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ARGUMENT AGAINST THE PARALLEL RAILROAD.
By Mr. Henry C. Robinson.
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee:
. The learned gentleman who opened this case for the petitioners,
for the purposes of his argument has searched with candles the
records, in the General Assembly, in the courts of our State and
on the exchange, of the history of the New York, New Haven &
Hartford Railroad Company and its predecessors. He quoted to
you the oratory of President Bishop, the literature of President
Watrous, and he even went back to a grave made nearly thirty-five
years ago, and summoned as a witness to support his argument a
defaulting transfer agent of the old New York & New Haven Rail¬
road Company, whose misdeeds were made a decade before the fall
of Sumter.
THE SUBJECT BEFORE THE COMMITTEE.
I desire, gentlemen, to call you back from the rhetoric of the
learned orator, and from the attack which he has chosen to make
upon that road, to matters which are before you here and now.
The questions which you are to pass upon and report to the General
Assembly, which you represent, relate only to the bills which the
gentleman has submitted to you—and those bills are very simple.
It requires 110 scholarship and only the plainest common sense to
interpret them. They are two in number. One of them asks you
to report in favor of giving his clients (the Housatonic Railroad
Company) the privilege of building another railroad from the City
of New Haven to the State line in Connecticut, there to meet
another road, to run to the City of New York. The other bill
asks you to allow this company to purchase the franchise, the
property, and the stock of an alleged road, called the Connecticut
& New York Air Line Company; and those, and those only, are
the questions for you, gentlemen, to pass upon. And what is it that
the gentleman in these bills asks ?
2
WHAT IS ASKED ?
He asks of you to delegate one of the most sacred functions of
sovereignty, to wit, the right of eminent domain, to these gentle¬
men for the purpose of building a road, paralleling an existing
road, and at an average distance from it of less than one-half of a
mile' if I am correctly informed, and in many instances approach-
in o- very much nearer. Well, gentlemen, that attribute of sov¬
ereignty is an important one, but by no means a trivial one. Be¬
fore it there are no private rights that are sacred. The cottage of
the humblest man and the house of the richest man must open to
its call; the trees most sacred to memory, planted by ancestors,
must fall before its axe; and even the graves, which have been
watered perhaps with the tears of affection, must be removed for
the progress of the State, when it moves in the name of its own
sovereignty and in behalf of the public interest. That is well. So
must we hold all our rights in subjection to the great interests of
the people. But, sir, before any single private right be sacrificed,
be it but the poor hair of the poorest citizen's head, there must be
shown to you, as you recommend that the State march forth in its
majesty and put on this armor of eminent domain, it must be
shown to your satisfaction that the public convenience and the
public necessity require the sacrifice. And, sir, it appears in the
progress of this hearing, as it has appeared in the examination of
the two witnesses that have been before you, that in addition to a
mass of individuals, this project proposes to attack, to wound, and
to injure a great corporation. And what is that corporation ? Born
of several predecessors, in 1871 it received from your predecessors,
gentlemen of the committee, and gentlemen of the General Assem¬
bly, a charter—a valuable franchise ; and what does that franchise
represent to-day? And it is for it that I speak here, believing not
only that it is my right, but my duty to speak in the most emphatic
protest that I can raise against the measure which is submitted to
you.
THE CONSOLIDATED ROAD.
First, who are the men who own it ? Two thousand of your
fellow citizens, representing in their property holdings at the pres¬
ent market rate $15,000,000; representing in their families from
5,000 to 10,000 people; leased lines representing 1,500 more Con¬
necticut stockholders; a body of 7,250 men in the employ of the
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corporation, representing with their families 20,000 or more people.
