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SLAVES.
BEING
A Lawyer's Plea in Behalf of the People;
OR,
SPEECHES ON THE RAILWAY PROBLEM,
(from Short-Hand Notes,)
BY
Hadley
LEIGH HaVINE,
of the Kansas City Bar.
TRANSPORTATION LIHO ALL
"Death to Anarchy and Socialism."
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR,
KANSAS CITY,
1888.
Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1887, by
LEIGH H. IRVINE,
In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C.
COLUMBIA, MO.:
HERALD, PRINTERS, STEREOTYPERS AND BOOK-BINDERS.
1888.
To my beloved
Parents
CLARKE AND ANNE K. IRVINE,
This little volume
Is
Affectionately Dedicated..
"Out of their mouths shall their words condemn them."
A RAILWAY MAN'S WORDS.
*
Everywhere, and at all times, these corporations illustrate the
truth of the old maxim of the common law, that corporations have no
souls. *
* The system of corporate life and corporate
power, as applied to industrial development, is yet in its infancy. It
tends always to development, always to consolidation;
-it is ever
grasping new powers or insidiously exercising covert influence.
Even now the system threatens the central government.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* The belief is common in America that the day is at hand
when corporations far greater than Erie-swaying power such as has
never in the world's history been trusted in the hands of mere private
citizens, controlled by single men like Vanderbilt, or by combinations
of men like Fisk, Gould, and Lane, after having created a system of
quiet but irrepressible corruption, will ultimately succeed in directing
government itself.
We know
what aristocracy, autocracy, democracy are, but we have no word to
express government by moneyed corporations; yet the people already
instinctively seek protection against it, and look for such protection,
and significantly enough, not to their own legislatures, but to the single
autocratic feature retained in our system of government a veto by
the executive. Vanderbilt embodies the autocratic power of Cæsarism
introduced into corporate life; and as he alone cannot obtain complete
government of the State, it perhaps only remains for the coming man
to carry the combination of elements one step in advance and put
Cæsarism at once in control of the corporations, and of the proletariat,
to bring our vaunted institutions within the dreadful rule of all historic
precedent."- Charles Francis Adams.
RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE.
“Wait.
Retribution will come in due time.
Justice travels with
a leaden heel, but strikes with an iron hand. God's mills grind slow
but dreadfully fine. Wait till the flood gate is lifted and a full head of
water comes rushing on. Wait, and you will see fine grinding then."
Jere Black.
THE VALUE OF ECONOMIC TRUTHS.
(C
Adam Smith contributed more, by the publication of his 'Wealth
of Nations,' towards the happiness of man, than has been effected by
the united abilities of all the statesmen and legislators of whom history
has preserved an authentic account."- Buckle.
HIGHWAYS IN MISSOURI.
The Constitution of Missouri, Article XII, Section 14,-" Railways
heretofore constructed, or that may hereafter be constructed in this
State, are hereby declared public highways."~
PREFACE.
This is not strictly a book, but a collection of imperfect
speeches, some of which were made in campaigns a few years
ago.
My former work, on industrial depressions, met with a
favorable reception, and the edition was soon exhausted. That
fact, in part, led me to revise some facts and figures which I
had been gathering for several years, and put them in this shape
in the hope that they would prove acceptable to the general
reader.
I have repeated much, for that is a vice peculiar to speeches,
which seek to hammer a fact into every conceivable shape; but
they usually have the advantage of addressing the hearer direct,
rather than the subject.
I am under obligations to Hon. W. H. Ashby, of Wymore,
Nebraska, a clear-headed Democrat, an eloquent speaker, and
a thorough gentleman,-for valuable suggestions and conversa-
tions on this subject last year, while I was a guest at his home.
I must also thank the United States Commissioner of
Labor, Mr. Carroll D. Wright, for prompt answers to inquiries
and for other courtesies. I also thank our painstaking and able
United States Senator, Hon. Francis M. Cockrell, for courtesies
extended; also Mr. J. A. Graham, former managing editor of
the Kansas City "Times," and a thorough student of the
railway problem, for innumerable courtesies in the past.
Lastly, my thanks are due to Mr. A. P. Barnett, and to
Mr. H. M. De Moss, for invaluable stenographic aid. Their
8
PREFACE.
services have enabled me, during evenings, and after business
hours, to pursue my thought with no interruptions of profess-
ional duties.
I submit these crude addresses in book form, convinced
that the true herein will live, and that the false must die. It
is a collection of facts to be "chewed and digested." I make
no pretense to literary accuracy. Truth is my whole aim and
object. I have no new axes to grind. I belong to no new polit-
ical party, as the reader will see further on.
Sincerely,
LEIGH H. IRVINE,
President of Farmers' Highway Society of America.
Kansas City, November, 1887.
PROLOGUE.
A few evenings ago I was sitting in the waiting room of the
Kansas City Union Depot. Passengers were rushing to and
fro, about to take passage on trains bound in all directions.
The travel West was especially heavy.
"All aboard! Passengers going west via the Chicago,
Burlington & Quincy, all aboard!" cried the passenger
director.
Old men and women, palsied with age. Young men and
women, dreaming of the Golden West. Platoons rushing.
Men, women and children.
Tramp tramp! tramp! to the cars!
Ding-a-ling-ah! ding a-ling-ah! ding-a-ling-ah ! The
engine bells are ringing.
1
"That train yonder, old man, on the third track, says a
brakeman.
"
"This way, young lady! May I assist you with your bag-
gage?" says a passenger conductor.
•
The coaches are all crowded.
"All aboard! Last call!"
The steam is escaping with a deafening h-i-s-s; the bell is
ringing; the train begins to move.
On, to the Pacific! Five passenger coaches; 40 people to
the coach; 5 times 40 is 200; 200 passengers at $60.00 each;
$12,000 paid to the railroad company! It is Monday night.
That load of human freight will reach the Golden Gate early on
Friday morning-three and one-half days.
'How cheap the fare is now," one says.
10
PROLOGUE.
"How cheap ?"
"Yes."
"How dear!"
How much is gain to the company? How much is the
people's contribution to Shylock?
"Thank God! We live in the age of steam," says the
gentle optimist at my right. Ah, truly! Can this system
that girdles our new continent be an evil? If so, why are we
ignorant of the existence of the evil?
“Can these things be,
And overcome us like a summer's cloud,
Without our special wonder?"
Come, let us see.
"You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you
free."-JOHN 8:32.
Whoever or whatever imposes unnecessary restraints upon
the power and right of free locomotion, and whoever and what-
ever unnecessarily removes from men the power to freely
exchange commodities, wields a tyrannical influence over the
people.
The unhampered exchange of services is the foundation of
prosperity. The power to change our habitations cheaply, as
pleasure, convenience, or business demands, is a blessing. No
government has the right to rob the people of this power.
High freight and high passenger rates make men depend-
ent. Dependency is slavery in part. The barnacle, the oyster,
cannot move. No muscular power can compete with steam.
The uncivilized man is tyrannized over by gravitation, which
his forces cannot conquer; but the civilized man invented the
steam engine, "hitched his wagon to a star." It kills time and
space, throwing weary miles over its Atlantan shoulders untir-
PROLOGUE.
11
ingly, carrying godlike burdens. The tyrants of modern
industry, the barons of the feudalism of money, by money's
mere brute force, the autocratic railway kings, stand between
the citizen and the enjoyment of these high privileges. They
impose useless burdens and restrictions upon the right of free
locomotion, and upon the power to freely exchange the services.
which we offer one another.
The railway problem. We often hear this expression.
What is the railway problem?
I shall attempt to make an intelligible statement of that
problem, and to give the outline of what must be, so far as eco-
nomics indicates, a philosophic solution of that problem in the
United States.
The railway problem proper, in the highest and most
accurate meaning of the terms, is nothing more nor less than
the problem of so utilizing modern methods of land locomotion
as to give to every citizen the highest liberty of transportation
consistent with the like liberty of every other citizen. In other
words, how to use this new giant, which carries tons faster than
the wind blows a feather, to the best advantage of all men; and
to do this without violating the principles of American liberty,
and without doing violence to property in vested rights.*
*NOTE :- See pages 35 and 42 to 44.
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
CHAPTER I,
PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS.
The American Republic stands alone in one respect in the
world's history. Nowhere has the right of free discussion of
public questions been carried to the extent it has among us.
Here we are free to peaceably express our views at all times on
men and measures; subject, always, to the laws against libel
and slander. Freedom of speech and the liberty of the press
are sacred and inviolable rights of the American people. Wisely
did our forefathers guarantee them to us in our Constitution.
Liberty can never exist where the voice of the people is gagged
or the press throttled. No great reform can succeed, no exist-
ing evil be overthrown, except by, full, free and open discussion.
It is in this spirit that these speeches were made.
Another great principle is closely connected with the forego-
ing. Show me the people so immersed in the pursuit of wealth that
all other questions are subordinated to the greed for gain, and it
is only a question of time, before that people becomes a race of
slaves, a nation of "shop-keepers ", ruled by a few masters. It
is, therefore, not only the right of the people in free America
to discuss political and economic problems and to hold our pub-
lic servants to a strict account; but it is our high duty so to do,
for our own salvation and that of our children's children, to re-
mote posterity.
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
13.
If any of the pestilent spawn of the hired Hessians who
fought our ancestors at Valley Forge or on the Delaware; if any
out-cast European, whose name ends in "ski", or some combina-
tion of consonants impossible for American vocal organs to
enunciate; if any flaring-eyed, hairy, crazy, six-month's-old im-
portation, red-shirted and blatant; if any such, I say, expects to
draw comfort or support from these pages, he would better
send his money to Johann Most; he will waste it here. These
are the mad-dogs of America. Their fangs must be drawn by
the strong hand of the law.
On the other hand I advocate no centralization of power in
the Federal Government. I believe in all sincerity that I fol-
low strictly the principles, laid broad and deep, by Jefferson,
Madison, and their successors. I believe that the Democratic*
party can handle this question, and handle it successfully upon
and under strict Democratic doctrines. I believe that that party
has a great mission to perform in this connection. Has it not
wrested large parts of the public domain-millions of acres-
from the iron grasp of subsidized railroads? Has it not been
always the people's party, and opposed to senatorial autocracy?
Why should it not crown its work by rescuing the public high-
way from private control, place it under the supervision of the
several states; thus restoring to the people their inheritance?
Then, indeed, will its name be blessed as long as America and
American liberty shall endure. In no undue haste would I
have my party act, but it is time to lay the foundation stones of
a glorious work.
The love of freedom and the intuition of liberty charac-
terize every patriot beneath the American flag. Every citizen,
under our free system, is a mariner on the sea of politics; and
he is wise who never loses sight of the North star, which peren-
*NOTE:-While I hope that my own party will move in this reform, I do not
desire any Republican to take offense at this. This is not a party book,
14
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
nially shines for the brave and the free. We like to recall the
deeds of our forefathers, and to preserve in memory the record
of their lives. Who has not read with tender emotion, and
taken to his heart in sympathy Henry Clay Dean's beautiful
story of the lad of the Revolution, who, overcome with fatigue
and weary marching, dejected, down-hearted, storm-beaten, and
sick, fell asleep in his tent and thought to die? A deep slum-
ber, like the wings of night, wrapped him in the darkness
almost of death. As he slept he dreamed; fairy hands painted
beautiful visions on the canvas of his entranced mind. Again
the scenes of childhood came to him. The pine trees sang
their requiem; the forest waved in solemn grandeur; the fields
of golden grain glistened in the sun; the birds were singing in
the joyous air; the summer sky was calm and clear; no cloud
of trouble cast its shadow there. Troops of boyhood friends
danced and played in careless glee. The toil, the hunger, the
gloom, the soldier's cares, were to come to him no more. Musing
thus in slumber a maiden's form he saw, as in the sunlight, fair
and free, she gently came, bearing in her hand a trophy, a
garland of roses fair. And still she came, with gentle footsteps,
and softly pinned it on his breast. A face more fair he ne'er had
seen-so frank, so sweet, so pure. And as he slept the soldier's
sleep, the beautiful girl paused o'er him to smooth his ruffled
locks and kiss his eyelids closed in drowsy rest. His pallid
brow she gently stroked with hand of love, and fondly gazed as
though upon a sleeping babe. He marveled much, but could
not speak, nor raise a hand to greet the maid. Before she left
she looked again with sweet and earnest face, and waved her
hand, and pointed to the flag in Dreamland's sky. Then she
said in tones as sweet as the voice of music itself,
Good-bye, my gallant sweet-heart; you will be rested
soon and you will remember me, won't you, for my name is
Freedom' ?"
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
15
t
And when the young soldier awoke, his spirit was as fresh as
the morning air. The form of Freedom, bright with eternal youth,
was before him. Her hand and her heart he would win at any
cost. He saw his country invaded by those who knew not and
loved not the beautiful Freedom of his dream; he fought for
that dear form and sweet face as only true men fight. He won
her hand and heart, after the snows of Valley Forge, and
though she is more than a century old, and has lived all these
generations in progressive America, there is no feature dimmed,
no wrinkle on her brow. Bathed in perennial youth, may she
live forever, enshrined in the hearts of every lover of his native
land! As the Revolution won Liberty by overcoming tyrants,
so let us preserve it forever, by overthrowing the plutocracy of
the railway kings.
We want no masters in this country; life, liberty, and prop-
erty must be free. The sun, the moon, the stars, the land, the
water, the air, and all forms of life must, each within its sphere,
remain forever free-not the liberty of savages, but the liberty
of free men, under the just limits of civil law. As truly as
the love of home lives in the civilized heart, so truly will we
fight for the reign of law and the maintenance of the rule which
gives "to every man his due." Our demands lie in reason the
most high, principles the most beneficent, and authority as
sacred as the memory of Bunker Hill. Civil liberty rests upon
the immemorial traditions and proverbs of the illustrious dead.
We ask nothing which the law will not uphold; we ask nothing
which reason will not confirm; we ask nothing which justice
will not approve. For let it be borne in mind that without the
reign of law and the use of reason, all is chaos and death. Let
it be borne in mind that every fact stated in treating the great
subjects which are now demanding the attention of the Ameri-
can people, must be examined calmly, not alone by the light of
the pine knots of old soldier camp-fires, but in the white-
16
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
light of modern thought. The future which spreads out before
us like the expectant creation, waiting to bloom in new glory,
is not too sacred, however, to be tested by the fires which
burned in the days when American liberty was born.
As one who loves the law, which is his "jealous mistress,"
and who reveres the hallowed memory of the illustrious dead,
I shall undertake the discussion of one of the greatest economic
problems of the age, in the spirit of simplicity and fairness ;
and I shall endeavor to test every proposition by the rules of
the science of the law, which I serve with fear and trembling,
lest when the pendulum strike, it shall miss the truth. As I
believe with the old judge, who many years ago declared that
"the sparks of all the sciences of the world are covered up in
the ashes of the law," I also believe that there is inherent life
enough in the Law as a science to properly control everything
in civil life that transpires beneath the American flag, whether
to regulate the movement of a pound of freight, or to adjust
the rights of powerful business interests, or to say whether one
who has taken his neighbor's life has committed murder. The
law of the land, pervading and controlling all things like a
gentle spirit, can always prescribe a rule of action which will
be safe and just, as well as a fixed test of liberty upon which all
patriots may depend. In this country all law rests upon the
will of the people, and the voice of the majority is the supreme
rule of action. Students, politicians, divines, and philosophers
alike must bow in reverence before the all-pervading presence of
law. No autocratic power, no foreign visitor, but the people's
will-that is the law of the land. Sometimes they suffer abuses
and bad laws to remain in power for long periods of time, but
when they at last understand all the facts justice is apt to be
done.
The common people are sometimes told by those in author-
ity-in so far as money gives authority-that the complications
i
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
17
of the railway problem are inherently so great that the layman's
mind can never hope to unravel them. This is the deception
and the fallacy with which monopoly has too often deluded the
robbed people of this country. There is no fact so important
or so sacred as not to be resolvable into simple elements. With-
out a thorough understanding of the foundation-principles of
free government, however, the man of best motives and inten-
tions is often misled, and a public wrong may seem to him to
bear the appearance of a private right. But so surely as one
drop of blood runs through the races, simplicity underlies
every problem that will ever arise in the politics of America.
The theorist with pale face and long hair, whose reasoning is
too sacred for the man in his shirt-sleeves, does not belong on
this free soil.
As the multiplication table consists of a few simple rules.
and as that arithmetic which solves the knottiest problems of
astronomy consists also of a few simple elements, so the econo-
mic rules and the great principles of justice which underlie the
railway problem are likewise resolvable into a few axioms, In
discussing this question the census of the United States will
prove to be the patriot's Bible and the philosopher's touchstone.
In the light of modern progress, the sphere of the State, in the
proper advancement of the economic welfare of society, must
be greatly enlarged; and while the rule remains true that the
State should never undertake what can best be done by indi-
vidual enterprise, it yet leaves much to be done by the State
rather than by the greedy hand of monopoly. This is the
sacred, protecting principle of free government.
