeds ITS FAIR VALUE, or if its capitalization is largely fictitious, it MAY NOT IMPOSE UPON THE PUBLIC the burden of such INCREASED RATES as may be required for the purpose of REALIZING PROFITS upon such EX-CESSIVE VALUATION or fictitious capitalization...

...Statutes and decisions, federal and state, invested national and state commissions with power to compel adequate services and to enforce reasonable rates...

...The Interstate Commerce Commission and the several state commissions were created expressly to regulate railway rates and services...

...It would seem from the attitude of the railroads and their press that it is a waste of good money to prosecute the great work of valuing the railroad property of the country...

...Without such information, the Commission itself says, "it is impossible to determine the reasonableness of rates...

...These articles are a mixture of twisted facts and false reasoning so cleverly dressed as to make it - appear that the railroads have been badly treated by state and national governments and are entitled to higher rates without question as a sort of compensation...

...Editorial criticisms of state and interstate commissions follow the publication of the special articles...