This company earns, gentlemen of the committee, abont $10,000,-
000 a year; of that amount it spends $7,000,000 in operating ex¬
penses ; nearly five millions of those dollars are scattered in the
homes of the mechanics and laborers and other men that are at
work for it; of the remaining two and one-half millions, or three
millions, $769,000 (I speak only from memory, but I think I speak
accurately) is paid to its landlords whose property it rents; two
hundred and sixty-odd thousand dollars is paid to its few creditors ;
there remains $2,000,000 to be distributed; there is given to its
stockholders $1,550,000 a year; dividends upon $15,000,000 and a
half of capital—which has never been increased one penny since
you gave them that charter eighteen years ago—and I beg to pause
right here a moment and ask you, gentlemen of the committee, in
your intelligence, what is the real value of that property, and
whether the 10 per cent, upon its authorized capital that is distribu¬
ted to these stock-holders is an unreasonable amount to return to
the investment in that enterprise ? There remains $500,000 to be
disposed of; and what is done with that, gentlemen of the commit¬
tee % $497,000 of it is placed in the treasury of the State of Con¬
necticut, to pay the current expenses of this good commonwealth.
Our current expenses, sir, are about $1,600,000 a year; and of that
$1,600,000 a year this corporation pays $497,000—almost 5-16s.
And that is the corporation that the gentleman is seeking to attack.
1 propose to enter into no eulogy of it, but it seems to me to go
almost without saying that that road is to-day giving to the people
of this part of the country, and to all our fellow citizens who pass
through our commonwealth, as good service as is given in the
United States, rendered promptly, regularly, safely, at the lowest
rates, both for fares and freights, required by the railroad companies
in our land. I say if the company is not a matter of pride, as was
said by my associate, to the State of Connecticut, then it is the
fault of the managers of the same road. They have a valuable
franchise, and I believe that franchise which you have committed
to them, gentlemen of the assembly, they have treated fairly and
in the interest of the public.
WHY BELGIAN RATES ARE LOW.
" But," said my learned brother Baldwin, " they carry people
cheaper over in Belgium." Again he has brought forth his candles
4
and gone across tlie ocean, and fonnd the only State in Em ope which
carries passengers and freight cheaper than this raili oad does.
"Whether his figures were drawn from the rates of fares in first
or second or in third class cars, which would not he tolerated
in our land, I neither know nor care. I know he has selected
almost the most densely populated country in Europe ; I know that
he has selected a country where the railroads are placed in the
hands of the government, and are now in government control; and
I know one more thing, gentlemen, which I call to your attention.
In the first volume of the report of the congressional department
of labor to the United States, the Hon. Carrol D. Wright, to whom
this country owes so much, has given us the figures for remunera¬
tion for human labor in different parts of the world, and it so hap¬
pens that at pages 424 to 431 he has told us what the laborers of
Belgium are paid; and I give them now to the gentlemen to see
why the Belgian railroads can be run at less rates of fares than the
Consolidated road. The figures which I submit relate in every
case to the adult male head of a family. The first figure I read is
$183.60 wages per year; the second is $147 for a year, the third is
$174 for a year, the fifth is $156 for a year, the seventh is $188.50
for a year, the next is 211.25 for a year, the next is $171 for a year,
and the last is $191.40 for a year. I regret that there were in
those tables no reports of the wages paid to railroad employees.
The nearest that I could find were the last two—one a workman in
a rolling mill, and the other a workman in a machine shop. There,
gentlemen, you have the reason why in Belgium passengers are
carried cheaper than here. It is because their laboring men
are forced to live on less than fifty cents a day, while the last
report of our own commissioner of labor shows that the average
pay of adult wage-earners in this State is about $400 a year, and
the average payment of wages by the road in question is larger
than that.
a comparison.
The gentleman went into a long tirade, drawing a picture of the
Consolidated company as a spider gathering in its toils railroad after
railroad, and he said that it even controlled the politics of this State.
I know not what control it has entered into the politics of the
State; I can only say that, for the two great parties who are, at one
time and another, severally in control of this State, I have seen no
suggestion from any intelligent person that the Consolidated road
was attempting to control them. As for that small and more
5
select body, which the unregenerate people call the mugwump
party, I dare say that no railroad people would dare approach
them for purposes of corruption or control. But the gentleman
in the very next breath goes on to say that the system that
he represents controls 422 miles of railroads in the State of
Connecticut, and the Consolidated road but 405 miles. And he
might have added that that system controlled 682 miles, within and
without the State, while the other road controls but 508 miles. He
might have gone on and said that the system he speaks of is repre¬
sented to-day by $29,885,000 of capital, while the Consolidated road
is represented by but $26,000,000; and that while the Consolidated
road is represented by a trifle more than $9,000,000 of debt, the
system that he represents is represented by over $24,000,000 of
debt, and by memories of debt-figures which would baffle the math¬
ematicians of colleges. I beg to ask where is the spider's web, and
whether it is best to locate that spider, as my friend has located
him, in the second story of a building in the heart of Connecticut,
or in some cotton-seed trust office in the city of Hew York?