The habit of looking upon things which are in existence as
being here by inalienable right, is one which sometimes baffles
and thwarts the greatest minds. Perhaps it is one of the most
difficult tasks in this world, to free ourselves from the slavery of
'habit, to flee from the tyranny of custom. Because the railways
18
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
have nearly always been owned by private individuals, we are
wont to believe that they ought always to be owned by individ-
uals. So I shall beg all who read what I have to say to look at
this question as one for original investigation, and to free them-
selves totally from the bias of education, past associations, and
the traditions of the last five decades. In the first place, let it
be remembered that, although this country has developed very
rapidly by the aid of railways, yet the railways are not the cause
of such developments. The folly of the argument that our
prosperity is due to the railway management is only surpassed
by the superstition of those old witches who, each time they
glanced out of their windows, saw a funeral procession, and
believed it was the act of looking out of the window which called
forth the procession. It tests and proves the greatness of this
country that prosperity has come like the sunshine and the rain,
in spite of the present inequalities of the railway system, which
has threatened our welfare in a thousand directions at every
step. When the giant, Steam, was born and while it slumbered
as a babe in the cradle, the miserly clutch of corporation mag-
nates reached forth and seized it-stole it from its natural
parents and guardians, the people. When the man whose
inventive genius discovered that steam was not a devil, but a
god which might be tamed, first beheld its power lifting the lid
of the pot on the stove, little did he dream of the eternal conse-
quences which would result from the harnessing of that giant.
When a thing becomes a public necessity, and when the
ownership of it becomes such that the owner may prejudice the
people's legislative, executive, and judicial representatives, and
corruptly control, as an irresponsible tyrant, the industry, the
happiness, the welfare, and the prosperity of the people, then
that thing should be controlled by the people.* It is often said
*NOTE:-Again, I repeat, I do not believe in government or State ownership of
railway trains.
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
19
that the government, State or National, would have too much
power if the track should be emancipated from the thraldom
and darkness of private greed. When you hear such arguments,
ask yourself, "What is the government in this country?" and
it will come to you almost like a half-forgotten dream that this
is a government "of the people, for the people, and by the
people." What! Have we arrived at that stage of perfect civil-
ization when the railway magnates are to prescribe the rules of
legislation and the economic laws which must govern a mighty
country? Have we arrived at the point when these magnates,
who have robbed us, shall have the right with impunity to
question our sacred ownership of these everlasting privileges,
the highways? The impudence of the assertion that the gov-
ernment will have too much power, is only equaled by its
ingenuity, and by its power to cast a cloud of doubt upon the
minds of the masses. It is the argument of tyranny, fleeing to
the wall, grasping at the floating straw of fear.
When corporations, like mighty devil-fish, run their fiendish
prongs almost through the vitals of the people, and threaten
the destruction of individuals; when cities tremble, as angry
mobs march through the streets; when farmers, who constitute
more than half of the country's population, move sadly down
the furrow, clothed in ragged garb, and when magnates eat in
palatial cars from silver plates, attended by servants, parading
bank accounts that read like fables of the past, is it not time
that the people ask why, and seek a redress for the wrongs that
have long ago grown old? Discriminating rates, secret rebates,
that have killed some vast enterprises and cities in this country.
and greatly prospered others, the issue of inflated stocks, com-
monly called "watered stock," the manipulation of con-
tracts, and the use of other corporations to change the profits
from the masses to the pockets of the railway kings, making
possible such corruption as would put Satan to the blush, are
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SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
some of the evils of which we complain. What right has any
private citizen or monopoly company to make a fortune out of
the public thoroughfares? The principle is wrong from base to
apex. Nothing can validate such a claim.
Since we have given an empire in lands to some of these
corporations, and money to build transcontinental roads, have
we not a right to ask whether they shall continue to buy our
legislators, and bribe officials to obtain still further favors? As
Mr. Hudson has so beautifully said, "No set of men ought to
be allowed to play the part of Providence over the commerce of
this country." And it has come to the point when we must
choose between railway autocrats on the one side, and freedom
on the other. It has come to that point when nine intelligent
citizens in every ten realize the awful grasp with which these
private corporations hold the reins of power in the Municipal,
State and National governments. The grain business and thous-
ands of other enterprises are directly controlled by them, greatly
to the disadvantage of the farmers. Who shall say that, led by
the spirit of liberty, we ought not to abolish the evils of arbi-
trary power from the land?
The day has arrived when no well-informed thinker longer
doubts the existence of a serious problem for solution in this
country. The mobs of working men, the riots of dissatisfied
employes, the low mutterings of the depressed and oppressed,
can no longer be pushed aside with insolence and denied with
a laugh. The rapid growth of this country and the enormous
aggregation of great fortunes, have given rise to an era so
different from the provincial period in which our ancestors
lived, that a comparison of olden times with the present can no
longer be maintained. The coolest thinkers must admit that
the social questions now knocking at the door of the temple
of thought for solution cannot be put aside in a day. Evils
under which the century groans cannot be remedied by a
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
21
sudden and sweeping revolution, for remedial justice is as slow
in growth and adaptation to existing environments as the growth
of the wrongs against which it is directed. The industrial
depressions that have afflicted us since 1837, at periods
recurring every ten years with singular regularity, are clearly
the outgrowth of modern civilization; in fact they seem to
inhere in some mysterious manner in the very complexities of
the times. The sudden multiplication of man's necessities,
actual or ideal, the enormous increase of the productive power
of machinery, the amassing of tremendous private fortunes,
and the growth of exclusive, selfish, money-getting corpora-
tions, characterize a vital era, not only in the history of America,
but in the history of the world. It is an age without precedent
in the annals of all history. The country is no longer a vast
wilderness, an expanse of separate and isolated localities,
marked geographically by the shores of the two oceans,
characterized by local customs and provincialisms, but it is a
net-work of cities and towns, united by railways ever growing,
over which "winged giants" transport passengers and freight
at an enormous rate of speed. All these American cities,
villages, and agricultural communities, constitute a republic of
markets and customs, permeated by a a common spirit,
fluctuating with the voice of the press, the flash of the wires,
and the new conquests of steam. We can order Parisian
trousseaux by galvanic speech, and have the luxuries of the
world at our marriage feasts quicker than our simple forefathers
could have sent their humble homespun across a half-dozen
counties. Furthermore, the methods of life have become more
complicated by a multiplication of our wants, which have
perhaps really been enlarged into necessities. For example,
our house decorations, and the rare and curious treasures
brought from foreign lands, across oceans and over mountains,
from old museums, are common, where but yesterday was a
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wilderness marked, perhaps, by the cabin of some lonely
trapper, or of some simple old farmer who had cleared away
the trees, with the birds of morning as his sole companions,
and made a home in the vastness of new America. Theaters,
formerly found only in great cities, cosmopolitan habits and
city tastes, are multiplied with the increase of modern
invention. The ancient solitudes are undermined with sewers,
gas pipes, water pipes, and countless contrivances for the
convenience of man. The air is full of wires, and where once
was heard the woodman's voice resounding among the hills,
calling his companion, wires cross and re-cross, laden with
human speech, so gentle in its whispers that no sound is heard,
save by the listener at some distant mart, or quiet home. Have
such surroundings not multiplied the necessities of the people?
Is living not more expensive than in the age of log cabins and
pioneer fields? And should not the wealth of the world be so
distributed that a larger proportion shall fall to the lot of the
citizen, who is called upon for a larger expense, in order that
he may keep up with his fellow-men, and with the progress of
the age?
Since wealth has grown so vast and man has learned
to draw such varied conveniences from the storehouse of nature,
is it a wonder that there is a severe conflict for the possession
of the wealth of the world? When we think of it seriously we
will comprehend in a moment that in a desert the purest gold
can purchase little at the best, but in a civilized community, its
power is increased a million fold. As a result the ambition of
the masses is greatly and even vulgarly for money. Culture,
beautiful culture, is not the one word of aspiring youth, but
money, the Almighty dollar sits on the throne. It is the
ambition of the busy day and the dream of the troubled night.
The commercial spirit-if this grasping desire and greed for
wealth may be so termed-permeates the country as well as the
city; and the thrifty farmer boy longs to move to the city, where
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23
!
he may receive the training of the business man and have
thrown open to him the opportunities for speculation. The
pale-faced apprentice boy, and his father, struggle in vain to
surmount the disadvantages of old clothes, meager education,
long hours, grimy faces, and factory air. Circumstances over
which they have little or no control force them to continue
their treadmill round of daily toil. Very little respite, scarcely
any theaters, no such thing as watering places, no bon-bons, no
time to linger. Work! work! work! It is the price of Life.
Sad, pale-faced children can receive little consolation from the
over-worked parent. Education is a word without meaning.
Luxury vanishes; poverty is perennial; the sweet dream of
better times scarcely ever becomes more than a dream. It
haunts the workmen as a receding mirage, which vanishes as
they approach. But some one says that their ambition is ill-
founded. Is it? Who is responsible for that? Shall the rich
man be the censor of the morals of the poor man? Shall he
deny to the man of limited means that which he himself enjoys
with ease; and shall he say that morality is one thing for the
poor and another for the rich? No, no! This ambition is in
the air; these men are a part of the times, and the feverish
desire for something better than they have known and are
experiencing, fills them with discontent. The ill-founded
ambitions of the times, the spirit of the age, the philosophy,
which permeates the world, must have much credit for the gen-
eration of such strifes as fill the air with discord. So the man
who would lodge the blame of all ill-founded ambition upon the
unfortunate men who must suffer from their depressed position,
is indeed shallow in his view. We must press these things to
their remote causes, and the problem of the age will then be seen
to take root down in the eternal granite of those principles of
philosophy, economy, and law, which have lived and will live in
all ages. Superficial views must give place to thorough, benev-
24
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
olent, conscientious, and painstaking researches, and the
philosopher of the hour will become the fool of to-morrow.
Is it, candidly, the best that is possible? Must there be
barons while bare-feet grow weary in search for rest and home?
Shall the pale face of Toil turn forever in silence from bountė-
ous supplies of food, and from warehouses filled with clothing
enough to keep warm the shivering poor? Shall those who
grow rich forever press on, they know not why, to become
richer? Shall Shylock always demand his pound of flesh, and
come to dwell with us in this land of the free? Shall the men
who would ameliorate the happiness of the people and perpetu-
ate the conditions for which their ancestors died, be classed
with the anarchist, foreign element which has inundated this
country and threatened its liberty? Shall they who dearly love
liberty, and who would die for it, if necessary, be called cranks,
agitators, and fools, forsooth, because they ask why when they
see foot-prints of blood in the cold snows of winter? Shall the
man who dares to sympathize with the down-trodden, the poor,
the masses of the United States, be branded by these new plu-
tocrats as one whose principles, whose motives, and whose life
are all alike inimical to American freedom? Only last year there
were, in round numbers, twenty thousand idle factories in the
United States, filled with various articles of necessity and lux-
ury, while the fields of grain all over the West and South
waved in the breezes as if in mockery of the hungry poor.
Such is the sad story of the census. We all see these harsh
lines of life on every hand. Poverty is the skeleton that haunts
the closet of the colossal world.
Who shall say that heartless discriminations, selfish freight
rates, ungodly pooling, stock-gambling, bulling and bearing the
market, charging the traffic all it will bear, which means to
draw the last drop of blood from the people, who shall say that
these and like false conditions, have not had much to do with
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
25
the unequal and the cruel distribution of wealth in this country?
A cool investigation is sufficient to confute the oft-repeated
fallacy of over-production, and to show beyond a reasonable
doubt that under-consumption, economy forced upon the
masses, and unequal distribution of wealth, are the evils so fre-
quently mis-called over-production. Not that there is not
enough for sixty millions of people to eat and wear, but that
arbitrary burdens are purposely imposed upon the transporta-
tion and distribution of the great staples and varied products
of this country. Are there faded carpets, old-fashioned sets of
furniture, and shabby clothing, among the forty-two millions of
farmers of America? If so, why? Is this by choice or from
necessity? The agriculturist always has enough to eat, for
Nature annually spreads enough on her great table for his nour-
ishment; but the question is, "Can the crop be turned into
money that the farmer may help the dependent factories, by
buying from them the goods which they make ?" Must the
farmer under-consume, must he economize and always buy the
very minimum, doing with the old so long as a shred is left?
These are vital questions. If a majority of the consumers of
the United States, upon whom the manufacturers are depend-
ent for sales, are parsimonious, which means publicly stingy,
the result must be stagnation of industries, over-crowded ware-
houses, slow sales, and the shutting down, many times, of the
factories. The result of this is partly, at least, as statistics
show, the idleness of many thousands of workmen, and hard
times for the masses. These things will recur more frequently
in the future than they have in the past, just as the enormity
of industrial depressions has increased and their severity has
been multiplied with the growth of vast private fortunes.
According to the report of the Labor Commissioner of the
United States, there were, in 1885, ONE MILLION IDLE PEOPLE
IN SEARCH OF EMPLOYMENT, which they could not find by
26
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
honest effort, and more than one hundred and fifty thousand of
these had been employed in factories and mines continuously
during prosperous eras. Now it is frightful how the idleness
of even such a percentage of the population can cripple the
consumptive power of the country; yet that number is insig-
nificant when compared with the number of farmers unable to
buy, which nearly always characterizes the dull years. Driven
to restricted, home markets, where prices are low, and where
every man raises as much as he needs, and more, the farmer is
robbed, by extortionate freight rates, of the surplus which a
distant, higher market would permanently afford, but for such
freight rates.
THE CONDITION OF THE FARMERS IS FOREVER
THAT OF THE ROBBED.
They are not poor, however, as workmen
in cities are poor, for the humblest farmer is quite independent
as to mere food supplies. The idle, under-paid artisan sees a
day's earnings as the only friend which stands between his
family and starvation, or the almshouse.
It is a wonder that those who seek to solve the social prob-
lems of the times so persistently ignore the fact that farmers
and their families (and the villagers adjacent to farms, in this
country, chiefly a non-manufacturing population) constitute by
far the mass of the American people. For example, in 1880,
when the total business population of the United States was
seventeen millions, nearly eight millions (to be accurate 7,607,-
493) were engaged in farming pursuits; that is, they held the
plow handles; yet more stress has usually been placed upon the
welfare of a minor portion of the population, numbering a few
thousand craftsmen in cities, than upon the prosperity or down-
fall of the greater bulk of the people, and of the business part
of the population. However, as before suggested, the severity
of the suffering of idle artisans is so much greater than the
distress of farmers can possibly be, that the oversight may per-
haps be accounted for on that ground. The pangs of actual
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
i
27
hunger, as seen in cities where artisans are out of employment,
are more stirring in their appeals than the continued inconven-
ience of the farmer. The wail of despair that arises from
crowded, unhealthful tenement houses, is more startling than the
low mutterings of the millions who till the soil. And yet could
these millions be well to do; could they but possess money
for their crops (instead of high freight bills and cornered
markets), their very necessities, enlarged and enlightened
by the education of the times, and made possible by the exchange
of products for money, would keep busy many thousands of the
factories now idle because of slow sales. Idle tens of thou-
sands of working men, whom the census says were IN SEARCH
OF EMPLOYMENT WHICH THEY COULD NOT FIND, and who
have been busy in prosperous eras, would also find plenty
of work, and good pay, where now is the slow agony of
under-paid employment, or the pangs of actual hunger, both of
which tend to make men dissatisfied, not only with their
employers, but also, at times, with the form of government
under which such conditions are possible.
In a land of farmers nothing is truer than that all
material prosperity is measured greatly by their prosperity.
When the farmer is crippled, or seriously hindered from any
cause whatever, it is with the people like unto a house when the
foundation crumbles away. If, from these considerations, and
from a simple outline of the growth of the most tremendous
facilities of transportation to be found anywhere in either
ancient or modern history, one may find any connection between
the existence of the corporation which owns the highway, on the
one side, and the suffering of the farmer who must use it on the
´other, no effort should be spared to make that connection plain
and clear to the voters of America. It requires very little
research for us to be convinced that one of the giant evils of the
age is to be found in the unequal distribution of the wealth of
28
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
the country. This is one of the simplest propositions of com-
mon sense and one of the axiomatic laws of political economy.
Where are there higher or broader problems, or greater fields
for philosophical research? These questions must first reach a
settlement in the court of reason, and it is wise to go over the
ground with care and patience, lest the thickness of the night
of industrial gloom become too deep for penetration by mortal
sight. The thinkers, the workers, the writers, the students,
are in the field, and have been for long years; but the problem
is becoming even more complex with the flight of time; and no
honest endeavor to reach a solution is to be dismissed, provided
it bears on its face evidence of the merit of common sense.
Speaking of present inequalities, Mr. James F. Hudson, an
eminent authority on American railways, says, "Our modern
feudalism is most apparent in the erection of great and irrespon-
sible rulers of industry whose power, like that of the feudal
barons, pursues the people and even overshadows the govern-
ment which gave it existence. The only important distinction
is, that, in the old days of force, the power of feudalism was
measured by thousands of warriors, while in the days of modern
plutocracy, it is measured by millions of money." The same
writer says that, "The railway pool is the conqueror of com-
petition in transportation and the parent of this modern brood
of combinations, each of which has attained absolutism in its
especial sphere."
