meled over the lakes, but where those great propeller lines are in competition with the railroad lines they would make rates or contracts in order to be allowed to make cuts which are the discriminations that are talked of and that you desire to provide against.

In order to be allowed to make these cuts, the railroads now owning them would divest themselves immediately of the ownership of the lines of propellers that have been built up for transportation, and they would leave that part of the line free and open, so that from Chicago to Buffalo, or from Duluth, or from any other great shipping point, they would take grain to the elevators at Buffalo, leaving the rate of transportation from Buffalo to be fixed by the railroad.

Mr. PALMER. Will the Senator from New Jersey permit me to interpolate a remark?

Mr. SEWELL.

Certainly.

Mr. PALMER. I would say that in regard to lake navigation it is the railroads that have brought the freights down to where they are. The lake craft are probably owned by five hundred different parties; they are constantly competing, and it is only when the railroads come down to their very low rates that the lake craft come down, and the railroads are the regulators of the lake craft rather than the lake craft the regulators of the railroads.

In regard to the lines of the different roads which the Senator speaks of, and which he says will be disconnected from the propeller companies, I would say that they form a mere bagatelle in the transportation of the lakes. The Western transportation lines connected with the different railroads carry very little freight proportionately compared with. the vast amount carried on the lakes. I believe that without the introduction of the amendment of my colleague, it would be exempt from the provisions of this bill. I do not see how the United States could take supervision of that vast freight traffic on the lakes and determine the price of freights from Chicago and from all the intermediate ports to Buffalo any more than I can understand how they could fix the price of tea and flour and sugar.

Mr. HOAR. The Senator says the lake craft regulate the railroads and not the railroads regulate them. How does that accord with the experience that when the lake craft are frozen up the railroads raise their rates?

Mr. PALMER. I may have made that a little too broad. I will say that I have seen freights on the lakes brought down from 27 cents a bushel from Chicago to Buffalo to the minimum of 2 cents. The lake craft, as a matter of course, compete with each other, but it is only the railroads that have brought freights down to the present low rates; otherwise they would combine. They will lay up a number of vessels on the lakes. As it is now it makes no odds whether they lay them up or not; the railroads carry so low that at certain seasons of the year when the railroads desire to compete for the vast traffic of the Northwest there is no money in it to the sailing vessels or to the steamboats on the lakes.

Mr. BROWN. Will the Senator from New Jersey allow me to ask a question before he resumes?

Mr. BROWN. The Senator from Michigan speaks about Michigan particularly, her lakes and railroads; perhaps the Senator is familiar with the Mississippi River and other river transportation.

Mr. PALMER. Only approximately,

Mr. BROWN. Take the case I put awhile ago, where a railroad runs parallel to the Mississippi River. The bill as it now stands does not apply at all to the transportation company running on the Mississippi River; it does apply to the railroad company and binds the railroad company, if the amendment of the Senator from New Jersey becomes a part of the bill, not to make any reduction of rate until ten days' notice. Suppose the rate from Memphis to New Orleans is 50 cents a hundred pounds, and the steamboat company on the river gives notice to-day that at 12 o'clock it will commence carrying at 40 cents a hundred pounds; that turns all the business to the boats. Then it is ten days before the railroad company can make any reduction. Suppose the next day after it makes the reduction down to the point where the boats put it the steamboat company again gives notice that at 12 o'clock that day it will reduce 10 cents more; then it is ten days again before the railroad can reduce. The result is to destroy the railroad for the benefit of the river, and there is no remedy for it.

Mr. SEWELL. The amendment offered by me shows the absurdity of attempting to regulate transportation by one route and not by the other. The Senator from Michigan [Mr. PALMER] is right

Mr. PALMER. The Senator from Georgia asked me a question; what was the essence of that question?

Mr. BROWN. The essence of it, as I intended, was, can the railroad companies be justly called on to meet such competition as that by your turning the boat loose to reduce whenever it chooses and binding the railroad company not to reduce without ten days' notice?

Mr. PALMER. I did not say it was right that discrimination should be made against railroads, but I was somewhat surprised to see this amendment introduced by the Senator from New Jersey on that account. It seems to me to be giving notice to every one that within ten days there will be lower freights, and every one will hold back his freights for the reduction. I do not see how it is going to affect the

competing lines.

Mr. BROWN. But the steamboat on the river can reduce when it pleases and the railroad company can not reduce without ten days' notice. Then the boat has the advantage of the lower rate for ten days, and therefore the advantage of the traffic.