ABSURDITY OF THE CRY OF MONOPOLY.
And why is this attack made upon this road ? The gentleman says it
is a monopoly. A monopoly—a railroad running from Hew Haven
to Hew York, and by its side, coursing in all its beauty and privi¬
lege, one of the most charming and safe navigable waters on the
whole globe; guarded upon its south by Long Island Sound, and
upon the north by the shores of the Connecticut; reaching with its
navigable tides every city and town in Connecticut from Greenwich
to Hew Haven ; and we are told this is a monopoly, when that high¬
way, made by the Almighty himself for His children, is open to
everybody's service without let or hindrance ? And we are told that
this is a monopoly when there has been standing upon the statute
books of the State for seventeen years a law that allows any
twenty-five men to associate together and to construct a railroad
upon fair terms between any two points in the State. Although
that bill has stood upon our statute books, as I say, for seventeen
years, there has yet been found no legitimate business enter¬
prise which has embarked upon its rails; not one, sir. It would
be interesting, if time allowed, but, under the limitations of time
to which my learned antagonist and myself have subjected our¬
selves, I may not go into it—it would be interesting to trace the
history of the parallel road projects which have come to the legisla-
6
ture since 1866. Many of yon know tliem by lieai t. Tliey ha\e
come bere witli all kinds of representations. Tliey have come
here often with a case as much stronger than the present one
as Samson was stronger than a child; and from year to year our
State has rejected them. There lingers but one of them the
the blew York and Connecticut Air Line—sold ont in 1884 to a
construction company, hanging in its clutches until last December,
when it passed into the hands of the men who are now before
you pressing for this charter. And the State of Connecticut has
refused to grant any of these charters; and that is its established
policy in the matter of parallel railroads.
THE " BRANCHES" AND PROJECTS.
Coming now directly to the question which the gentleman sub¬
mitted to you. Occasionally my learned friend has said, speaking
from his statuesque attitude that this is a mere permission to these
people to build branches. I looked at my friend's eye to see if
there was any discoverable twinkle as he submitted that piece of
sophistry to this learned committee, but candor compels me to say
I found none there; there were only depths of composure, which
it seems to me could have been obtained only by long worship of
the sphinx. Build branches ? Do branches grow from roots of
trees ? Build branches ! Do branches run transversely across and
through the tree ? Build branches from Yew Haven to Hew York
—froinHew Haven to the State line, for a north and south road?
Why, gentlemen, it is the very perversion of language to call such
a thing a branch. It would take no wisdom to see, if one were to
speak of the Consolidated road as being a branch of the Haugatuck,
that the speaker had made a mistake and had confounded the tail
with the dog. Build branches! And is that what the gentlemen
want ? Y hen to-day upon our statute books every company—
every company is authorized to build branches between any two
points in the State by public law. That this act of 1871 relieves
the Ilousatonic road of the limitation suggested, unless that limita¬
tion is re-enacted in the word "branch" itself, there can be no
doubt. Ho, gentlemen, that is the merest suggestion to try to ap¬
peal to the sympathy of some man, and to shut out of sight the real
issue and which his client and witness said was the real issue, and
that is the construction of a parallel road, which he had brought
his money here to build, and which he was going to build. That is
the question for you to consider. In connection with this bill there
7
is pending before your learned committee a bill to keep alive the
charter of the Connecticut Air Line. There is another little bill
to which your attention has not yet been called. It has the
harmless title "Resolution concerning the Rew York and Yew
England Railroad Company and the Rockville Railroad Company,"
Let us look at it. "Resolved by this assembly that the Rew York
and Rew England Railroad Company is hereby authorized to pur¬
chase, take, and hold stock, bonds, franchise, and property of any
corporation owning a railroad, operated at the time of said purchase,
in whole or in part," (the Rockville railroad is four miles long, and
indivisible) "by said The Yew York and Rew England Railroad
Company; to borrow money for the purpose of said purchase, to
issue its interest bearing bonds to a total amount equal to the pur¬
chase price, and to secure such bonds by a mortgage upon the whole,
or any part of the property and franchise belonging at the time of
said purchase to said corporation or thereafter acquired by it."