In the March, 1886, number of the North American
Review, Col. Ingersoll, who delights to be called the friend of
freedom, admits that labor's substantial demands must be
recognized, using the word "labor" in its broader, economic
sense, as distinguished from the cause of any mere party of
laboring men. In his epigrammatic manner, he says,
"The
truth is to-day what it has always been, what it always will be.
Those who feel are the only ones who think. A cry comes from
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
29
:
the oppressed, from the hungry, from the down-trodden, from
the unfortunate, from men who despair, and from women who
weep.
There are times when mendicants become revolu-
tionists, when a rag becomes a banner, under which the noblest
and the bravest battle for a right."
While I believe that there is nothing in this problem which
any man of good sense cannot master, I admit that the man of
trained habits of thought, who possesses an original and inde-
pendent mind, and who has accustomed himself to closely fol-
low a chain of reasons, will fare best in reaching an intelligent
conclusion on this, as on any other like subject. I beg the
reader to follow patiently and honestly; let him remember that
together we stand beneath the dome of freedom. If he can
detect any fallacy, let him do it; he is my friend; he is the
friend of truth. But unless he can answer the arguments with
which the facts themselves will confront him, let him remain
forever silent. Custom rules almost supreme in men's minds,
but if there is the blood of our ancestors in our veins, and the
simplicity of their habits of mind in ours, we will experience
few difficulties. Bear in mind, always, that the Constitution
of the United States and the Declaration of Independence,
together, enlarged by construction and interpretation, to meet
new demands of the age, and the exigencies which have arisen
by reason of invention, the increase of wealth, and new economic
relations, will always be the Bible, the lamp, the light by which
this question must be solved. We need import into our reason-
ing no foreign substance. The spirit and genius of American
institutions are with the simple and truthful solution of this
question. The laws of our country, the words of our supreme
judges, the tenets of freedom, the better instincts of our com-
mon people, all recognize the fact that the highways of this
country belong to the people; and while we are at present
maintaining the fiction of public supervision and ownership,
30
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
there exists the private and monopolistic tyranny. Again: bear
in mind that simplicity is the rule; allow yourself to think for
yourself; accept no wild and visionary theories; test everything
by the white-light of thought and truth; reach all conclusions
by the lantern of your own understanding, rather than by the
sunlight of another man's mind. If you cannot be convinced
by reason, let not impulse nor experiment move you one step
from your position. Shun mere experiments! Despise with
all
your heart and mind the flood of new "isms " and "ologies"
of the age; but if a man is right, grasp his hand and give him
strength by the moral courage of your friendly aid, for he will
be entitled to it. That is the right of all, whether king of men
or the loneliest wanderer along the shores of human toil.
CHAPTER II.
DEFINITIONS AND FIRST PRINCIPLES.
Fellow Citizens:-A few well-drawn distinctions lie at the
foundation of every science and every right, and pave the way
to an understanding of the most complex and highly evolved
conclusions. So, in presenting the essentially fundamental
truths which lie at the bottom of the railway problem, and in
harping upon one string until its strain is heard, there is hope
that the relation between cause and effect will be so strongly
perceived as to lead the thinker to sound and obviously true con-
clusions. On topics like this there are more mistakes made in
the failure to comprehend the simplest things, than from any
other cause. The elementary truths that lie at the threshold of
the railway problem are of that simple and self-evident nature
which cannot be solved by complex explanations. They must
be understood at sight in much the manner of the simplest
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
31
J
rules of arithmetic. Just as old axioms and proverbs strike the
mind with freshness and strength, carrying conviction at a
glance, so also ought the underlying facts of the transportation
problem to strike the unbiased mind as belonging to the family
of every-day truths. Let one become well grounded in these
alphabetical facts, and he may readily read the truth to its
ultimate conclusions. Let him study the character of high-
ways, and trace the iniquitous abuses of their management to
the violation of first principles. In whatever aspect we view
the problem of defining the limits of railway corporations, we
are startled at the divergence everywhere seen between the
theory of rights and the sad results of actual practice. The
legal, the historical, and the philosophical view alike concede
that the supreme end of the application of steam to transporta-
tion is to preserve inviolate the rights of the people in the
public highway, and to maintain passenger and freight rates at
minimum cost.
Primarily, then, the railway cannot, in justice, be viewed as
anything other than a public highway. The legal authorities
are almost unanimous in this conclusion. Whether we read the
early opinion of Chief Justice Waite, in the case of the Pensa-
cola Telegraph Company (96 U. S. page 1), in which he says
that the government has the undoubted "power to make a
government monopoly of the management of railways and the
telegraph, and to appropriate to its use the existing lines of both",
or the opinion of Mr. Redfield, the eminent law text-book
writer, as to the elementary characteristics of railway property,
we are alike led to this conclusion, and it was on this theory
only that the roads were built. The same principle has been
clearly enunciated in many cases by the supreme courts of
nearly all the older States, especially by the courts of New York,
Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, the Carolinas, Vermont,
Iowa, and Pennsylvania. In a large number of States, among
32
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
1
which are Missouri, Nebraska, Colorado, Illinois, Pennsylvania,
and Texas, the State Constitutions declare that railways are
public highways. This eminently just principle and sound
conclusion of law was declared more forcibly than for many
years by the Supreme Court of the United States in Olcott v.
The Supervisors, 16 Wall. 678. The public character and
public obligations of the roads have long ago passed, beyond
question, into the common law of America. While this is true
in theory, the fact stares us in the face that a monopoly of the
highway, the exclusive right to move trains over the road, destroys
competition and robs the road of the essential advantages of a
highway to the people at large. It is strange that railways ever
degenerated into such an abuse, in view of the fact that their
character as highways is the sole license by which the com-
panies were authorized to build at the outset, and in the
original charters it was plainly intended that the railway
companies should not have the monopoly of the track. In the
older grants there was a plain declaration that the only
monopoly given to the companies was the right to charge the
public reasonable tolls for operating their trains over the roads.*
However, no matter how plain this intention may have been,
the wealthy men who owned the roads soon smothered out
every possibility of putting the theory into actual practice, and
in truth the companies at once assumed absolute control of the
roads, rolling stock, and all appurtenances.
It is well to remember that the arguments of the railway
barons are often the desperate resorts of sophists who are driven
to the wall. Let us recollect that wrong finds defenders; the
greatest evils live the longest and die the hardest. The infant
that sleeps innocently in its cradle cares about as much for the
mysteries of astronomy as the average railway magnate does for
what we, in this country, call the welfare of the people. I make
*NOTE:-See Note at end of chapter.
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
33
this statement advisedly, and on the authority of legislative com-
mittee reports, and of the statements of such railway men as Mr.
Charles Francis Adams, who has forcibly said that the great
corporations stand as emblems of Cæsarism and even threaten
to control the central government itself. The roads have
always been operated under the devil's motto, "Charge the
traffic all it will bear", which means, "Let us grow rich and
let the people look out for themselves." While railways.
influence the value of every pound of commercial products, and
regulate more or less the business and social relations of the
people, prescribing the bounds of all activity, and limiting the
possibilities of the citizen, they are selfishly operated, irre-
spective of the public welfare, and solely to pile up gigantic
fortunes for privileged and autocratic owners.
I really wonder how many of us can forget for a little
while that we live in the age of steam. Let us shut out from
our minds every picture of modern progress. Let us wander
back, back, back, almost to the cradle of the human race, even
to the threshold of pre-historic times. Let us view the young
race of man untrained in the art of conquering time and
space by harnessing giant elements to ponderous locomotives.
How did those old ancestors travel? Let us observe their
roads and highways. Who owned them, and why? Not that
we would return to the childhood of the race, but that we
would recall the axioms and simple truths implanted in their
youthful minds. There may be a valid and simple reason why
the ownership of highways has always been in the masses rather
than in the privileged few. There may be a principle under-
lying the songs of seers, the bibles of races, the laws of
generations, for in all of them the road, the king's highway, the
thoroughfare, has been recognized as belonging to the people as a
whole, and as partaking essentially of the elements of natural
right. Whether the race of man traveled in platoons, or in sin-
!
34
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
gle file like savage Indians of the plains, or on the backs of
trained elephants in the tropics, it traveled, in all ages prior to
the era of railroads, free from inequalities and unjust tolls for
the right of passage. He who could buy or borrow a trained
animal or a go-cart, or who could provide himself with raiment
and food to go a-foot, was not fined for the privilege of the
highway as much as he could pay short of financial ruin. The
old races knew that there were some things too sacred to be
granted, bargained, and sold to the greedy few. And while
some forms of slavery flourished in olden times, our forefathers
may sleep in their graves free from the charge of having sold to
the highest bidders the right to fine men for the privilege of
locomotion. Under fictions and deceptions, hidden deep in
figures and tables, underneath the secrets of railway manage-
ment, old axioms yet lie buried. Some things in this world
cannot become private property. Some privileges belong to the
human race as a whole.
Now let us inquire in all earnestness, what is a highway?
By outlining its distinct characteristics we may be enabled to
say whether the railway belongs to the genus of highways, or
whether it is some foreign species. If it is a highway, there are
certain well-defined rules and rights which must be observed in
its management; if it is a highway, the interests of the public,
as contradistinguished from the purses of its managers, should
be consulted and sacredly observed throughout its operation,
aims, and ends. If the railways of this country do not partake
of the essential characteristics of the people's highway, on what
ground can any man justify the subsidies of land and money
which have been given to many companies by the general gov-
ernment? The very spirit of the railway, its chartered right to
be, rests on the sovereign will of the State. Now the owners of
these great iron ways, having accepted the gift from the public
of the right to build, and in many instances the "sinews of
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
35
war" with which to build, are not in a position to act wholly
regardless of public rights that may be affected by the acts of
the companies. In other words, there are public obligations
which they have no right to overlook, but which they do over-
look every day.
When the great Santa Fe line sent a right-of-way man out
to my township the other day, he beckoned with his finger,
called a condemnation jury of my old neighbors, and ordered
my house to be torn down, assessing my damages at eighteen
hundred dollars, and my benefits at seven hundred. Now on
what principle did it justify the act? Stop, until you have
clearly settled in your own mind the proper answer to that ques-
tion. Here it is: Only on one ground can such an act be
justified, the ground called by lawyers, "the right of eminent
domain"; that is, the right of the government to take private
property for public use-I mean either the State or the general
government. Bear in mind, that under no pretext has any man.
the right to take private property for private use. On any other
ground than that the condemnation of our lands is for a public
use, the proceedings of the jury, to which I have referred,
would have been tyrannical and entirely subversive of every well-
defined right to life, liberty, and property as guaranteed by our
fundamental law. Farmers, especially, ought to under-
stand this principle with readiness. When it becomes necessary
to build a county road, their mere conveniences must give way,
and it is customary for them to witness proceedings against
private property for such public use. Even if the farmer does
not use the road he is compelled to pay his road taxes, or con-
tribute a definite number of days' labor, to maintain the road
in good repair. Why? Simply because it is a public highway,
and while he may not see fit to build it, or have occasion to use
it, yet his rights alone are not to be consulted, but the rights of
a majority of the people of his township, county, or district.
36
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
Canals, turnpikes, Roman military roads in ages gone, wagon
roads, and every form of path or winding way-all come under
the same rule, subject, all of them, to the sovereign regulation,
which is only another way of saying, subject to regulation for
the interests of the majority; for in this country SOVEREIGNTY
IS LODGED IN THE PEOPLE. This fact should always be borne in
mind, lest the bugbear be presented that sovereignty is some
foreign thing or name which threatens the safety of this
country, The State has simply granted to the railways the right
to carry on a great public necessity, viz., freight and passenger
transportation. Nothing is plainer to a mind trained in the princi-
ples of constitutional law, and there is nothing so difficult in those
simple principles as to be incapable of a thorough understand-
ing by the masses of the people, While some things in law are
complex, it must be admitted that the propositions here stated
are too plain for quibbling, even by the' most captious minds.
Have these roads the power to defy the government; that is,
the people, who with one breath called them into being? This
one fact, that the roads from the first were regarded as public
highways and organized on that basis, forever distinguishes their
ownership from comparison with legitimate commercial prop-
erty, owned by individuals, such as mills, factories and other
gigantic institutions, the owners of none of which can perform,
in the name of the government, or by aid of the whole people,
such sovereign acts as taking my property for their use. Accept-
ing the benefits, the companies must, in strict logic and justice,
accept also the burdens of the public supervision. The
fatherly hand of the people that fed them on the sweetness of
millions of acres, has the power of administering the eminently
just chastisement of public supervision. They must give an
account of their doings to the people, who are their masters.
In view of this fact, what are we to think of the contumacy of
a distinguished railway man-I mean Senator Leland Stanford-
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
37
1
who refused to answer proper questions relative to the manage-
ment of the Union Pacific road, the questions being propounded
to him by the people's committee in the National Congress a
short time ago? Impudently and boldly he defied the right of
the people to see the books of "his" company, and he thereby
exhibited one of the dangerous tendencies of railway growth in
this country. Is this not a sorrowful departure from the
original idea of a public highway?
.
Listen not to the argument which says that we cannot touch
the roads, forsooth, because the rights of the owners are "sacred
and vested," because they are the "conservative interests" of
capital. "Vested rights!" What terror they try to throw into
those two words! And pray, were my rights not vested, that is,
fixed, settled, when they took my home from me? Were your
rights not vested when they ran through your farm, and spoiled
your favorite piece of land? Your children may have been born
in yonder house, the old homestead, with its memories of family
re-unions, and hallowed rites, of the old fire-place sending its
merry light of burning logs joyously into your soul, in the
winter nights of long ago. But they will tear it down and pay
you for it the price fixed by a condemnation jury. Applying the
Golden Rule, let us suppose that we find public necessity crying
aloud in the loneliness of the night of hard-times, for the cessa-
tion of this modern robbery. We are tired of paying two and
three bushels of corn to move one over to yonder market by the
lake or at the sea-board. We believe that we ought to have a
right to the benefits of cheap transportation. We are weary and
heartsick at seeing our fairest and brightest young men ruined
in the legislatures, by the soft, velvety touch of a hand well
filled with greenbacks, which railway treasurers took from last
year's fields of grain. We are exasperated to know that the cost
of railway transportation is in fact steadily becoming reduced,
by the omnipotent hand of invention. Cars of larger tonnage,
38
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
i
locomotives of greater power, improved machinery, better tracks.
The railway builders and committees of distinguished civil
engineers meet within our sight, and read carefully-prepared
essays upon the increasing cheapness of moving freight per ton-
mile, BUT THEY TELL US WE ARE POWERLESS.
The managers,
and that poor herd of thoughtless humanity called the conser-
vative public at large, cry in chorus hoarse with anger, "Hands
off! It is our 'vested right.' What would this country be with-
out railroads?" And the great army of young bank clerks and
commercial men, who are, perhaps, embryonic railway barons,
and editors who ride on free passes, and old-fashioned law-
yers who look upon every new application of an old principle as
the ghost of centralization or disunion, cry aloud in startled
breath, "He must be a socialist! He is an enemy of our coun-
try." But so surely as the flag and the Constitution live, just
that surely are high crimes and misdemeanors committed in the
name of liberty and law, until the heart is sick and the brain
grows dizzy at the task of rousing the robbed world that slum-
bers, from the sleep that foreruns national decay and the death
of the fair form of Freedom. As, in the silent past, cruel abuses
have grown to the proportion of fully-developed devils before
the people recognized them as fiends that lived within the fold,
masked in hatred's cruel form, so to-day every attempt to wrest
the sacred privileges of the people from the hands of their heart-
less robbers is met by the resistance of the robbed themselves.
As the fiend of lust can hold some tender girl from youthful
scenes and home's fair joys, and teach the toleration and even
love of vicious ways, so the leaders of giant wrongs may often-
times deceive, seduce, and lead astray the masses who, soothed
with plausible lies, benumbed by the sting of robbers' fangs, lie
dormant when Freedom cries aloud for friends. AND YET THE
RAILWAY MAGNATES THEMSELVES KNOW WELL ENOUGH THE
PRINCIPLE OF LAW UNDER WHICH THEIR ROADS WERE BUILT,
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
39
Two of the most famous railway kings of the century, one of
whom was Gould, in addressing the New York legislature rela-
tive to franchises, spoke of the subject in this light and said
that "It is the primary duty of the State to furnish highways,
whether roads, turnpikes, canals, or railroads." Singularly they
added, "the State alone having the right of eminent domain."