Mr. PALMER. In answer to that I will say that the effect in my opinion would be to demoralize business. The people would hold back their freight. They would neither ship by rail nor,by boat until the ten days were up.

Mr. SEWELL. If business is going to be demoralized by this legislation, if adopted by Congress, we ought not to pass it. The Senator from Michigan [Mr. PALMER] is perfectly correct in saying that the railroads have brought the price of transportation from 35 cents a bushel charged by water transportation down to from 6 to 9 cents. It has been forced down by railroad competition. In winter the rate went up 15 cents a bushel and down in summer to 10, and in extreme exceptional cases it has been down to 6 cents a bushel. Instead of relieving the situation, when you adopt the amendment of the Senator from West Virginia [Mr. CAMDEN] you destroy the whole fabric that we have been building up for fifty years.

It is within the recollection of yourself, Mr. President, and of myself, a younger man, when the extreme limit of transportation by rail was to the Ohio River. By reason of the energy and the genius of our people it has been from time to time, and day to day, and year to year

pushed mile after mile westward by the building of railroads, by the advancement of science, and the laying of tracks, and the running of locomotives, until to-day we present the spectacle to the world of having accomplished what no other nation and no other people ever has done, of bringing grain, cattle, and other products of that kind 2,000 miles to the seaboard, and allowing the community to have the benefit of competition. No other nation has accomplished this great feat. No other people has practically ever tried it.

The capital invested in the railroad transportation lines of this country is enormous when you come to look at the figures-125,000 to 130,000 miles of railroad, from eight hundred to a thousand million dollars of the absolute savings of the people of the country for forty years invested, because it has been probably the best field of investment when applied to bonds, although that does not apply to stocks. We are told by some gentlemen in the Senate that there is a great deal of water in this.

Mr. President, when I had the honor to address the Senate on this subject at the last session of Congress, I admitted that there was water, but that water is limited to a very small percentage and limited to the lines constructed in late years, and with the approval, as we saw here a few days ago, of those very complaining Senators about water who voted deliberately to allow a company chartered lately to issue any amount of securities for the building of its road. The Senate voted it on the basis that that company should have the same privileges as those that preceded it, and that they could not compete with the previously organized and chartered and running railroads unless they were allowed to have water, as though transportation was absolutely to be by water and not by rail. In other words, that the more indebtedness you piled on a corporation the easier it was to run it and pay expenses! It is hardly necessary to talk about it, but such was the argument and such was the vote.

Mr. President, the railroad men of this country as a class are about the best merchants and the brightest minds we have to-day, and necessarily so. They have the best education of any set of men in the country. Gentlemen who occupy seats in the Senate mostly belong to the legal profession. Coke, Blackstone, are the same, and the classics have not changed. You will never build great railroads on them; you can not follow the progress of the age; you can not settle this country with them.

It takes all the elements of a great man to be a successful railroad manager; and we have a great number of them who have grown up in the last twenty five years. They must have all the education that any gentleman on this floor gets in order to equip himself as a lawyer or as a Senator; and it is but the starting point of what he has to acquire of professional knowledge in order to fit himself for his position. After he has graduated at Yale or Princeton or Harvard he has to go for four or five years to a special institute for the purpose of learning the science of mechanics, chemistry, metallurgy, and then he rolls up his sleeves and goes into a shop and applies himself to the mechanics about which it will be necessary for him to have a perfect knowledge in his business as the manager of a railroad.

At thirty years of age that young man, never having up to that time probably earned a dollar, preparing himself in every way, spending money to acquire this knowledge, enters upon his career in a subordinate capacity as a railroad man; and if he has the talent and the brain

necessary, he rises rapidly because in our country a man of thirty years of age has practically but twenty years of active business vital force in him. That man applies himself to the business of his life. He has all the knowledge that books can give him; he has all the knowledge that practice can give him. He is not a moneyed man. He does not enter upon the business of railroads for the interest of the community in which he lives, but as a matter to furnish for himself a position, and for his family, if he has any, their bread. He has no prejudice, no feeling. He is as well equipped as any man can possibly be to do as near right as any one man can. And this is the class of men you have to-day in the active management of the railroads of this country.

It is not fair to say that those men, absolutely working for a salary without any interest in the railroads, withont any dealing in a share of stock or ever going into Wall street, are going to oppress the people. They are the men to-day who have built up this country to be the great nation that it is. Without the genius and the money and the labor and the education that has been applied to getting these men into the positions they hold, your railroad transportation, with the movement of the products of the mines and of the crops, would not have been what it is to-day, and you would never have been able to reduce the cost of the movement of a ton of corn or a ton of wheat from 3 cents a mile down to four-tenths of a cent a mile or 3 mills a mile as has been done within the last two or three years and is being done probably to-day.