There, gentlemen, is the key to this situation! The gentleman
brings in here a bill authorizing these people to build branches, and
to pay one-half in stock, and one-half in cash. After that there
comes in this bill which allows the Rew England road to buy every
one of these roads and to issue its bonds to pay for them. All that
it has to do is to operate one mile of this Housatonic system so-
called, after that system has absorbed these other roads, and then
it may purchase them, and ask the public to pay for them. There
is the scheme, gentlemen! These men have a larger pecuniary
interest in the Housatonic and Derby roads than in any other. By
an accident one of them is at the head of the Rew England road,
a majority of whose stock is sold in Wall Street every three weeks
of history—a road with great opportunities for good; a road which
this State should encourage and keep in the hands of safe railroad
men; and now one of these gentlemen of the Housatonic system is
at its head, and there is a scheme to bnild a parallel road from Bos¬
ton to Rew York; and there is the question for you to decide,
whether or not it is wisdom on the part of the State of Connecticut
to authorize them to build such a road.
WHY CHANGE POLICY ?
What reasons have been submitted to the State of Connecticut
for changing its policy % My learned friend, in his opening argu¬
ment, asked why there had been no witnesses offered here on the
part of the defence. I was not aware that it was good military to
limber real guns when the assault had only been opened with
8
quaker-guns. The gentleman has the affirmative. Before he asks
the State to put its great seal upon this project, it is incumbent upon
him to show that there is a demand, in the name of public conven¬
ience and necessity, for it. And now I beg to ask you vffiat reasons
have been given ? I have heard no approach to a suggestion of a
reason from the gentlemen themselves, excepting certain trivial items
of alleged friction between this system, as it is called, and the old road.
If there has been any other suggestion of public convenience or
necessity in their case I have failed to hear it. And, gentlemen, I
beg to know to what does all that amount? Could you have ex¬
pected otherwise, since the managers of this road have put upon
them their war-paint and entered upon an assault upon the old road ?
Could you after that expect perfect harmony and absence of fric¬
tion such as it is always desirable should obtain between railroad
companies ? Is there any item of complaint here which did not
exist when the present manager of this road was running the New
York, New Haven & Hartford road in its New Haven division?
Is there any serious ground of complaint which they have submitted
to you? To all their complaints, gentlemen, I submit the time¬
table ; and if that is not a complete answer there can be none. On
the back of it it says: "Trains leave Grand Central station, New
York, for Danbury & Norwalk railroad 5.1, 8.00, 11.00 a. m. ; 2.00,
4.02, 5.02, 8.01 p.. m., (7.30 a. m., 5.00 p. m. Sundays). For Housa-
tonic railroad, 5.01, 8.00 a. m. ; 3.02, 7.01 p. m." Gentlemen, can
you, looking at that, be for one moment led to any idea that there
is anything like reasonable ground for complaint against the treat¬
ment that road receives ?
Well, gentlemen, my learned associate has told you the number
of passengers carried from those roads—an average of eleven to
each of those trains. But, gentlemen, our laws are so drawn, in the
wisdom of the legislature, that if any railroad, in any way, manner
or form, abuses or fails to give complete accommodation to any
connecting road, the State, by its Board of Bailroad Commissioners,
can at once correct the evil. You need no legislation and no new
charter of a parallel road to correct those things. You have got
all the necessary law, open to anybody, and the Board of Rail¬
road Commissioners and the Superior Court are open to anybody
who has any grievance. And, gentlemen, I submit to you that
this is their entire case, and on this they ask you to injure the inter¬
ests of thousands of our fellow-citizens : to usher a new policy into
our State ; to antagonize every authority on the subject of railroads,
and to Hy in the face of all the commercial experience of our country.
9
REPLY TO SENATOR HILL.