What did they mean when they said it was the primary duty of
the State to furnish highways, whether canals or railroads? Did
they mean that it was the duty of the State to furnish the high-
ways for them or for the whole people? For once I can fully
agree with the railway barons; I believe it is the primary duty
of the State to furnish the people highways, yet I believe that
every road in the United States has, under that principle, vio-
lated the public confidence, and long ago forfeited its right to
live. The courts of the States and the Supreme Court of the
United States, as before said, have time and again defined rail-
ways as highways of the people. In the earlier cases, those who
opposed the right of railways to condemn their lands under the
principle of eminent domain, argued that the roads were "pri-
vate ways", because they were so constituted that none but the
owners could use them, since they excluded every other man's
vehicle. Strangely as it may now seem, the very argument
which the farmers used against the railway, viz., that it was a
private road and a monopoly of the company, is an argument
which some friends of the railway companies have advanced as
a reason why the roads should be free from government inter-
ference, and be allowed to reign uncontrolled, like some inde-
pendent and sovereign power. But the courts have uniformly
construed the law to be that the roads are public highways,
whose privileges are for a time only granted to companies, sub-
ject, always, to the supreme rights of the people; and that such
a theory of the law is the only one under which roads were built
or can be maintained. For if they do not exist by public neces-
40
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
!
sity, the acts by which they acquired many of their rights of
way could be set aside as absolutely void and beyond authority.
Judge Jere Black was especially clear in this view. In a
leading case the United States Supreme Court, when passing on
the rights of the old Camden & Amboy road, sounded what
ought to be the death knell of monopoly. Justice Baldwin,
after holding that the roads were public highways, qualified the
statement by asserting "that if the toll amounts to a prohibi-
tion, it is a monopoly, and the road is no longer public." In
the light of that rule, let the overtaxed freight and the overtaxed
people testify in unity that the railway tariff lists are so oppres-
sive as to have long ago become the most outrageous abuse of
the age. However, the high charges react disastrously upon
the railway companies, restricting and cutting off much traffic
which would otherwise, under the stimulus of low rates, become
so greatly increased in volume as to enrich the stockholders,
without subjecting the public to the myriad inconveniences of
extortion. The lesson of the post office department, which
diminished its rates to increase its revenue, seems to have been
wholly lost upon the railways.* The one is operated for pub-
lic good; the other for private gain.
itself, and while demanding at every turn the pound of flesh, it
will finally lose its right of robbery entirely. There is no ex-
tremity of sophistry, corruption, or verbal logic to which a
hard-pressed railway advocate will not resort
his selfish ends. On what other theory can a devotee
of the right of plunder denounce the just and benign
interference of the people, and declare it to be the "confisca-
tion" of his property? On what other theory does a Gould
unblushingly testify before an investigating committee of the
But greediness o'er-leaps
to carry
* NOTE :-Poor's Manual, the standard compendium of railway figures, shows that
the freight rates have decreased 68 per cent. in the past 25 years, but the earnings of
the companies have increased 72 per cent. On the western roads a reduction of 40
per cent. within a few years increased the earnings nearly one hundred per cent.
But the roads have never reduced to a minimum as the post office has done..
:
41
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
1
Legislature that he buys up Democrats, Republicans and Inde-
pendents, that it costs this or that to carry a district or State,
winding up with the statement that he is always an Erie man?
On what other principle can you account for the fact that the
railway companies have systematically elected their tools as rep-
resentatives in various districts, or else bought the votes of the
representatives after the people had elected them? On what
other theory can you account for the fact that the statement of
Mr. Charles Francis Adams that the Erie Railway Company runs.
the State of New York, goes unchallenged by the corporation
itself? You have heard the standing joke, which has been
repeated for many years in the Pennsylvania Legislature, when a
member should see fit to move an adjournment, of the House.
Uniformly he would say, "Mr. Speaker: Since the Pennsyl-
vania Railway Company has no more business for this body to
transact, I now move we adjourn." No wonder that a promi-
nent railway manager once said, that if the people knew the
ins" and "outs" of this despicable system of robbery in the
name of vested rights, "The bare-footed militia would charge
down from the hills and tear up the tracks." The truth is that
the average man, engrossed in the treadmill round of domestic or
business cares, or wedded almost beyond recall to the tenet of
some ancient or inapplicable party dogma, and who prefers to
read the latest novels and belles-lettres to studying the cold fig-
ures of books of fact, or who reads the Police Gazette, society
gossip, or sporting news, to the exclusion of all other lines of
thought, knows little and cares less about the rights of the pub-
lic in the railroads. Reasoning from immediate causes to
immediate effects, he sees that the exercise of reasonably well-
directed effort brings him a livelihood. The solution of the
problem of a better regime he resigns to the "great men" of his
party, while the concealed weapon of some dangerous and inap-
plicable old maxim is, in his mind, sufficient to annihilate all
42
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
the desperadoes of new ideas, who attempt to assassinate him as
he sleeps in the night of the past, serene in his ancient and neg-
lected tent. To think, is one of the most difficult tasks in the
world, and for this reason even the simplest truths are often
buried beneath the complex strata of falsehood. An axiom is
beyond explanation. It is so simple that if one does not grasp
it by intuition it never firmly adheres to his mind. Yet how
often are the old proverbs neglected or lost. The true defini-
tion of highways is a very commonplace generalization. If the
student cannot see that the following conclusions are deducible
from a study of the growth of the road, I fear that he is hope-
lessly lost to the truth. Granting that the outline is true, and
that the definition is essentially correct, there is but one way to
escape the conclusion that the history of railway control in
America is merely the story of a CRIME AGAINST LIBERTY AND
COMMERCE, and that is, to justify the robbery of the people and
the usurpation of their sacred privileges by showing the existence
of an overpowering public necessity, an exigency such as martial
law and revolution sometimes excuse. I ask you to follow closely,
as you dissect the definition, and weigh the bearing of each
word. Ask yourselves what possible exigency since the Decla-
ration of Independence was signed, can justify the era of plun-
der and conquest which ensued after the law of the highway
was overthrown? By what pretense of law or color of right
were the people of America and their posterity robbed of the
countless benefits of an invention given to the world by the brain
of genius?
A study of the history of highways will show that a com-
prehensive definition, embracing every phase of land-ways,
characterizes them as such modifications of the surface of the
earth as will enable it fitly to receive the vehicle furnished by
the civilization of the era. Thus a road is primarily the essen-
tial outlet or sole pathway for locomotion on the land.
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
43
Under such a definition the abridgment of the right to the
use of the road drives those who are denied its use either to
trespass on the premises of private individuals or to venture to
discover a path through unknown wildernesses, perhaps amid
almost insurmountable obstacles, rivers unbridged or too dan-
gerous to ford, swamps, thickets, and like barriers, sufficient to
impede or entirely prevent locomotion. Therefore, such in-
junctions against an easement in the roads are equivalent to a
prohibition of the right to travel, or, at least, to the imposition
of unequal burdens upon the prescribed class, who are, in this
country, THE WHOLE PEOPLE.
For such reasons the highways of all countries have been
maintained FOR THE USE OF THE PUBLIC. They have been
guarded from private ownership, or public monopoly, alike in
ages of barbarism and in ages of civilization.* They have
always been considered as places over which the public had a
right to pass and repass. All persons have had the right of
way, whether walking, driving, or riding.
So the known ocean paths are highways over which ships of
the world have the right to pass and repass without tolls. No
company has the exclusive right to move steamships over the
ocean roads. Ocean paths, like most highways over the land,
have always been regarded as being inherently incapable of pri-
vate ownership, and from this cause partly, water freights have
universally been maintained at the minimum.
Highways are of great antiquity. They must have existed
in ancient Egypt in a high degree of perfection, for the Egyp-
*NOTE.-The critical man may here submit that toll roads are exceptions to the
definition. This is too narrow an objection to receive serious consideration, since
toll roads are now quite infrequent, and were never monopolies to such an extent as
to injure the masses. Whoever heard of toll-road barons? The assertion would be
ridiculous. Whoever saw a toll-road system so extensive that by pools, discriinina-
tions, stock watering, bribery, "bulling" and "bearing" the market, it compromised
the freedom of the millions of people of this nation? However, if such roads exist,
let them come under the rule herein prescribed for railways and highways in gen-
eral. But they do not prohibit your vehicle or mine, as the railways do.
44
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
!
""
tians had hard, smooth roads, over which they carried immense
blocks of stone for the Pyramids. Highways also existed
among the Hebrews, for in Judges, chapter V, verse VI,
Deborah sings of abandoned highways: "In the days of Shangar,
the son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the highways were aban-
doned, and the travelers walked through the byways. In
ancient Greece and Rome road-building was a great science, but
the Carthaginians seem to have excelled all others as builders of
great roads. The student of history will recall the Roman
roads, Via Appia, Via Aurelia, the Tyrrhean coast roads,
and the famous Flamminian way. Roman military roads
were also very numerous. Going into another country we find
that Alexander Humboldt, philosopher and student, says that
the ancient Incas built wonderful roads, and he refers to their
mountain highways over the Andes.
The evolution of the road and the evolution of road vehicles
have necessarily been almost simultaneous, the improvement of
the vehicle demanding such a modification of the road as to
render it useful and safe. Chariots are the most ancient road
vehicles of which history speaks. The first chariot was made*
by Erichthonius at Athens 1486 B. C., and the earliest purposes
for which transportation was applied were war and agriculture—
war first and most universally. In England, the earliest vehicle
was the "caretta " of the thirteenth century, and it was used
chiefly for women. Next came the two-horse litter of the
fourteenth century. Highways themselves are, in England,
said to be "of immemorial antiquity, or else created by act of
Parliament. Horses and camels are found in abundance in
regions first peopled by man, and riding on the backs of camels
doubtless preceded the custom of driving domestic animals har-
nessed to vehicles. As a further historical study, it may be in-
teresting to know that the various methods of transportation
used in ages past have necessarily been determined by the
""
*NOTE.-See Exodus XIV, 7.
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
45
!
climatic conditions of the countries where travelers have jour-
neyed. The known methods of transportation may be briefly
summarized as follows: Riding or driving horses, mules, asses,
oxen, camels, elephants, dromedaries, reindeer, dogs, sometimes.
ostrich riding among Africans of the interior; snow skating,
in Lapland; skating on frozen canals in Holland, with bundles
on the head; and lastly, oriental palanquins. These methods
have often involved the use of peculiar vehicles, such as the
Syrian ox-cart, the two-wheeled French brounette, the Italian
telega, which is a rapid cart,-or the many modifications of
vehicles seen in all ages.
Applying the definition first given, it is found to hold in
every age and for all conditions of the human race. Thus, a
highway is a modification of the surface of the earth to receive
the vehicle given by the civilization of the age. Whether
applied to the pathway of nomadic man, or to the iron railway
of modern times, the definition is equally true. The railway is,
in principle, nothing more than a smooth surface on which the
wheels of a steam-propelled carriage and its train of coaches.
may roll with the minimum of friction.
This historical outline may serve to give a clear understand-
ing of the principles of justice which have been hitherto applied
to the control of the highways of the world; and perhaps, by
example, furnish to those who like to see a historical precedent,
a rule of universal application. I trust that it may. There are
some minds which revel in the fields of history, while others see
truth at best advantage in the contemplation of cold, face to
face, facts. I know not how many of the respective classes may
be here, but I have endeavored to hammer out the argument in
such a shape as may be acceptable to both classes. In conclusion,
let me say that I will be under obligations to any listener who
will, in public or in private, point out to me the fallacy of the
deductions which I have made from the foregoing historical
46
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
illustrations. I may have erred in some minor details, but I
have surely not misstated history when I have said that the
highway has been FREE, from the times of winding foot-paths,
down to the latest invented vehicles of transportation. The
slavery of the age of steam is the first serious innovation upon
the liberty of free locomotion. *
*NOTE :-I take occasion here to say that under the principle of eminent domain
the State can condemn a railway franchise or any of its vested rights as well
as any other property. All classes of property are subject to the law of eminent do-
main. The railway franchises are not more sacred, nor are they held by rights
more inviolable than any other property. I deem it unnecessary to give any citations
to legal authorities on so plain a proposition; but no sound lawyer will deny it.
Whoever desires to study the origin of railways will do well to get the early charters,
in which the intent was plainly that the exclusive right to own and operate trains on
the highway was not recognized.
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
47
BUSINESS POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES. 1880.*
CLASSES. 1880.
Persons Occupied
TOTAL ALL OCCUPATIONS, 17,392,099.
ALL AGES.
10 to 15
16 to 59.
60 and over.
Male.
Female.
Male. Female. Male. Female. Male. Female.
Agriculture
7,670,493 7,075,983 594,510
584,869
135,862 5,888,133| 485,920 602,983
22,728
Professional and person-
¸al services.
4,074,238 2,712,943 1,361,295
127,565
107,830 2,446,962 1,215,189 138,416
38,276
Trade and transporta-
tion.
Manufacturing, mechan-
ical and mining
1,810,256 1,750,892
59,364
26,078
2,547 1,672,171
54,849
52,643
1,968
3,837,112 3.205,124
631,988
86.677
46,930 2,978,845
577,157 139,602
7,901
All Occupations
17.392,0991
14,744,942
2,647,157
825,189:
293,169
12,986,111
2,283,115
933.644
70,873
*NOTE:―These figures are from the last census of the United States. The census of 1890 will doubtless show, as this does, that
the agriculturists constitute nearly half of the business population. See pages 25 to 28.
48
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
“There shall be no Alps.”
CHAPTER III.
STARTLING FACTS AND FIGURES.
Fellow Citizens:-If the whole people could but know the
alphabet in the chapter of railway crimes, I would not be here
to-night. Not one man in thousands understands even the
simplest elements which enter into the cost of railway transpor-
tation; nor will men believe that so monstrous an evil as the
railway system can exist in an era of peace and prosperity. It
overpowers the mind with its vastness; and those who have
lived here during its continuance, cannot believe that they have
been so blind as not to see it. But I intend to present a few
figures, which constitute the weapons with which the people of
this country may defend themselves against the arguments of
the railway kings.
the present system.
Nothing can justify the continuation. of
NOTE: The word robbery used in relation to railway charges has been applied
by such eminent writers as the author of "Wayland's Political Economy." Some
thinkers suggest that the present tariffs on freight and passenger traffic are the
natural outgrowth of the monopoly system, and that they have already reacted
disastrously upon the system and limited it to very narrow dimensions compared to
what it would be had it been differently administered. The present methods are
essentially restrictive. The masses travel but little, and millions of tons of freight
that should be in motion are at rest, although the roads are often working to their
full capacity. Were the lines and facilities quadrupled and rates reduced so that at
a minimum profit no stock should remain idle, the lines, even under the present
system, might earn more than now. This tended to illustration during the late rate
war from Missouri river points to the Pacific, although the roads could not accommo-
date the demands; and to deprive way or local travel of low rates, they absolutely
exacted an overcharge to be returned as rebate. Suspecting the companies,
motives, the rural population refused the tickets at five dollars each. Even then the
roads that had been doing almost nothing had to curtail the ticket sales because
overcrowded, and the receipts from this crippled business, managed on a narrow
basis, averaged from twenty to forty thousand dollars daily. Yet so ignorant are the
masses as to the cost of railway transportation that it is often supposed that the
roads lost money, whereas on the contrary those cut rates stimulated a traffic which
replenished their funds. And yet along these lines, owing to limit on way travel
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
49
Do you know what it costs to move a ton one mile? Have
you any means of arriving at an accurate conclusion as to the
cost of transportation? Have any of your neighbors ever led
you into the secrets and mysteries of that problem? No, they
have not. Immersed in the cares of business, and at least
moderately successful in the vocation which you follow, you
have thought little on this question. Would you not be sur-
prised if I should tell you that the average cost of moving one
ton of freight one mile, by all the roads of the United States, is
less than fifty hundredths of a cent? And yet these are
the figures furnished by the American Society of Civil
Engineers and by the reports of the railway companies them-
selves. He who has even slight ingenuity may readily evolve
some convincing arguments against the claims of the railway
barons from the figures furnished by the railway companies, in
there was but a fraction of the patronage that would have been gained with an
extension of the cut throughout to local traffic. But it was impossible for the roads
to accommodate the through travel. Under the system which I advocate, let the
carrying capacity be quadrupled, if necessary. If the cost of enlarging be urged as
an objection, the answer is that it will pay a good per cent, in spite of this cause.
Returns being assured, the cost of the enterprise is not a valid objection. In this
connection it is interesting to recall the estimate in this chapter of passenger rates
from standard freight tariff lists; that is, the former $600 transcontinental rate. If
a comparison is desired on freight rates, the reader might recall the example of a
Nebraska farmer who shipped a car load of grain to Chicago a few years ago and
received a bill for $2.75, the balance due to the railway company, above what the corn
brought in the market. A similar instance came under my notice in Holt county,
Missouri, when a small tobacco grower failed by several dollars to realize what it
cost to ship several hogsheads of tobacco to St. Louis. Doubtless there are innum-
erable instances where the result, though not so deplorable as in these cases, has
netted but a meager return to the farmer. Every man, woman and child in this
country must pay these freight rates, and thus contribute to the support of this giant
evil. On corn, rye, oats and barley the rate per hundred pounds from Kansas City to
Chicago is twenty cents; hogs, single deck, per car, $42.50; unmanufactured tobacco
per hundred pounds, 35 cts.; wheat per hundred pounds, 25 cts. The rates from Chicago
to New York are as follows: Grain per hundred pounds, 30 cents; live hogs per
hundred pounds, 30 cents; wool per hundred pounds, pressed in small bales, 85 cents.