Mr. President, I did not intend when I offered this amendment to make any remarks of this kind. I am honest in my belief that if you are going to regulate rail transportation you must necessarily regulate transportation that goes alongside of it, parallel to it, and that is competing with it, and particularly as that transportation would be controlled by the different rail corporations and for the purposes of competition.

Mr. GORMAN obtained the floor.

Mr. PALMER. Will the Senator from Maryland permit me to ask a question of the Senator from New Jersey?

Mr. GORMAN.

Certainly.

Mr. PALMER. I would ask the Senator from New Jersey in what. way he thinks that this notification of reduction would favor the railroads. At first sight it seems to me it would be different.

Mr. SEWELL. I have not said it would favor the railroads. I want to have a bill that would relieve us from some of the charges which are made. This is the worst part of this bill. We make rates to-day and you put the railroad companies to the trouble of making their rate-tables and posting their rates. Then you should provide that they should not be cut the very next day by one of these same corporations without notice. They should last for a period of at least ten days. I would prefer that the period should be thirty days to give some stability.

Mr. GORMAN. Mr. President, the amendment suggested by the Senator from New Jersey is one that seemed to the committee who examined this subject to be worthy of careful consideration. There is a popular impression that a provision of this sort should be inserted in this bill. Hence we gave the matter a very patient and careful consideration. I think I am justified in saying that every member of the committee, after hearing the arguments on both sides, came to the conclusion, which I do not believe will be questioned by any of the experts who were before us, or by any of the large shippers who have given the mat

ter consideration, that an amendment such as is now suggested would be absolute destruction to all the American roads for the benefit of the Canadian lines. We may not be able to control the Canadian lines, notwithstanding the passage of this bill. They may still have it in their power to give a drawback or rebate of from 1 to 5 cents a bushel, which would take from our roads all the profit which they make from Chicago to the seaboard.

The people of this country are amply protected when they require the railroads to publish to such extent as the commission may determine their tariff of rates, which shall be uniform, and every shipper shall have notice of that tariff, whatever it is. Now occasions occur frequently, sometimes daily, where a reduction is absolutely necessary and should be made on the instant. For instance, by cable comes the notification that grain will be taken in Liverpool at such a rate to meet the competition of Indian grain. The question must be determined at once whether we will accept that rate or not. If it is to be accepted,

it can only be by making a lower rate of freight.

The bill provides that when the railroads make that reduction so as to secure such results, that reduction shall be uniform to all shippers. Therefore the public is amply protected, whereas if you required companies to give a notice of ten days before the reduction can be made the water routes and the Canadian routes would be enabled to embarrass our roads so that they might be bankrupted. The public is amply protected by the publication of the rate.

Mr. SEWELL.

Mr. GORMAN.

Allow me to interrupt the Senator.
Certainly.

Mr. SEWELL. The Senator thinks the American roads are amply protected by this bill as it now stands.

Mr. GORMAN. Yes, Mr. President, I do, with the bill in the form in which it comes from the committee, and in which it stands as amended to-day, with the exception of the one amendment offered by the Senator from Rhode Island [Mr. ALDRICH].

Mr. SEWELL. Will the Senator inform me how that protection is to be extended? How do you carry it out? You have a branch of a Canada road to Chicago, and you have a road in Maine which forms the other link on our soil. These two roads come in and they file their rates from Chicago. What is there in the bill to prevent the Grand Trunk in Canada outside the United States from giving a drawback ? Nothing.

Mr. GORMAN. That is true; there is nothing in the bill that would prevent that. The bill would leave the American roads in the same condition to compete with the Canadian roads that they are in to-day. They meet that by making instantly a reduction whenever it is necessary to meet the competition of the Canadian roads or the water lines. But now the Senator from New Jersey comes in and says by his amendment that our roads shall not make this reduction to meet the Canadian competition and the water competition, unless they give ten days' notice. Under that one half the freight would be gone.

Mr. SEWELL. I intend to follow this amendment by a provision under which the Grand Trunk road would be controlled. This amendment was drawn at a time when it was supposed, and it was based on the idea, that the water lines would also be controlled, and that we should have some permanence of rates, which is what we want to establish.

Let us have the American lines, the Canadian lines, and all trans