I have not forgotten, sir, that besides the case that the gentlemen
have put in, we were treated one day here to a spectacle. A junket¬
ing trip from ISTorwalk was organized over these interested roads,
and the house of representatives was assaulted, politely, earnestly,
hy a collection of gentlemen from the town of Horwalk. It came
in the name of the sacred right of petition and had its being in
the fact of the sacred right of stump speech. The orator who rep¬
resented them on that day did not trust himself to the junketing
party, hut preferred to come hy a safe road—hut he was here and
presented his case. How, gentlemen, we all listened to him with
very great pleasure. There certainly is no one within the sound
of his voice who does not always listen to the effusive oratory
of that gentleman with great pleasure, and perhaps one might
say that its music is as attractive to the artist himself as to any
of his audience ; but everywhere,—in the hustings, and in the
halls of legislation, and even in the halls of congress, he could not
fail to get an appreciative hearing. What were the arguments
this orator presented to you ? If I heard his memorial correctly,
he gave three reasons : and first, he said a second road was needed
through Fairfield county so that, in case some enemy of man¬
kind should put a dynamite bomb upon one of the bridges of the
old road and destroy it, there should still be another road. Did it
ever occur to that learned gentleman that, if this enemy of man¬
kind chose to interrupt public travel, he could probably purchase at
the same arsenal, and use with the same hands, two dynamite
bombs to destroy two bridges as well as he could one % Did it ever
occur to the gentleman that the bomb had never yet been made
to blow up the waters of Long Island Sound and prevent public
travel there ? But the gentleman's second argument was that in
case of a blizzard—which comes once in a century,—the tracks of
the Consolidated road might be blocked and its service crippled. I
beg to ask the learned gentleman if he supposes there will be an
advent of a new angel of the Passover to save the iron rails and
sleepers of the new parallel road from the visitation of the snow.
I had always supposed that the elements, moving under the will of
the Almighty Heavenly Father, made no discrimination, but that
the raindrops and snowflakes fell impartially upon the evil and the
good, the just and the unjust.
10
CONNECTICUT BELONGS TO HERSELF.
But once more the gentleman added a third argument. In the
billows of his rhetoric he made Fairfield county to be nothing but
a back yard of the City of Yew York! Well, gentlemen, we have
heard that story for a long time. We have been of ten. told that
Connecticut is nothing but a kitchen garden of the city of Flew
York. But I repudiate that sentiment. I say that the great me¬
tropolis owes more to Connecticut than Connecticut owes to it. That
was the cry years ago when the Americus club filled the streets of
Greenwich with its tigers, and when the late William M. Tweed
condescended to visit us, and Mr. Woodward filled a place in the
Senate chamber and in politics; but I thought that idea had been
banished. Just a hundred years ago one William Try on, then Gov¬
ernor of the State of Yew York, not liking our Connecticut boys
because they had gone down to the city and knocked his royal type
into pi, and had carried the royal equestrian statue from Bowling
Green up into Litchfield to melt it into bullets, came here visiting
Fairfield county, thinking that Connecticut was a kitchen garden of
Yew York and both a sort of back yard of England, but he met
one Wooster, and he met one Putnam, too, and I had believed that
we then learned that Connecticut was something besides a kitchen
garden of the city of Yew York. I believe I have considered all
the reasons that have been suggested. I pass over the petition just
presented by my learned friend from Bridgeport this afternoon, for
I have not had time to examine it. I have considered all the
reasons that have been urged upon this committee why this parallel
road should be chartered; and now, gentlemen, what is inyolved in
chartering a parallel road ?
SENATOR PLATT's OPINION.
But, before I forget it, let me read you three or four words
apropos of this matter of the delegation from Yorwalk, and let me
say here I hold that city in the highest honor, and believe too well
of her to think that Yorwalk, consciously, for one moment would
ask you to charter a road which was for her exclusive benefit, if it
was to the injury of the State ; I do not believe it would be for her
permanent benefit; but conceding that that city,—which has £ot a
larger interest in a parallel road than any city in the State—
would receive a temporary benefit, I think too highly of her pa¬
triotism to believe she would ask you to do this if she felt
that it would be to the injury of the State in general. And that
11
is the question you are to pass upon. I will read you a few lines
from what I think you will admit is respectable authority:—
There is no more ruinous kind of competition in the world, none more
against the public welfare, than the building of competing railroads where
none are needed. * * * As I have suggested, there is a class of people in this
country who hold that any competition between railroads is for the public
interest. It comes from men usually who want this whole railroad question
to revolve around their city, or their farm, or their store, their mine, their
manufactory, or their bank. There are men who would be glad to have
their wheat and their cattle, and their coal carried for nothing. There are
shippers who would rejoice to get secret rates or pass rates, if I may use the
word, for their freight; and they welcome all competition which puts down
prices to unremunerative points. Such individuals gain by such competi¬
tion, but it is to the injury of every other citizen of the United States; it
is to the demoralization of all business ; it is the breaking down of all busi¬
ness honesty and lawful trade. There is a competition which is worse than
the combination and co-operation of railroads.