And there have been frequent instances where railroad companies have suddenly
increased their freight rates on foreign products, when the markets had been for
any reason suddenly stimulated, until the freightage thus extorted absorbed the total
difference in the price between the local and the distant market. In effect, this is
equivalent to a failure of crops, since if the farmers' crops net them no gain, they
might as well not have planted the seed. Shippers of horses from Kansas City to
Los Angeles, Cal., were recently about to hold an indignation meeting to condemn
the charge of $400 per car, limiting the attendance upon the stock to one man per car.
50
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES,
their annual reports, their engineers' estimates, and like docu
ments.
The actual cost of carrying freight and passengers is so low,
compared with the rates charged by the companies, that the
average man will hardly believe the figures when he sees them.
I do not, by any means, desire to be understood as saying that
any company earns the giant sum which the figures show. As
I have before several times said the methods of the companies
are so greedy and narrow as to really destroy, by restriction, the
very business which cheap rates would stimulate.
Suppose that we turn our attention for a few moments to
the reports of the companies and others who are supposed to
know most about these things. On the 25th day of June, 1885,
two eminent construction engineers, Mr. E. Sweet and Mr. E.
L. Corthel, read addresses before the American Society of Civil
Engineers on the subject of the cost of carrying freight. These
two addresses throw great light on the subject and aid the com-
monest layman in reasoning out this problem. Here is what they
say. I quote their exact words: "The reasons for the reduced
cost in railway transportation of late years are improvements in
the condition of railroads by better construction, better mainten-
ance of the track, and in more economical administration; also
in the increased amount of the freight hauled on one train,
which is made possible by the increase in locomotive power, and
in the capacity of the cars. The train-load has increased about
seventy-five per cent. The capacity of cars increased from
20,000 pounds in 1855, to 40,000 pounds in 1876. The car-
carrying capacity in 1885 was 50,000 pounds, and the master
car-builders have recently decided upon a standard car which
will carry 60,000 pounds. The weight of cars on the Pennsyl-
vania Railroad increased from 20,500 to 22,000 only, from 1870
to 1881, but in the same period the load capacity increased
from 20,000 to 40,000 pounds. Cost of hauling on American
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
51
1
railways has been about 6-100ths of a cent per ton per mile.
All expenses included, on the best American railways, the cost
of both handling and hauling has been about three mills per
ton-mile. All expenses, including receiving, loading, hauling,
handling, discharging, and every other expense has been about
four mills per ton-mile, average, on American railways."
Are these figures not enough to reveal, even to the sim-
plest mind, the fact that there must be vast abuses in the
department which fixes tariff rates on our products? How else
can you account for the enormous difference between cost of
transportation and charges to patrons ?
Again, do you know how much they formerly charged as a
tariff rate for one freight car from New York to San Francisco ?
A few years ago one might charter a freight car in New York
City, for the transcontinental journey, for six hundred dollars.
Surely that was a rate furnished by the company, after due
consideration, and at a good margin of profit. Suppose that
farmer Jones or merchant Smith had chartered a freight car in
New York City at that rate; and suppose, further, that he
had seen fit to place thirty seats in that car, each of which
would accommodate two passengers, and thus have carried sixty
passengers in the car which he had chartered. To raise the
necessary six hundred dollars, an assessment of ten dollars per
passenger would have made up the charter rate. But the
moment that any such attempt should have been made, the
railway managers would have put a stop to it by summarily
announcing that the transcontinental rate was $151 per passen-
ger.* Can any one, after viewing these facts, believe that the
passenger rate was made with a view to the general welfare of
the people? Can any one believe that the power of combining,
strangling competition, and fixing arbitrary rates, is in any
*
* NOTE:-The transcontinental passenger rate is now but $80.
5
52
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.`
1 I
manner a necessary incident to legitimate railway manage-
ment ?
case.
Let us go further: The miscellaneous freight rate above
given, six hundred dollars per car, must be modified, when we
come to apply it to the passenger traffic. Now I doubt whether
one man in ten thousand can tell whether it costs more to move
a ton of passengers than to move a ton of freight a given dis-
tance. The popular impression is that it must cost more to
move passengers. Let us apply the cold rule of logic to the
The railway companies show, by their tables, that the
cost of moving passengers is from one-third to one-fifth the cost
of moving freight. For example, a freight train running from
New York to San Francisco, must employ a large force of
switchmen, a large crew of train-men, and the cost of firemen,
engineers, and brakemen is as great per day as the cost of the
same service on a passenger train; but the freight train burns
coal for thirty days, pays salaries to all its men, from president
of the road down to the brakemen, for thirty days; it pays inter-
est on the investment for thirty days; and all the countless costs
and elements which enter into the sum total of actual freight
rates, enter into it as strongly, and usually for a longer period of
time than in moving a passenger train an equal distance, besides
the cost of handling by human hands every ton of freight.
The passenger train will make the trip in eight days. There-
fore, the result is obvious that salaries, interest on the invest-
ment, and all the elements of cost, cannot be so great as in
handling freight trains. However, waiving all the minor
details, which, if you will have the patience to investigate, you
will work out for yourselves, let us assume that when the rail-
way companies show a report which places the cost of moving
passenger trains at much less than the cost of moving freight
trains a corresponding distance, they have made a report which
is true to the facts. But they do not make in the passenger
1
53
SIXTY MILLIÓN SLAVES.
1
1
traffic so much as this startling discrepancy seems to reveal.
Why? Because their rate is so high as to prevent men from
patronizing the roads. Thousands of people in this broad and
beautiful country who would travel for pleasure, recreation,
health, and the urgent necessities of business, now remain
at rest because they cannot stand the enormous charge of the rail-
way companies. The sick who need a change of climate, the
artisans who ought to go from crowded districts, where wages
are low, into a country where their services are demanded;
the wives and daughters of well-to-do families, and all the
people of this country, who are now confined in the narrow
limits of their fixed homes, might, but for this restrictive and
prohibitory charge, take the wings of the morning and fly to
the farthest parts of the world. If the rates were what they
ought to be, each road would need more trains, more tracks,
and better accommodations. The selfish policy which demands
all that the people can stand, under the infamous maxim,
charge the traffic all it will bear", restricts the roads from
earning what the legitimate business of the country ought to
give them. Whose fault is it, if the trains that run over this
broad country are sometimes compelled to carry empty seats?
We all remember the powerful effect which low rates have in
stimulating and encouraging people to travel. If the rates
were made permanently low, infinite blessings would redound to
the people and to the roads. As it is now, the masses have not
received and are not receiving the benefits of the application of
steam in the art of transporting trains. The facts which I
have given show beyond the shadow of a doubt that the tariff
lists of the railway companies, commonly called "rates", are
not calculated at all on the actual cost of the service. In fact
the railways have been mere gambling instruments by which
the barons, who own them, have been enabled to "bull" and
"bear" the market, and fill their purses at their pleasure.
66
54
SIXT
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
1
'
How else can you account for the frequent and unjust discrimi-
nations which have been extended to classes of shippers? On
what other theory can any man account for the fact that the
charge for moving a tub of butter per pound from Orange
county, New York, to New York City, a distance of a few
miles, was, for a long time, greater than for moving the same
tub of butter from Central Illinois to New York City? Like
discriminations almost ruined the iron and coal interests of
Pittsburg a few years ago. The transcontinental lines formerly
charged more for moving freight from New York to points in
eastern Nevada than to San Francisco.
With what sadness these poor railway kings tell us of their
losses; how dolefully they portray to us that their business is
not a prosperous one. With funeral tones, and meekness almost
of saints, they read to us long columns of figures, running
up into the millions; all winding up with the conclusion that
they have made only a paltry per cent. on their gigantic invest-
ments. Let us look into that for a moment. According to the
most reliable railway authority in the United States-"Poor's
Manual"-there is an over-capitalization of more than FOUR
BILLION dollars in American railway investments. By a ficti-
tious system, called "stock watering ", these giants of American
commerce have inflated the values of their roads, equipments,
and total outlay to such an enormous extent that the per cent.
which they make does seem rather small. However, when they
tell us that they have made 32 per cent. on the investment of a
given year, that per cent, must be multiplied by two or three to
get at the truth. According to the report of a New York
Legislative Investigating Committee, the New York Central
and Hudson River Railway Company had increased its capital
one hundred and forty-six per cent. by this infamous and ficti-
tious policy. The Erie Railway Company had watered its stock
over seventy per cent: The Pennsylvania Railway Company
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
55
1
1
· had, by the infamous process of increasing its investments, by
pretended outside interests in other companies, swelled its
wealth until its excess of stock was enormous; and when it
said it had cleared 8 per cent. in the year 1884, the truth is it
had cleared 17 per cent. The great Western roads, called
Granger Lines, have committed equally gross frauds. The
Union Pacific road, according to the testimony of Mr. Charles
Francis Adams, has been guilty of enormous inflation to deceive
the people; and this road owes the people sixty million dollars,
on which it has not paid one-third of the low interest due by its
obligations. Thus, by the reports of the most conservative
railway authorities, it seems that in dull years, when bankruptcy
and ruin stalk abroad like a ghost in the land, and when other
business enterprises sink beneath the wave, wrecked and ruined
in financial loss, these companies make from 8 to 12 per cent.
on their enormous investments; and in addition to this, mag-
nates have drawn salaries which would put to shame the richest
princes of the ancient world. Twenty, thirty, and even forty
thousand dollars have been paid as the year's earnings of the
president of a road, while each company retains an army of
officers at salaries equaled by few other modern business enter-
prises. Of the great fortunes on Wall Street, nearly all can be
traced to the iniquitous influence of pooling and other railway
crimes. Who knows how many of the elements in the cost of
railway transportation may be traced to the corrupt expendi-
ture of the money of the shareholders? How much went for
bribery in buying Representatives, or in secret rebates, to favor
friends who gave them aid—all of which had to be collected
back from the over taxed people of this country? How much
went in "cornering" markets, so as to rob the people of bona
fide values for their products?
Whenever we attempt to control the railway kings, so that
the people may receive at least some of the benefits of modern
,56
SIXTY MILLIÓN SLAVES..
invention, they point to us the frightful example of the French
Revolution, the growth of socialism, and the downfall of the
government of the people. They tell us that we are powerless
to remedy the imagined evils; that the complex relations of
the business of the country will be ruined if we ever attempt
any adjustment of our rights. They point to the six thousand
million dollars of railway investments in the United States,
including rolling stock, and tell us that the conservative inter-
ests of capital will suffer, yea, die at our hands.* They talk
as though their interests were the only interests worthy of con-
sideration. In the first place, it must be remembered that we,
the people, have THIRTY BILLIONS of property at stake, and that
they have a disastrous influence over the whole of our property.
Ah, but they say, "You would go back to the age of the ox-
team, the go-cart and the pack-mule." Emphatically, no! But
this assertion is based on a fallacy—the fallacy that they, the
barons, gave us the roads. They do not give us the benefits of
invention. What railway baron hitched steam to this "winged
god", the powerful locomotive? The inventor did that service
for the race. Instead of giving us the benefits of steam, these
monopolists stand between us and the full enjoyment of the
riches which it spreads out before us, but which they tax almost
beyond our reach. The question is, not how much better are
we doing now than we were doing in ages gone, but it is how
much worse are we doing now than we ought to do. The ques-
tion is, not how much cheaper are rates to-day than they were
yesterday, but how much higher are they than they should be
to-day. While steam itself has greatly stimulated the develop-
ment of the country, yet all the benefits of progress are not to
be credited to the individual owners of the roadbeds and the
rolling-stock, who really stand between the people and the
*NOTE:-Some one has said that when the carrion crow of fear hovers nigh,
beware! Death, decay, and unsightly things are close by. Evil deeds are covered
up.
SIXTY MILLION ȘLAVES.
}
57
highway, to which they have inalienable rights. The readiness
with which these railway barons, who ride over our country in.
palace cars and live like kings, champion the cause of the people
might lead one to believe that they had been called like Cincin-
natus, from the plow.
And who owns the six thousand millions of railways and
rolling-stock in this country? Do you own any of the stock ?
Does your neighbor, your congressman? You do not, cer-
tainly; and if your congressman does, mark him well; he
likely got it for his vote. Many congressmen have been made
directors of roads in the past, and given shares, in considera-
tion that they should vote away public lands to their roads.
#
According to Mr. John Swan, who has written a book that
attracted some attention, entitled, "An Investor's Notes on
American Railroads", and at one time general manager of the
Alabama and Great Southern Railroad, and a friend of the
present system, by far the larger per cent. of the capital invested
in our railroads is owned by foreigners, who are ignorant of our
affairs, and careless of our rights; they do not belong to this
soil, nor sympathize with the people of this country. They
are here just as Shylock is abroad over the world—for the pound
of flesh. As before said, the magnitude of the people's inter-
ests does not depend alone upon the magnitude of their property
values, running up to THIRTY BILLIONS. Even if the railway
barons should own all the wealth in this country aside from the
soil, thank God, the soil belongs to the people, and so long as we
are here, this country is our home, and we should guard it with
jealousy and patriotism from the miserly clutch of the slaves of
gold.
The census of the United States should be the Bible of the
people, the encyclopedia of information, the source of argu-
ment. What is the population of this country? Sixty
millions. How many of them are farmers, and their families,
58
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
1
:
and the villagers, dependent upon agricultural communities?
Nearly forty-two millions. Suppose that a farmer has to give up
two or three bushels of his corn to move one bushel to a large
market. Is it not plain to be seen that his wealth in this way
reaches the coffers of his masters, the owners of the railroads ?
Has it not been shown by the figures relative to the cost of
transportation that this rate is only made possible by tolerating
actual robbery in the name of right? The golden fields of corn
are waving in the sun, not for you, and your little children, not
that you may reap the benefits of civilization by means of your
hard-earned wealth, but that the kings and barons and tyrants
shall have more and yet more with which to oppress and further
rob you.
As the boa constrictor calculates the size of its victim,
and licks it over with saliva before swallowing it, so these
companies calculate the tonnage of the crop of a given area,
and fix a rate as high as the traffic will stand, which is but
another way of saying that they will merely leave the people
enough surplus to barely sustain life. Your furniture is dingy,
your carpets are faded; you have few books; your boy, who
goes to school, is dressed shabbily; your loving daughter, just
blooming into womanhood, wants an organ, for she has taken
music lessons from the village master; your wife, now that the
golden wedding is nigh, desires to "spruce up" to meet her old
friends and recall the scenes of long ago. Ah! But these
things are impossible. You know well that hard times prohibit.
Perhaps you cannot tell why, but the sad reality stares you in
the face. You may blame this party or that party, this cause
or that cause, but never know exactly why it is so. However,
while you, the farmers, constitute so vast a proportion of the
population, you are by no means all who suffer. Have you not
heard of the thousands of idle men in this country, almost
famished for food, leading strikes, riots, lockouts, boycots, and
angry mobs? Did the newspapers of the country not advise
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
59
1
you from time to time that the hard lines of life sometimes fall
harshly over the innocent; that the evil and the just and their
children have suffered and died in want? Have you never
heard the wail that arises from the sickly and overcrowded
tenement houses of the great cities of this continent? Have
you never heard of men who work, being thrown out in mid-
winter with no power to sustain life standing between them-
selves, their families, and the next meal? In 1885, according
to the report of the Census Bureau of the United States, there
were twenty thousand idle factories in this country, consti-
tuting 7½ per cent. of all such enterprises in the land. I have
repeated this fact, but I desire to impress upon your minds that
at the same time their warehouses were overstocked with goods
of household necessity and every-day use, Well, why were these
factories idle? Look at the census account, and you will find
that for some cause the producers have always been compelled
to find a sale on American soil. I care not whether you attri-
bute this limitation of sales to American soil, to the high
protective tariff, or to a war among the Zulus, it nevertheless
exists as a fact. The larger percentage of these goods in the
past twenty-five years has finally been consumed by Americans.
Why did you not buy those goods last year? Why did you not
patronize the factories of your own country, that they might
prosper and that those whom they employ might make an
honest dollar? I have already said that hard times prevented
it. You were compelled to curtail your expenditures; you
were forced to economize and become parsimonious; you were
stingy, not because your great hearts longed to be mean and
narrow, but from an overpowering necessity, over which you
had no control. Whoever wields unbridled power over the com-
merce of the country, as the autocratic railway barons do, may
dictate the terms on which all other men shall live. Give me
unlimited control of the railways of America, and I will turn
$
•
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
60
{
all the streams of industry into the reservoir that holds my
wealth.