I have read from the speech of the Hon. Orville II. Piatt of Con¬
necticut, delivered in the Senate of the United States, January 6,
1887.
How this proposition to build a parallel road is not only at war
with the policy of the State of Connecticut, but it is at war with all
the authorities upon the subject of railroading ; it is at war with all
the experience of the railroad business of this country. I need not
again tell you what has been the policy of the State of Connecticut.
OTHER AUTHORITIES.
Let me ask you for a moment or two to listen to a few authorities
upon the principle involved, and I submit that the gentlemen may
search again with their candles, and again with their drag nets,
through the whole field of political economy and railroad literatures
and they cannot find a single intelligent authority which says to you
and says to the world, that a parallel road is a benefit to a commun¬
ity, when an existing road can fairly do the business—not a single
one—be it Stevenson, or our own Hadley—who stands to-day at the
head of railroad authorities—or Mr. Adams, or any other authority.
This matter has been investigated by legislative body after legisla¬
tive body. In 1872 a select parliamentary committee was appointed
to consider the whole matter. It comprised some of the ablest
English statesmen; they conducted an elaborate investigation, and
their results went fully to support the proposition which I have
stated. The same result has been reached in France, the same in
Germany. In 1874 a committee was appointed by the United States
12
Senate on transportation routes to the seaboard, and the members
of the committee were "William Wmdom, whom General Harrison
has just placed at the head of the treasury, John Sherman, David
Davis, one of the greatest of our statesmen and of our judges,
Roscoe Conkling, one of the most brilliant orators and statesmen,
and other leading senators. They took up thoroughly the whole
railroad question, examined in prolonged hearings at various cities
the chief railroad experts of the country, and as a result of their
inquiries and deliberations, reported that American experience
forces them to entirely endorse the results of the English commit¬
tee of 1872.
A CONNECTICUT OPINION.
I hold in my hand a brilliant argument made in 1882 by a dis¬
tinguished citizen of our State, in this very hall; not an especial
friend of the Consolidated railroad, for he says :—
I am not certain how much the Consolidated road would be injured by the
construction of a parallel road. In any case I do not care to make any plea
for them. All my sympathies are against them.
I can only read a few sentences from it.
It is in the name of the public at large that I urge you not to grant any
such charter as this. I urge this not for one locality, but in the interests
of all. I urge it even in behalf of those who live between New York and
New Haven, for though during the discriminations of a railroad war they
may gain temporarily, at the expense of the others, they also, in the end,
will suffer loss with the rest. Both the English and the American com¬
missions, and indeed, so far as I know, all railroad experts without excep¬
tion, agree in pronouncing the policy of chartering competing railroads to be
not only absolutely futile, but to be moreover fraught with serious and per¬
manent mischief to the people at large. Again and again have communities
tried this experiment, only to wake from their dream of reduced rates and
find themselves charged with a heavier burden of expense for the support of
two roads instead of one. Unless gentlemen are ready to disregard the entire
railroad experience of the world ever since George Stephenson drove the first
locomotive from Liverpool to Manchester, they cannot grant such a charter
as this.
i
J. PIERPONT MORGAN'S STATEMENT.
I will read you one other authority. A few weeks ago the
hankers of our country assembled to consider our present predica¬
ment, when the country is distressed on account of the troubles
between the great western roads. At that meeting a distinguished
banker J. I ierpont Morgan—and an honored son of this city—
one ol the men who have gone out from Connecticut to make Kew
} ork great—expressed himself in these words :—
13
In regard to the remarks made informally by President Roberts about;
building parallel lines, and the attitude of the bankers thereto, I am quite
prepared to say in behalf of the houses represented here, that if an organiza¬
tion can be formed practically on the basis submitted by the committee, with
an executive committee able to enforce its decision, upon which the bankers
shall be represented, they will not negotiate and will do all in their power to
prevent the negotiation of any securities for the construction of parallel
lines or the extension of lines.
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE.
There, gentlemen, is the practical voice of a practical man. But
it is not a question for theory. It is a question, gentlemen, that
has been tried out over and over again ; and the voice of experience
speaks to you in clear tones to-day and tells yon that the his¬
tory of parallel lines is the history of commercial disaster. Have
yon forgotten the history of the Hickel Plate road ? Have you for¬
gotten the history of the West Shore road from Jersey City to
Buffalo'? Have you forgotten the history of that great road, the
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy—held largely by Connecticut people
—how in their vanity they went foolishly to Denver and then to
St. Paul, building in each case parallel lines ? Are our eyes blind
to history ? There is not a word of philosophic wisdom quoted by
any of these authorities hut that is confirmed by the history of our
country over and over again.
THE INEVITABLE LAW.
How we are always met with these same maxims: u Competi¬
tion is the life of trade " The more money there is brought into
this State from without, the richer we are " The more railroads
the better." Gentlemen, the railroad business is as distinct from
the ordinary avocations of men as a tree is distinct from a flower.
An investment in a railroad must remain there, and can do only the
service of the railroad. Its expense must go on and go on. Its
charges are fixed. They must be met; and if there are dividends
they must he met; and I beg to ask who pays for these things %
Gentlemen, it is the public who pays for them. If the railroad now
existing between the city of Hew York and the city of Hew Haven is
sufficient to do the business between those places, then any other
railroad between them becomes a public burden. If a man's farm
is unremunerative he may sell it for building lots—he may sell
it for a factory ; and if a factory can no longer earn money in
making revolvers, it may make sewing machines ; but when a
railroad is unprofitable, it can do no more than run at public
u
expense. If another railroad is needed, then build it, but I submit
to you that there has been no kind of testimony to warrant
such a conviction; not a single aggrieved man has complained
of existing roads; no man has come up to stand before you
and say the service is not good upon the old road ; and yet you
are asked to attack it; and you are asked to attack the best
interests of this State by chartering another competing railroad.
And, gentlemen, history repeats itself over and over again. There
is but one possible result to these competing roads. Competition
remains for a few days, rates are cut, business is disturbed, the coal
merchant of to-day finds that the coal merchant of to-morrow can
buy at less rates his merchandise because of the cut rate; and after
quarrel and cut rates what comes ? Combination, always and every¬
where. And gentlemen may be as violent in their utterances as
they choose at thought of combination, but it is the inevitable result
—perhaps not to-day—perhaps not to-morrow—perhaps not in ten
years—you and I and all of us may be dead, but this commonwealth
will not be dead. Sooner or later, and that not very far off, com¬
petition must end in combination, and the public must support two
roads, one of them a gross superfluity. That is the inevitable law
of business, and we can no more fly away from it than we can from
the law of gravity.
I ask you, gentlemen, to read the columns of the intelligent press
of the State of Connecticut and the State of New York and the
State of Massachusetts, and I beg to inquire if there is not abso¬
lute harmony in their chorus, advocating precisely the same prin¬
ciple which I am urging upon you this afternoon.
ARE THEY TRUSTY?
And now, gentlemen, I have but a few moments more to talk.
There is another branch of this case that is interesting, but I do not
deem it my duty to enlarge upon it, and that is, whether the peti¬
tioners before you are persons to whom you should entrust this
franchise. I have 110 unkind words for any one of them, nor for
anybody in this world, if I know my own heart, but I do submit to
you, gentlemen, this, that there are two kinds of railroad men and
two kinds of method in the organization, in the construction,
and in the operation of railroads. One is what I should call a
business method—usually springing from the residents of a com¬
munity, asking for railroad privileges to bless and edify their
own locality. That transportation business honestly run, faithfully
15
run, witli a fair eye to the public, a fair eye to the investment, is, in
my judgment, a most honorable business, contributing in unequalled
measure to progress and power, and though it may be easy some¬
times to criticise the successful corporation, I submit to you that
there is often more, in such criticism, of that malice which conies
from the pit than of that decency which descends from the skies.