*
What is the totality of the business population? About
nineteen millions, of which nine millions hold the plow
handles. Barring out the babes that sleep in cradles, the
invalids that lie in beds, the ladies and gentlemen of elegant
leisure, the preachers of the gospel, and the railway kings
themselves, there are nineteen million people who actually
carry on the work of this part of the world, and of this number,
nine millions are, approximately, practical agriculturists. And
I tell you here to-night that upon the welfare of the farmers of
this great agricultural land depends the welfare of the great
mass of the people. Do not tell me at any time, or in any
place, for any cause, or under any pretense, that when the cost
of moving freight, as revealed by railway tables, is fifty-hun-
dredths cent per ton-mile, including the enormous salaries and
corrupt expenditures of the management of the roads, as they
conduct them, that we can prosper when the rates charged are
so greatly in excess of equity, justice, and right. Do not tell me
that any other question of this century appeals to the American
heart with the magnitude and sacred importance of this railway
problem, when fully understood. Do not tell me that the men
who point to the evil and indicate the remedy are to be
denounced as cranks and fools. Give a knock-down argument
in favor of the railway kings, if you can. Give us just one
reason for them.
A man who loves his country and his family, his home and
his children, will not drop these facts and figures at a glance,
but will take them seriously to heart. They should burn
within his mind and ring within his ears until he is conclusively
convinced, as have been the leaders of all the world's reforms,
that the end of the reign of tyranny and usurpation of the
people's rights must come. The influences to be overcome are
1
•
· SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
SLAVES
61
powerful ones, but the task is not hopeless; the question is
solvable in cold reason, and although the people may be slow,
yet when they speak their voice will be the law, and it will
reverberate in thunder-tones throughout the length and breadth
of the land. The facts entering into this argument against the
reign of robbery are so simple that a child should understand
them; but just as the greatest truths are, when understood, the
simplest, and just as the greatest abuses in the past have seemed
complex and incapable of solution, while existing, so these
things will be simple enough when solved and wiped away by
peaceful revolution. This question, when stripped of all use-
less complications, will stand out in the light of the world a
very naked devil. The stability of our Republican institutions,
the full and free triumph of all those things which we hold
dear, depend upon the patient investigation of this question by
the whole people, and a thorough activity in behalf of truth,
when conviction reaches the mind.
•
When this problem shall be solved, most of the strikes and
riots will cease. We will not reach the millennium in human
affairs, but we will have gone a long step toward it.
At any
rate, let us serve the truth through clouds and smoke and fire
and darkness; let us march against the protest of conservative
railway owners, who threaten the safety of the government
itself. Let us struggle, by every honorable means, to arouse
the people to a sense of duty, until they shall, with one voice,
drive out and forever suppress the giant evil of the times.
Every citizen ought to know the extent to which the pub-
lic's rights are overthrown by the tyrants who rule the industry
and retard the welfare of the country. Until there is a solid
understanding of the elementary truths underlying the problem
there can be no permanent good accomplished. The people,
until intelligently aroused, are as a giant arising half asleep
and bewildered by delirium. Every man ought to be able to
62
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
show how and why these artificial pumps can draw the rich
blood of commerce into their own enlarged veins, transfusing
life from the people to these kings; how the masses are perpet-
ually poor, and the few fabulously rich; how labor here longs for
the opportunities of exertion, while there it is overworked and
underpaid. Every patriot should fight for the freedom of
transportation, and denounce the centralized greed which
imposes unjust burdens on all men other than the owners of the
roads. The products of this country's manifold industries must
not forever flow into the coffers of our present masters. We,
the whole people, demand the advantages that belong to this age
of progress. They are ours by right as sacred as life itself.
CHAPTER IV.
THE EMANCIPATED HIGHWAY.
Fellow Citizens:-In sober truth, I believe in overthrow-
ing the fiction by which government agents now own the
monopoly of transportation by steam.
The railway companies
They all have charters.
are the trusted agents of the States.
They were appointed to carry on our national railway business.
Were we so helpless as to require such powerful guardians?
Are we now so incapable of attending to railway commerce,
and so ignorant of the mysteries of the business of moving
trains, that we must be ruled off from the iron track? I advo-
cate the right of every citizen who can own and skilfully
manage a train to put that train on the highway.* He shall
* NOTE :—In a qualified sense. See the note on page 74.
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
63
move it, not to suit his whims, but under the strict supervision
of the road overseer. He must be spotted by the road agents
and traced from the moment he enters upon the highway until
he returns to his engine stall. The central train dispatcher
must foreknow and direct his every moyement, his speed, his
destination, and every possible detail of the journey. Is there
anything impossible in such an arrangement? Is it an idle
dream? The best train dispatchers with whom I have con-
versed tell me that the plan is eminently practicable, and that
any good railway man could readily arrange the details of man-
agement. In fact, the same thing is practiced every day.
Have you never known two or three companies to jointly own
one track of ten, twenty, thirty, or one hundred miles? Such
ownership is common, and on such lines of road the companies
run independent locomotives, with their own engineers and rolling
stock. On the Pennsylvania Railroad I once counted cars of more
than a dozen independent companies, but all were operated by
a common train dispatcher. The pretense that the rolling
stock and the highway must be owned by one company to insure
safety is the ultimatum of nonsense. Can a solitary reason be
given for the necessity of such dual ownership?
Of course,
many roads which now possess niggardly-maintained single
tracks would need to be extended by the addition of two or
three parallel tracks. Other details which readily occur to any
sensible man would need to be skilfully arranged; but to say
that the plan is impossible, contradicts the opinion of many
eminent and practical railway men, as well as the practices
which may be seen on scores of roads throughout the United
States. No sane man proposes to open up the railways to the
use of every irresponsible person who may be able to hire or
buy a locomotive, or a train of cars. Far from so foolish an
undertaking. Nobody advocates a loose management, for there
must be the severest attention to details. Sometimes people
*
64
+
*
t
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
1
talk about this question as though they believed that the free
highway plan would so throw off all provisions for the safety
of human life that a crazy engineer might move an untrack-
worthy locomotive up to the depot, and while passengers were
alighting, wave his hat in the air and cry aloud, "Look out
everybody, here I come with the throttle valve wide open, for
this is a free-for-all race"! On the contrary, I would have all
trains operated under the ever-present rule that extreme vigil-
ance is the price of safety. I would increase the number of
tracks, so that chances for accidents would be reduced to a
minimum. Now I ask you whether this is all an idle dream, a
Utopian idea? Seriously, what do you know about railroading ?
Have you a formula which will show that I am wrong?
Bring it forth! I will call to my aid the testimony of the
ablest train dispatchers in the world, and they will corroborate
my statements, that the plan is not only eminently practicable,
but that they annually direct the movements of many trains of
foreign companies over their own roads. Since their testimony
and their practices corroborate the conclusions of commor
sense, we may rest this more than prima facie case, and sum-
mon experts to give further testimony in our behalf at any
time. In this connection, I desire to remark that I am inti-
mately acquainted with one of the oldest train dispatchers
in the United States, whose name, however, owing to his
railway connection, I am not at liberty to divulge. He has
held one of the most responsible positions that any company
could possibly offer him, for more than two decades.
Not only
has he confirmed all that I tell you, but after a thorough study
of the railway problem, he has become one of the most uncom-
promising advocates of the doctrine that the highway must be
reclaimed for the whole people. He sees that the principle
underlying rail highways is the same as that upon which rests.
our right to the use of every wagon-road.
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
65
}
The lesson of history is that the highway has prospered.
best under the people's control. It has been developed as the
property of the people. Where there is no monopoly of the
road, no exclusive right to better facilities than other men have,
transportation has always been maintained at minimum cost
to the people, the sole object of such indirect tolls as road
taxes being to create a fund from which to pay the expenses of
building and maintaining the public highways. But suppose
that a few men should own all of our roads? Suppose that the
motto under which the owners operated their roads was to
charge the people all they could possibly pay, as railway com-
panies do. Would this be regarded as inimical to the people's
liberties, and destructive of their opportunities for material
advancement? In the light of history, which points to the
true principle of highway management, these questions are of
vital importance. Can you not see the force of the argument?
Steam and the iron highway have reversed the rule of history.
The wagon-road that modestly winds over hills and through
valleys, beside the track of rails, stands as a perpetual example
in opposition to the monopoly plan. The one is managed by
the people, and for the people, at the lowest possible outlay,
while the other is a chess-board over which the barons of
modern feudalism move the over-taxed freight and over-taxed
travelers of the country. Why such a reversal of the rule of his-
tory? Did steam revolutionize the laws of right and wrong, and
change the sovereignty from States to millionaires? Did rapid
communication obliterate the inalienable rights of the people to
life, liberty, and minimum rates of transportation? If there is
anything in the characteristics of railways, or in the expansive
power of steam which must necessarily convert the public road
into a private way, it is not plain what it is. It is clear by all the
legal authorities that in abandoning their right to build rail-
ways, the State governments merely delegate to their temporary
66
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
appointees or agents-the railway companies-the right or
franchise to carry on a great public necessity, viz.: passenger
and freight transportation. The highway, irrespective of the
vehicle for which it was made, partakes of the elements of all
natural rights. Inherently, it should be freed as much as
possible from artificial restraints.
The fundamental distinction between government owner-
ship of the tracks and rolling-stock, coupled with government
management of the entire railway system, and the State control
of the track only, which I advocate, must never be lost sight of.
This distinction is essentially fundamental, and lies at the basis
of a thorough conception of the philosophy of the highway,
While the people's ownership of the track is feasible and
prudent, as a means of causing the complete cessation of
unequal money-making opportunities, out of the highway, on
the part of those who at present usurp the rights of the people,
there is much to be guarded against, lest there arise patent
abuses even under such control. It must not be forgotten that
there are sacred constitutional rights that should never be
taken from individuals for any cause. Therefore, proper limits
should be put upon the sovereign ownership, and property
which is now held rightfully by individuals may continue to be
so held. The State ought to own no more than the tracks,
depots, operating-stations, and like properties which are insepa-
rable from the highway; and there should be uniform regula-
tions governing all train dispatching, observing the very highest
precautions for the best speed and safety of all trains. By
such regulations, traffic would not be interrupted during any
part of the season. By the imposition of proper checks and
balances there would be no central ownership of the rolling
stock, which is properly personal property. The line of demar-
cation should be drawn between PERSONAL PROPERTY, on the
one side, and all such INHERENTLY PUBLIC ESTATES AS THE
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
67
*
EASEMENT OF THE HIGHWAY, on the other.
As to the owner-
ship and operation of trains, it would be proper to provide that
licenses should be issued to skilful engineers or train managers,
who would be compelled to observe the central code of uniform
and safe train-operating rules. The cost of freight cars and
railway coaches is not so large as to preclude men in ordinary
circumstances, or manufacturing and other companies, from`
owning not only a single coach or car for freight purposes, but
even trains of such coaches and cars. Small capitalists or
village companies might readily own, manage, and entirely
operate trains, subject always, of course, to the central and
uniform supervision, and compelled at all times to employ the
most skilful conductors and train employes. Separate com-
panies thus competing for the patronage of the people, or
carrying on their own passenger or freight transportation on a
common highway, the cost of traveling would soon be reduced
to a minimum; that is to say, the people would receive the
benefits of freight and passenger transportation substantially at
first cost. But these are all minor problems of detail which
any shrewd railroad man could very readily solve, observing at
all times proper rules as to convenience and practicability. As
I have before said, the same principle is applied in practice
to-day whenever a train or the trains of one road are granted
the right-of-way over another company's line. Do you ask how
we should adjust the toll which the State should charge the
company for moving a train? That matter might readily be
settled by the simplest mathematical calculations. As a sample
method of approximating the toll-rate which the State would
need to charge the carriers who should move trains over its
track, let us glance at some figures from present railway sources.
Without eliminating some fictitious elements which enter into
the Pennsylvania Railroad Company's estimate of cost, let us
see what would be its rate per ton-mile. Allowing for charges
68
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
for maintenance of the 'way, general expenses, and interest on
fictitious stocks and bonds, the rate required to make the freight
tariff of that road maintain the roadbed, etc., would be 0.189
of a cent per ton-mile; on the Erie, the rate of toll per ton-mile
would, by a similar estimate, be 0.431 of a cent; on the Lehigh
Valley road, 0.838; on the Chicago & Northwestern, 0.774 of a
cent; and so on, throughout the list of railways, with varia-
tions of rates proportionate to the cost of original construction,
the amount of inflated stock, and subsèquent maintenance.
Into all these estimates, however, it must be remembered that
many fictitious elements enter to make the rate high, and these
would be wiped out entirely under the people's ownership on a
bona fide capitalization. Of course, the rate would depend upon
the cost of maintaining the track, and the charges would have
to be proportioned to the number of tons of freight likely to be
moved over the track within a given time. The greater the
tonnage and the less the peril and annoyance of moving the
peculiar class of freight to be transported, of course, the lower
the rate until the first cost were actually reached.
It cannot be disputed or gainsaid in any way, that there can
be no thorough competition between independent railroad compa-
nies operating trains on different highways, each company owning
the powerful monopoly of its own line. If there is ever to be
thorough and honest competition, such as will bring down the
cost of transportation, it must be, not between railway companies,
each of which has its own special chain of stations, with but one
competing point to every nine stations, averaged on the best
roads, but between trains operated by separate companies on a
common public highway, where rates have, by opposition, been
reduced as near as possible, to first cost or a fair minimum.
However, the chief benefit to be reaped from competition, after
the highway shall be in fact emancipated, is in the increase of
the number of trains that will use the road, thereby dividing
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.'
69
I
the expense of maintaining the track between the largest
possible number of trains, and, therefore, between the largest
possible number of travelers or tons of freight. In other words,
the people, who must, under the present system, always pay
interest on the inflated sum total of railway investments, will
be given, under the system which I advocate, numerous trains,
at rates which, in comparison with those now charged, seem
ridiculously low. The interest debt of millions, which we must
pay to the companies, as well as the gigantic salaries and
"slush" funds, will be cut off forever. Again, while the
private companies or citizens operating trains would reap a fair
profit from their investments, yet the total outlay for their
rolling-stock, and the chances of pooling would be so incom-
parably small, as against the present outlay and over-capitaliza-
tion by monopoly companies which own the track, that no evils
will arise from using such property for purposes of individual
gain.
No one has ever complained that any serious injury arises
from the ownership of such personal property. Take the high-
way from private owners and the people will run the risk that
competition will see them well provided for. But the highway
itself should not be a part or parcel of any commercial invest-
ment, nor should it earn one cent of interest, not even on the
actual investment. Behold the vast transformation which this
simple revolution would effect! It is no injustice to the
public to tolerate private ownership and commercial investment
in all personal property such as trains, cars, and locomotives,
but estates equitably unownable do not belong in any com-
mercial enterprise. Herein lies the evil of the present system-
the violation of the fundamental law of the road.
For such reasons as have been given above, in part, it is a
fiction and a misnomer to speak of that which monopoly owns
as the highway of the people; for in this country the railways
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✔
་
have, almost from their inception, been owned and controlled
by private corporations, under such rules and regulations as
they desired, and the railway laws of all, the States have been
drawn with singular carelessness of the liberties of the people.
It was much easier to appropriate the railways when steam was
first applied to transportation than it would have been to take
the wagon-roads for private use, since by the private control of
the railways the wagon-roads still remain to the people;
whereas, if the wagon-ways had been so controlled from the start,,
no land outlets whatever would have remained to the people.
But the age of steam and its controlling necessities really
robbed the wagon-road of its usefulness for long journeys. *
Whose horses are able to compete with locomotives? So that
steam has greatly reduced the actual cost of transportation.
Considered in the abstract, without reference to relative values,
it has also driven all other competition from the field, and
multiplied man's necessities and the demands for cheap trans-
portation, until all values are essentially, relative; hence not to
be measured in comparison with ante-railway rates. The
question is not, how much cheaper freights are to-day than at
some past time, but how much higher are they to-day than they
should be. The railway companies work under a motto which
says: "Charge the people all they can stand." The rule ought
to be, like the one applied in all past ages, "Give the public
the lowest possible freights, and emancipate the highway from
private control.”
Some things in this world cannot be owned by a few men
without injustice to all other men. The use of the highway is
such a species of property as to be, in strict justice, incapable
of private ownership. Because of the vast power and superior -
advantages which such ownership gives to the few, extending to
* NOTE :-Railways have no doubt superseded common highways.-Chambers*
Encyclopedia.
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
71
}
them powerful privileges solely for private gain, and against
the general welfare, it should be prohibited by the organic law
of the State. The disastrous railway motto, above quoted,
which robs the people of the use of the right-of-way, even to
the farthest cent, ought to be annulled, by allowing the whole
people the freest possible use of the tracks.
The following, among other abuses, seems to inhere in the
very nature of private control of railways-the roadbed :.
1st. The aggregation of vast wealth and material power
by a few corporations, which are thus enabled to control com-
merce, and especially the markets for agricultural products.
As an incident of this is the imposition of unequal burdens
upon the many.
2nd. Opportunities for vast interest on investments,
chances to "water" stock, and to pay princely salaries to rail-
way presidents, who sometimes have been known to receive as
high as forty thousand dollars per annum.