A great railroad honestly run, seeking to serve the people—the loco¬
motive its type—is one of the best forces in civilization to-day—
hardly behind the church and the school-house ! That is one kind
of railroading. There is another kind of railroading, which treats
this investment as it does any other investment out of which money
may be made—as it does the oil well, the cotton-seed trust, and the
water-lot, that I should call the railroading of speculation. Its offi¬
ces are not on the lines of railroads but in Wall street. Its tele¬
graph instruments record the price of shares more regularly than
the trips of trains. The former is represented in popular estimate,
whether wisely or not, by the Pennsylvania road, by Mr. Roberts
and Mr. Thompson, its present managers; the latter method,
whether justly or unjustly to him, is represented in the popular
mind by Mr. Jay Gould.
"my and mine."
Row, gentlemen, I submit to you in no spirit of uncharity, but
only in the spirit of fairness, whether or not the operations of
these men in connection with the Housatonic road indicate mem¬
bership in the ranks of the first or second described class of railroad
men ? Do they ask for a railroad for purposes of transportation
or of speculation ? You have seen, gentlemen, the leader of those
men; he has drawn his own portrait before you. He has told
you that he has come here with his money to build a parallel
road; he has said : " I will build my railroad." He has even
climbed to the supreme heights of proprietorship and spoken of our
earnest and active friend here as " My vice-president." Row,
gentlemen, I ask you whether he and his associates have come here
for the purpose of building a railroad on business principles, or on
speculative principles? You saw him sitting in that very chair,
lie nailed the black flag to the mast! He vomited forth from
every port-hole fire and fury! He paced the deck, and the weapon
he flourished was a butcher knife; and he boasted that his chest
and lockers were full of gold! I ask you gentlemen, whether or
not he and his associates represent honest industry and Connecticut
ideas of railroading, or whether he represents speculation and per-
16
sonal gain ? Does lie not treat tlie Housatonic road, taken by him
from its Connecticut management, as a bridge of convenience to-
carry him into Connecticut pastures ?
I shall spend no time upon the question, which is a very interest¬
ing one to us lawyers, whether these gentlemen have acted illegally*
that has been argued ably by the learned counsel who spoke upon
the petition. I have left no time to spend in discussing before yon
whether these gentlemen have kept their accounts properly. I
only submit to you this : that in one year of their railroad manage¬
ment the liability of the road has increased, by their returns to the
department, from about $3,000,000, to $6,000,000; and the assets
wTith an actual increase of betterments, according to their own state¬
ment, of less than a half a million dollars, are made to increase pro¬
portionately upon the other side. The president of the road told
you that those entries were made because they must be to balance
the books. The vice-president of the road told you that unless
those entries had been made, and the revaluation made, and the
transfers made from the old expense account to betterment account,,
from 1852 down to the present time, they must carry on the wrong
side of profit and loss more than $1,000,000. Gentlemen, you have
the facts before you and you will pass upon them.
HAS THE LESSON BEEN FORGOTTEN?
In 1887, gentlemen, the Railroad Commissioners of this State, in
their report to the General Assembly, used these prophetic words:
" The increasing prosperity of our railroad companies is likely to
make Connecticut an inviting field for new schemes and the en¬
couraging business outlook with the lapse of time leads to forget-
fulness of the lessons taught by the Nickel Plate, West Shore and
kindred enterprises." That time has come. The lesson of the
Nickel Plate has been forgotten in the minds of these gentlemen.
It will not be in yours. I submit to you that we have come to the
time when we must decide again, and I hope forever, whether or
not the Connecticut system of railroad companies, founded upon
business ideas, is to be continued, or whether the legislature of the
State of Connecticut is to be captured by assault, and its whole
railroad system, carrying the heart's blood of the State through its
arteries, is to be handed over to speculation ? And as I again recall
old Governor Tryon's return to New York from Fairfield County,
I dare to believe that there are in this General Assembly children
of Israel Putnam and David Wooster and Oliver Wolcott to speak
for honesty aiid righteousness.