3rd. Enabling the rail highway to remain idle twenty out
of twenty-four hours, sometimes greatly to the inconvenience of
the public, together with the chance to charge for the four
hours of operation enough to reap high interest on the money
invested in the track, not only during the time when it is used,
but during the twenty hours of idleness, as well. And as a
secondary result the chance to impose upon the public arbitrary
rules as to the hours when the people may travel. At times
they are compelled to wait many hours, and even days, to meet
a connecting line, simply to enable the companies to operate
their trains the shortest space of time, and reap the highest
benefits from the least service.
4th. Draining the entire country of its surplus wealth
without redistribution, pouring our millions, which ought to go
to citizens and to citizen owners of trains, into the hands of the
railway barons.
+
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5th. Fostering, on the one side, princely aristocrats, and,
on the other, a dangerous proletariat of oppressed citizens-
barons and bare-feet, side by side. Stimulating the growth of
anarchy, socialism, nihilism, and all the modern brood of
cranks and assassins of the flag.
}
6th. Threatening the safety of the country, by giving
opportunities and pretexts for riots, strikes, the growth of
general discontent, and frequently recurring industrial de-
pressions.
7th. Giving rise to bribery and official corruption, and
exercising a pernicious effect upon all legislative, executive, and
judicial powers throughout each of the separate States, and in
the General Government.
All these abuses, and countless others of a similar nature,
are generated, made possible, and continued in existence by the
vast engines of wealth-gathering known as modern railway
corporations. Under the baneful rule of the railway money-
ocracy, such disastrous evils have so harassed us that the
safety of our institutions is being steadily undermined, until sin
uncovers its unholy face and defies the people. And a no less
distinguished railway man than Charles Francis Adams openly
writes of Jay Gould as, "a man without a conception of
morality"; and a legal author, in his text books, openly
accuses the Pennsylvania Railway Company of "running the
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania as successfully as it operates its
trains." Mr. Adams spoke of the Erie Company as having an
equal success in the politics of New York, State and city. The
same thing may be seen in many of our Western States, where
corruption places the tools of these companies in power.
Think of it! Are we to remain the chained slaves of such
despots? And this is free America, which liberated four
million black slaves, yet which perpetuates the slavery of sixty
millions beneath the stars and stripes!
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
73
•
¡
The enemy is fortified, and the battle will be a hotly-
contested and a hard-fought one; but either these principles
must be recognized by the whole people, and enforced, or else we
will hopelessly sink into a despotism without precedent in the
annals of the world, and, in the language of our largest-hearted
railway manager, Charles Francis Adams, "Men like Fisk,
Gould, and Lane, after having created a system of quiet but
irrepressible corruption, will ultimately succeed in directing
government itself."
Fellow Citizens: Take these problems home with you;
think of them, and solve them for yourselves, until at last this
whole system will stand before your vision as the threat and
menace of all there is of value in free government. After you
behold the evil standing before you, stripped of every shred and
patch of pretense, robbed of its mask of hypocrisy, then you
will see that the remedy is to THROW THE HIGHWAY, THE
ACTUAL TRACK, OPEN TO FREE COMPETITION, SO THAT THE
PEOPLE MAY PROSPER, The track is the key that leads to
power. Take the track from them and the giant is tied.
This is the remedy in a nut-shell. Reason out the details, each
man according to his choice, and for himself. Down with the
anarchists, the socialists, the nihilists, who have already preju-
diced the free discussion of these questions by giving rise to
fear, suspicion, and the frequent opportunity for those who op-
pose liberty to brand and class with these enemies of American
freedom, the advocate of every old axiom applied to a new ques-
tion. This is a government of law, under the Constitution of the
United States, as founded by our forefathers. The revolution
I speak of is a peaceful one, under our organic law. Should any
railroad sycophant attempt to sneer me out of court by raising
the cry of Anarchist!" to him I say, "Hang, punish by
process of law, every man who lifts his hand against our
sacred Constitution, or our beloved stars and stripes." Whether
74.
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
1
he be waving the red flag and exciting to incendiarism, rapine,
and murder, or whether he be secretly undermining our institu-
tions by railway bribery of legislatures and courts, the crime
is the same in its results. The methods only are different, The
demagogue and the political trickster assume various disguises
and many different names. The patriot is known everywhere
and at all times.
While the plan of State control of the tracks,* which I
advocate, may seem startling and visionary, yet I am convinced,
after thorough consideration of all its advantages and defects,
that the State, which represents the people, and is closer to the
people than any form of government within our system, must
stand between its subjects and these enemies of our liberty, If,
however, any man can suggest another plan by which the evils
of private ownership of the track can be abolished, and the
people allowed freight and passenger service at first cost, then
I am willing to adopt his plan, provided, further, that it offers
more advantages and fewer objections than mine. I shall be
ready to take off my hat and stand with uncovered head in the
scorching sun or drizzling rain, and bow in reverence to the
*NOTE: The business of owning and operating trains, disciplining men and carry-
ing on the many details of passenger and freight transportation is one thing, a pursuit
separate and distinct from any other, and characterized by peculiar skill and require-
ments; the pursuit of owning the railway track (if that conveys to the mind any idea
of complex activity) is another and wholly different affair. It is this latter passive
and equitable ownership, which is the province of the State. The railway business,
operation of trains, ownership of rolling stock, etc., etc., belongs to private com-
panies. The State should not meddle with that at all. Sovereignty should own the
highway and throw it open to citizen companies. It would not follow that al
men would be fit to own and operate trains any more than that all men are fit to
print the reports of the Supreme Court of the State, or repair broken watches.
Practicability would limit the business to safe men, while demand and supply would
regulate numbers, and weed out a superfluity. As I have heretofore said, time and
again, the idea expressly embraced in all the early charters of railroad companies
was that one company should own the highway, and allow the public its use. The right
to take tolls was granted, but not the right to exclude other companies or carriers.
Any student can look this matter up. See Redfield on Railways, and see decisions of
Atlantic States. This statement is a matter of history that may be readily verified,
and it may be found in many decisions. To dwell too much upon weary and useless
references is not my purpose. If the reader's intelligence and ingenuity cannot
show him the balance—then is reason useless in his case.
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
75
1
t
man who can offer a plan which shall at once prove to be THE
REMEDY FOR THESE EVILS. But I am free to confess that I
can see no other possible arrangement than one similar to that
which I have outlined. It will at once meet the exigencies of
the case.
I should be pleased to hear from any one at any time.
on this all-important subject.*
CHAPTER V.
AN INCOMPLETE REMEDY.
Fellow Citizens:-No man who has grasped the elementary
facts pertaining to the railway problem will be satisfied with the
half-way measures adopted by the General Government. The
Inter-State Commerce Bill as a remedy is simply worthless, for
it leaves the causes of our suffering absolutely untouched. The
chief benefit of this law will be to awaken the people, by dis-
cussion, to a sense of the evils of railway domination; but the
bill tolerates private fortune-making out of the public thorough-
fares. It does not contain a single clause which seeks to give
us FREE COMPETITION ON THE PUBLIC HIGHWAYS,
nor one line calculated to reduce the cost of transportation to a
fair minimum.
The lover of freedom need not despair on this account, for
* NOTE :-Speaking of the first railway in England, Chambers' Encyclopedia says:
Now began that course of commercial enterprise, unregulated, and often wasteful,
which has since assumed such importance. Refraining from all control over railway
operations, the government left speculators to carry lines anywhere or anyhow
that parliament could be persuaded to sanction. The result has been in many
places a complication of competing lines on no principle of economy or enlightened
foresight. Abandoned, as it were, to the audacity of promoters, AND THE MERE
BRUTE FORCE OF CAPITAL, schemes, good, bad, and indifferent, had to fight their way
at cost almost exceeding belief. * * Making every allowance, therefore, for the
high social value of the railway system, it has certainly reached a point of despotic
overbearance, that requires some species of control more effectual than the present
system." In 1874 a parliament committee reported that "no means have yet been
devised by which competition can be maintained." (See appendix IX.)
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4
these attempts, by the General Government, to control railway
companies, must always fail. The empire now ruled by the
kings of modern industry must be wrested from their grasp, not
by the centralized government, but by the people of the States
respectively.
But when this Inter-State Commerce Bill is abandoned as
useless, as it will be eventually, then the corporations will pro-
claim that they knew from the first that it would fail. They
will predict failure for any future attempt of a like kind. But
that will leave the State CONTROL OF THE TRACK PLAN FREE
FROM THE EXAMPLE OF PRECEDENT FAILURE.
A slight varnish of creosote will obtund and deaden the ex-
posed nerve of an aching tooth, but the victim of aches and
pains must have the tooth filled or drawn to obtain permanent
relief. An Inter-State Commerce Commission may strive nobly
to give the people relief against railway iniquities, but its highest
attempts must fall short of anything like permanent relief,
so long as the evil of private ownership is tolerated. The
causes of our suffering must be removed. It will not do merely
to tone down the severity of the injury. The modification of
disastrous results can never give relief against fatal causes.
When the innumerable evils of monopolistic control continue
with almost unabated vigor, under our regulative law, it is
an evidence that the law is but superficial.
once.
But wait until the people of this country shall know their
rights, then they will apply the remedy by marching hand in
hand to the ballot box and slaying the hydra-headed monster at
The population of the West and South, as heretofore
shown, is sufficient to forever stand between the people and their
plunderers. When they have once fully mastered this problem,
fear not! Their remedy will be simple, but thorough and
effective.
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
77
But this Inter-State Commerce Bill is bound to fail. It
may soften the evil as a poultice relieves a felon, but this railway
felon must be lanced to the bone. Of all possible measures the
Inter-State Commerce Bill is the most superficial.
FIRST. It merely applies the axe to the limbs of the tree,
and allows the roots of the evil to continue in all robustness and
health.
SECOND. The centralized government at Washington
does not represent the people, in that broad and beautiful sense
in which State Governments represent them. Our State Gov-
ernments must régulate these internal, every-day business
questions. So long as government shall maintain the fiction of
allowing private corporations to own railroads there will be
persistent demands for government interference and govern-
ment restrictions, which must inevitably prove harassing to the
corporations, if not void of benefits to the people. Besides, the
interference by the government with railroads owned by cor-
porations involves the exercise of more pernicious legislation,
and expensive systems of espionage than though the tracks and
their essential fixtures and incidents were absolutely the prop-
erty of the people.
Is this bill not so framed as to be substantially useless,
since there is not to be found in the entire measure a single
clause which seeks to deprive monopoly ownership of its most
baneful effects, viz. the prostitution of the highway (which is
of right a means of communication at minimum cost to the
people) to purposes of individual gain, without any regard for
the general welfare? Is there any part of the bill which
lessens the salaries of the corporation magnates? Or, does
any clause seek to lower the cost of operating trains? What
provision do you find that looks toward maintaining the tracks
at the maximum of good and the minimum of evil to the public?
Does it, finally, endeavor to foster legitimate competition, or to
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SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
make the track give service during the maximum number of
hours daily? As heretofore indicated, the limitation of the
road to such uses as one company chooses to avail itself of per-
petuates the abuse of maintaining an expensive, inflated,
interest-bearing investment during many hours of absolute
idleness. Beyond the time necessary for proper reparation of
the road and a safe separation of trains, there is no reason why
some of the vast rail thoroughfares of the country might not
be the scene of a continual procession of trains, competing for
trade, and adding to public comfort and convenience.
Has the exigency not already arisen when, for the safety of
free government, the better development of the country's
wealth, and the wiser direction of its industry, the people must
absolutely emancipate the highway, given to the world by the
brain of civilized man, from the thraldom of private greed?
No man who has followed the argument, as deduced from
incontrovertible figures and axioms, will fail to see that these
half measures will never do. How many of my audience can
this moment speak with certainty and say whether the Inter-
State Commerce Bill pleases the people or the roads the best?
Have rates come down? Can you get railway service at first
cost, as you might do if the highways were thrown open to
competition? Ah, gentlemen. This will never do.
Justice will not be appeased by a stick of political candy,
nor by the sweetmeats of narrow-sighted legislation. But I
want to see this question solved by a peaceful revolution of our
countrymen. We want no anarchists, nor socialists to com-
plicate our simple problems of self-government. The farmers
in their shirt-sleeves and the artisans at their shops can solve
this question in their heads, as they did problems at the village
school, and then settle it by their ballots. When the masses
see the truth, fear not. Their voice will prevail.
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
79
A
No red flags! No incendiary propaganda! No knife, nor
sword, nor dynamite! No "bare-footed militia pouncing
down from the hills to tear up the tracks." The revolution
will be simple, but thorough. Like the coming of a June
morning, when sweet flowers bloom amid the mingling of
the dawn and the dew. Like the reign of peace and good will
among men, the true regime will come. How? Listen!
Good and wise men founded this government. They loved
to think of the rights of man. With infinite wisdom and
patriotic devotion they often talked and wrote of such things as
liberty, and justice, inalienable rights, "the law of the land",
and the welfare of the people. Once they wrote a Constitution
for the people of the United States-yes, for the people and
their posterity, their children's children. For many years the
old fathers have been held in reverence, and their names are
.`woven into garlands of flowers on the fourth day of each July,
It is a good custom, for it recalls the noble deeds of those old
founders of the republic. They lived and died before America
was girdled with railways, yet they wrote the Fifth Amendment
to the Constitution as though, with prophetic vision, seeming to
foreknow that some day there would be property in this country
which the people ought to buy at a reasonable price, in order to
preserve the safety and promote the general welfare of the
country. But to prevent oppression they provided that pri-
vate property shall not be taken for public use without just
compensation. This is a clear declaration of the underlying
principle of the law of eminent domain." The quotation is
from Judge Cooley. What lawyers term eminent domain is the
"right which exists in every sovereignty to appropriate and
control individual property for the public benefit, as the public
safety, necessity, convenience, or welfare may demand." High-
ways and like public conveniences are provided by the States
under this principle-except such highways as are the latest
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SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
gifts of inventive genius to civilization, and over which steam
carriages run. With rare generosity, the State and general
governments gave rich men the exclusive right to build and use
the rail highways. These rich owners have made many millions
out of their private roads. Vast fortunes are still being plucked
from the prolific tree of transportation; for, though railroad
construction and operation are constantly becoming cheaper to
the companies, the people receive few of the benefits of these
reductions. Is it not a consolation that we have State Consti-
tutions and the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the
United States? These are our safe and sure guides in such
questions. We can condemn and buy the railroads, even as the
railroad companies condemn and buy our farms, and rights of
way everywhere. It will be a big sale day-a big sale century.
A private trader, in pursuit of fortune, thanks the God of the
Universe if, at three-score, he is rich and sound of health.
Shall the people, whose longevity is that of many generations
of men, possess themselves of many millions' worth of railway
tracks in a day? No, no! But we may yet rival the railway
barons if we set ourselves about the task of acquiring railways.
In our old age we may be sound of health, and our children
rich indeed, if we observe the great rules of national health—
economic laws. No more slavery beneath the stars and stripes !
No highways to be sold hereafter at the auction block of
national legislation! Neither shall they be squandered. No
waste must be committed upon the vast fee-simple estates in
highways. They are the people's forever. Let us hold them
in trust for posterity. The larger part of American railway
investments is held by foreign owners, who have but little
understanding of American habits, and no sympathy with the
people. Let the death-knell be sounded to the clutch which
they, and all owners, have upon the industry, the happiness,
and the safety of the people of the United States. Let us
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
81
reclaim the highways, and with them gain a prosperity that we
have never before known. Let us forever settle this problem
by placing a keen-edged wedge at the very center of the log of
corruption, and with sledge-hammer blows, each one of which
is directed by the giant arm of the people, sunder into countless
atoms and pulverized fragments every semblance of this
national disgrace. In the bright majesty of conscious strength,
let the united people move as one man against the bulwarks of
this monopolistic power. It is our sacred right to bring about
so beneficent a reformation, and it is already time to act.
The corporations have been written and preached against,
and voted against, and still they live, MORE STRONGLY IN-
TRENCHED IN THE PLACES OF POWER THAN THE PEOPLE THEM-
SELVES. They boast that they can buy our legislators and our
courts cheaper than they can elect them. We need organization,
thorough, unremitting, and well-directed movements against
them. At least, let us not make peace with our enemies nor
listen to the alluring and dangerous voice of reconciliation. One
course alone is open to us. That is the gateway which leads to
freedom. On the one side, is the perilous 'road, which leads to
national decay, and, on the other, the plain path whose desti-
nation is the very temple of Truth.
If the plan which I advocate is not right, and if we are
powerless to destroy this evil, then we should seriously question
whether the American Government, as seen in our dual system,
is not a failure; but I will not believe that failure is possible.
"There are no Alps." "In the bright lexicon of youth, there
is no such word as fail." This country is still young; and the
oldest State has hardly become of age. The British Government
desired a railway in India. It guaranteed capitalists, who
should undertake and complete the road, 5 per cent. on the
enormous investment. It paid them, and has a large per cent.
to spare ; and by this means of raising revenue it has been able
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SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
to abolish the income tax in India. In the language of the
Rev. Lyman Abbott, "If the American Government cannot
do as much, it is time that we know why." Our State Govern-
ments can do as I have said. It is already time to begin the
reform, which cannot be accomplished in a day nor in a year,
but it will be a magnificently-accomplished public benefit if the
wrong can be abolished during this century.
Few men can understand the gigantic and almost hopeless.
task which is before the people. Money is so strongly in-
trenched in the places of power that I often meet intelligent men
who argue that all of the evils existing to-day are bound to
continue, and that, in objecting to them, we are fighting the
fixed laws of Fate. There are those who resign reform to
posterity and give up all hope of success. I have so much
confidence in my countrymen that I believe this question will
be wisely solved and forever set at rest when the facts are fully
known.
CHAPTER VI.
SOME QUESTIONS ANSWERED.
I. The railway men invested their money at an early day,
to develop the country, and they ran great risks in so doing.
Do you now propose to rob them of the benefits of their invest-
ments because they have become profitable?
Answer.-The answer will be found throughout these
speeches. Individual convenience must always give way to the
public welfare. Pay the owners one hundred cents on every
dollar of bona fide investments. Under the principle of eminent
SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
83
domain, we gave many of the roads their capital in lands.
Shall we tolerate a public evil, forsooth, because there is some
friction in removing it? The aching tooth should be pulled,
though the operation be a painful one. The same arguments
were used to perpetuate human slavery.
II. Would we not be involved in ruinous debt, should we
seek to buy the existing lines of road, or to build parallel lines?
Answer.-Go at it cautiously, and there will be no such
danger. We now pay enough to the companies in outrageous
rates to float a debt equal to the total obligations of the nation.
A few roads thrown open to the people, and the question will
be settled forever. Let the States go cautiously into this enter-
prise, and no such danger will threaten us. It is not a matter
to be done in a day or a year, but the reform must be accom-
plished.
III.-Would your plan not be a nuisance and an evil by
reason of greatly enlarging the appointing power of the State,
and by perpetuating corrupt parties in power?
Answer.-No. The appointing power incident to track
ownership would be very small. The State would have abso-
lutely nothing whatever to do with the operation of trains,
further than to see that the proper rules of safety were obeyed.
The railway companies are now corrupting politics in all its
branches infinitely more than could be possible in a State where
the people stand close to their servants, the officers. The State
would own no rolling stock, nor would it employ train hands.*
IV. How would an injured passenger obtain redress if a
train should run off the track by reason of a negligently-main-
tained track ?
Answer. Such claims should be adjusted promptly, and
without such vexatious litigation as now characterizes the
unequal fight between a poor man and an omnipotent corpora-
*NOTE :-See appendix X.
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SIXTY MILLION SLAVES.
tion. Each company would be liable in damages for negligent
train management, while we, the people, would maintain our
tracks in such elegant repair as to be almost free from danger;
but should our tracks cause accidents, we would pay up like
The court of claims would adjust these matters
honest men.
without delay.
V.-Would not the present rich railway men, who own alk
the cars, cut our rates and kill all our small companies?
Answer.-No. There never was a time in America when a
few men could own all the trains. Bear in mind the distinction
between a MONOPOLY IN THE HIGHWAY and a MONOPOLY IN
ROLLING STOCK. You and I cannot buy a line of railroad, but
a few of us can at any time buy an engine and some cars and
ship our products at first cost. You might as well speak of a
monopoly of the horses and wagons of America as a monopoly
in rolling stock. If rates should at any time be suddenly raised
by those owning most of the rolling stock, then other engines.
and cars could at once be put on to compete, and this by com-
panies or by shippers direct.
}
1
APPENDIX.
The following, among thousands of landmarks in this
movement, are submitted. This appendix is probably the most
valuable part of the book.
I.—The Legislative committee that investigated the man-
agement of the Erie Railroad in 1873, concluded its report as
follows:
"It is not reasonable to suppose that the Erie railway has
been alone in the corrupt use of money for the purposes named;
but the sudden revolution in the direction of this company has
laid bare a chapter in the recent history of railway management
such as has not been permitted heretofore. It exposes the
reckless and prodigal use of money, wrung from the people to
purchase the election of the people's representatives and to
bribe them when in office, According to Mr. Gould, his
operations extended into four different States. It was the
custom to contribute money to influence both nominations and
elections."
II.--The third semi-annual report of the Railway Com-
missioners of Georgia, dated May 1st, 1881, says:
"The moral and social consequences of these railway cor-
ruptions are even worse than the political; they are simply
appalling. We contemplate them with anxiety and dismay.
The demoralization is worse than that of war, because fraud is
meaner than force, and trickery meaner than violence. Aside
from their own corruptions, the operators aim directly at the
corruption of the press and the government."
86
APPENDIX.
1
III.-Speaking, in October, 1886, of the tyranny of Penn-
sylvania railway corporations, and of their combinations to run´
up the price of coal, Gov, Pattison said:
"It extorts from the profits of shipment all that the traffic
will bear, and often more than it will bear, doing this without
a reasonable regard to the cost of service or the right of
shippers. It causes violent fluctuations in prices, making all
trade dependent upon its movements, and holding a perpetual
menace over the material interests of the country. Against
such combinations the individual is helpless."
said:
IV.-Governor Lee, of Virginia, in addressing the people,
"Combat great money corporations that seek to control
your legislatures, federal and state, by bribery and corruption.
* * * Draw the fangs from the money kings. * *
Organize against capitalists who furnish money to carry elec-
tions, and then claim as their reward the selection of the
rulers."
V.—Hon. M. K. Turner, of Nebraska, in addressing the
people, said:
“With no straining of the eyes we see men who run for
office in this State in the interest and at the bidding of rail-
roads; and officials elected by the votes of the people, who
come and go, who talk and vote at the dictation of the political
attorneys of the railroad companies.
"
VI.-A clear writer in a Western daily, says:
"Mr. Croffut, in his recent sketch of the Vanderbilt
family, a sketch written for the purpose of belauding the
Commodore and his progeny, says that among the principles.
of the elder Vanderbilt were these: To water stock and
increase dividends. He relates with great glee how the old
hero and his friend, Tobin, put up a game on the legislature and
made several millions out of a conspiracy."
APPENDIX.
87
VII.-The Irish World says:
气
​It is well known that, here in New York and in other
States, the railways act on the principle of extorting from the
shippers of goods the uttermost penny that can be wrung from
them. It is not improbable that if the companies continue in
this robbery, public opinion will, in the end, compel the States.
to take the railroads under their control."
VIII.—An unknown correspondent recently sent me the
following estimate, which is worth studying:
"Live hogs before fattening are shipped in lots of from
100 to 130 head per car, and after fattening, in lots of 60 to
100 per car, according to weight and condition.
"If a car load of 130 hogs were shipped across the conti-
nent, they would not charge more than $600 for the car, which
would amount to about $4.62 for each hog. The companies are.
charging from $150 to $600 per car for transcontinental freight.
It costs them no more to pull a car load of hogs than any other
kind of freight. If 130 hogs were taken for $150, it would
cost for each hog only $1.16 for the trip. Now, counting the
cost of a passenger coach at $5,000, the interest at six per cent.
for one seat for one day would amount to one and one-third
cents at a cost of $10,000, the interest would be two and two-
thirds cents; at $20,000, the interest would be for one seat one
day five and one-third cents, and for seven days, or the trip
across the continent, thirty-seven and one-third cents. It would
cost as much or more than that to handle each hog.
The hog
is only charged $1.16 for crossing this great American continent,
while the passenger is charged $151.50. From this it would
seem that the hog is a favored and superior being.
'How long are the passengers going to pay 130 times the
price of a hog's passage, when they know that two passengers
can be hauled for what it costs to haul and handle one hog."
88
ÁPPENDIX.
IX.-The railway really originated in England, where it
has, all things considered, reached the most formidable pro-
portions as an institution. In 1845 the Gladstone act proposed
that the State should purchase the roads, but that idea was
abandoned, and the question in England has really reached a
state of quiescence, and a few great companies control the
monopoly of the railway business. The Belgian government
owns 60 per cent. of the railroads there, and private enterprise
owns and controls the remaining 40 per cent. The one is a
wholesome check to the other, and competition has fair play.
France was very slow in the development of railways, and not
until 1837-when English and American trunk lines were
really planned and started-did France take any movement
toward organizing roads. The matter is undertaken in France by
private companies, which are limited to districts, in which each
company is supreme and free from competing lines, but the
Government arranges tariffs, time-tables, etc. There are six or
seven large railway districts. In Germany the theory of
bureaucracy prevails. The Germans approach the problem in
a cool and scientific manner. Nearly all the roads are private
companies, subsidized by the State, or else the State is a heavy
shareholder in the roads. At any rate the omnipotent hand of
Government in Germany regulates everything about the roads,
from the freight and passenger rates, down to the provisions
for safety. It is said that the English-speaking races have
favored the idea of private control, while the continental
nations, whose governments are peculiarly strong in the execu-
tive departments, favor the State control idea. Our English-
speaking nations are stronger in the parliamentary or legislative
branches, and commissions or bureaucratic control have not
been favored. The emancipation of the track, as I advocate,
combines the best points of both the continental and the
English or American system.
APPENDIX.
89
•
X. The reader should clearly understand that State
ownership of the railway tracks would involve the employment
of comparatively few officers. For instance, the total number
of men engaged in railway service (exclusive of clerks and book-
keepers, agents, etc., of passenger and freight departments) in
1880, was 236,058, and out of this comparatively small number
many must be excluded, for, as there were 29,000 locomotives, at
least 75,000 of this 236,058 must have been engaged as firemen and
engineers. Then there were many thousand employed as brake-
men and conductors. There are now 110,000 miles of railway
in the United States. I estimate that the track furnishes
employment to less than one man per mile, so that for all the
States and Territories the tracks would, after all, not employ any
considerable number of men. The reader can readily reason
the problem out for himself and quickly see that the State own-
ership of the roadbed would not perpetuate corruption in
power. The position of section-hand is not so enticing. Again,
State ownership does not mean that all men will go into the
railway business. No more than a practical number would go
into that calling. The baker, the printer, would not desert the
old calling. (See note on page 74.)
GENERAL INDEX.
PAGE.
·
Adams, C. F., prediction of
Adams, C. F., on Erie road.
Adams, C. F., on U. P. road..
Adams, C. F., on Gould.
...
Abuses in present system.
Abuses of the past..
Anarchy condemned.
Axioms, value of..
Ambition, for what.
Artisans idle..
Appendix...
·
Appointments by State small.
Black, Jere, on justice.
Black, Jere, on roads.
...
Buckle on value of economics.
Buckle on Adam Smith...
Baldwin, Justice, on roads.
Business population.
Benefits of low rates.
•
Belgium, railroad system of.
Commission of Georgia.
Charge traffic all it will bear.
Civilization, the effect of.
Crop, where sold...
Consumers of our goods.
Continental roads..
Constitution of U. S.
Census facts..
Custom, force of
*
•
4,33
41
55.
72
171
38
13
31
22, 23
25, 27
85
19
5
40
5
5
40.
47
53
89
85
53, 33
•
21, 22
25
25
88
29
39, 24
29
Citizens, duty of..
Charters of old roads.
Census of factory sales.
Competition, true...
Commerce, Inter-State worthless.
Cornered markets....
Crime against commerce.
•
Commercial crime...
Chariots are most ancient vehicles...
29, 30
32
59
68, 69
76, 77
55
42
42
44
92
GENERAL INDEX.
Census tables...
Corthel, on cost of carrying.
Cars, capacity of...
County roads..
Cheaper transportation.
•
•
Confidence of public violated.
Constitution of Missouri.
Centralization wrong..
•
Definition of highways applied.
Dual ownership unnecessary.
Distribution of wealth..
Duty of citizens.
Definitions..
Development, not by railroads.
Discontent..
Domain, eminent.
•
Dean, Henry Clay.
Democratic party.
Degeneration of roads.
Discussion free...
-
England, roads in..
Evils of monopoly
Emancipated roadbed.
•
Easement of the way.
Expenses of railroading
Earnings of roads...
•
• •
Economy, forced on people
Egyptian roads, perfection of.
Economists on railroads....
•
•
·
·
Engineers, American Society's report.
Exchange unhampered
Eminent domain.
France, system of railways in.
•
•
• • •
Factories, number idle..
Farmers and poverty..
Farmers very numerous.
Feudalism, modern....
First principles..
Franchises, original idea of…….
Factories sell to whom.
Freight rates applied...
Fear of railway kings...
Foreign ownership of our roads.
Facts as to cost....
•
•
•
PAGE.
47
50
50, 38
35
37
39
6
13
13
45
63
27, 28
•
•
•
29, 30
30, 11
18
23
•
+
35, 36
13
13
32
12
•
•
•
88
19, 20
62, 74
66,67
50, 51
55
58
43
•
48
49
10
35, 36
89
24
25, 26
26, 47
28
30
32
59
51
•
56
57
48
GENERAL INDEX.
93
Freight, cost of carrying.
Facts, how to examine same..
Gould, immorality of.
Georgia's railway wrongs
Germany, roads of.
Gould, on roads..
• •
Gould's confession of bribery .
Hauling capacity.
•
Hudson, J. F., on railroads.
Hogs, cost of carrying..
Highways clearly defined..
Highways of the ancients.
Highways, origin of...
• •
• •
•
Highways, owners of ours.
Highways, early operation over.
Highway, what is.
Ingersoll, R. G., his ideas.
Idle people one million.
Independent trains….
•
Indifference of people....
•
•
Influence of railways on commerce
Investigation, original.
Idle factories.
• •
Inter-State Commerce bill.
Incomplete remedies..
Injury to passengers.
Joint operation of trains
Jurists, opinions of..
Justice, retributive
Law, the aid of....
Law as to highways..
•
• •
Labor Commissioner 's report.
Legislature of New York..
Locomotives, number of.
Liberty, story of..
•
Liberty, true form of.
Liberty of speech..
•
•
· ·
•
PAGE.
49, 50
15
72
85
89
39
40, 41
50, 51
28
87
42, 43
43
33, 43, 44
33
34
34, 35
28, 29
25
63
41
33
17, 18
59
75
75
83, 84
63
31, 40
5
16
31
•
25
85
89.
13, 15
15.
2328
12
55
Markets cornered.
•
Money, ambition for.
Motto of railroad men.
Men employed on roads.
Morals of Gould..
Missouri law...
Muscle vs. steam.
•
33
74, 89
.72
6
10
94
GENERAL INDEX.
Necessity, public..
Necessities, multiplication of..
Nebraska, tyrants in....
New York to San Francisco..
New York legislative reports..
Occupations of Americans.
Officers, too many
•
Over-production a fallacy.
Objections overcome……….
Ocean freights..
·
Over-capitalization of railroads.
Owners of our railways...
Prologue....
People, voice of the law.
•
·
Private ownership wrong.
Passenger rates..
Poor's Manual reports.
People, their wealth.
•
Power over transportation
•
PAGE.
18
21
86
51
54
47
19, 89
25
82, 84
43
54
57
9
16
71, 72
51, 52
54
56
59
Public use of property
Private roads...
Public confidence...
People, indifference of...
Postoffice, low rates of....
Pennsylvania road runs the State..
Pennsylvania monopolies.
Pattison, Gov., his words
•
Public necessities..
Problem, there is a
·
Poverty of masses.
Population chiefly agricultural. ·
Questions answered...
Railway problem defined...
Reason, the court of
Rights and wrongs.
Railway, what is
Redfield on railways.
Roman roads..
· •
Riding precedes driving
Robbery by roads....
•
Railway men's admissions.
Riots..
Remedies
•
35, 36
39
39
40
41
41
86
86
18
20, 21
25
26
82 to 84
11
28
31
31
31
44
44
48
·
4,41,55,72
61
79, 80
GENERAL INDEX.
95
Railway problem is simple..
Rates, rule of..
Rates, table of..
·
Restraints upon travel..
State, sphere of
Simplicity of problem
·
•
Steam versus muscle..
Sales of American goods.
Strikes
Study, a duty.
State ownership of track.
Stock, watered
· •
Swan, John, on roads..
Sweet, E. L., engineering.
Steam, monopoly of....
State courts on railways.
•
Transportation, liberty of..………..
Transportation growing cheaper.
Thinkers, duty of..
Tolls on early roads.
Trackmen, number of
Toll roads...
Transcontinental trip..
•
Theorists unnecessary
Train dispatchers' ideas….
Unbridled power……….
Under-consumption..
United States courts..
Vanderbilt's methods....
Value of roads.
Vested rights...
•
Watered stock....
Wall street fortunes.
Wealth of people.
•
Wealth in railways.
•
·
Wealth, how distributed.
Wayland's words.....
Warehouses full of goods.
•
Wright, Carroll D., report..
Welfare of farmers..
• •
•
•
PAGE.
17
33, 53
49, note
10
17,18,19,39
17
10
59
61
61
66
54
57
50
18
31,32
11
37
23, 29
32, 46
89
43 and note
51
17
63
59
25
•
31
86
56
37
54
55
56
56
27
48
24, 25
25
60
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