or pork or any of the agricultural products of the West that can be shipped to a foreign market is a relief to the farmer and helps to maintain an active demand at home. It is of vast advantage to him; it is just what he needs, desires, and must have. It does no possible injury to any interest; but on the contrary, in promoting the prosperity of that great interest upon which all others are based, it contributes to the benefit of all. Here again we see the impolicy of adopting an inflexible rule and attempting to enforce it. The conditions are so variable and complex that it is impossible to apply rigid and immutable legislation without doing great and ruinous injury to the producing as well as the transporting interests.

Such legislation after becoming a proved failure would be either repealed or remain a dead letter upon the statute-book, while the lessons of experience and the laws of trade and transportation would soon resume their normal sway. The remaining important feature of this bill is that of prohibiting pools. This I understand to be an expression to describe a combination between railroads to regulate and maintain rates. A combination to prevent natural and healthy competition and to fix undue and extravagant rates would be against the public interests, and would furnish just ground for repressive legislation.

This is a popular idea of a pool, and may be in some cases a just one. There is, however, an arrangement which is the direct result of ruinous competition and which being absolutely necessary to prevent bankruptcy is expedient and justifiable. We have repeatedly seen on a great scale railroad wars so clearly unwise and dangerous as to call for some prompt and efficient remedy. The evil to be cured is frequently caused by the building of parallel lines of road where none were needed, thus dividing the business below the paying point. Then each of several roads commences cutting rates to secure more than its share of the business, until the rates become nearly nominal and business is done at a loss.

Of course when this process is pursued long enough it becomes a question of the survival of the fittest. One or more roads which were perhaps always weak become insolvent and are placed in the hands of a receiver, but even this catastrophe may not stop a railroad war; the receiver manages the bankrupt road in the interest of the bondholders, and so long as even a small percentage is paid upon them, or if the road will simply pay running expenses, or even if the running nets a small loss, it may continue to be operated for a time. Of course this must end at last or the insolvent road or roads will drag down with them those that up to that time had been in good financial condition. But the process may be long and distressing.

It must be borne in mind that competition does not follow the same rule in industries where there is a large fixed capital that it does in ordinary commercial transactions. In the latter the merchant can stop selling when goods can not be disposed of at a profit, or at the worst without loss. He can wait, expecting that his competitor will soon either fail or weary of selling below cost, and in either case he can resume business profitably. A manufactory or a railroad can not stop without serious loss. The former has a large capital in building and machinery, the latter in its road-bed and equipment, and they each have large numbers of workmen to whom idleness means poverty and distress, and who will seek work elsewhere in case of a stoppage of operations.

The mill or railroad will therefore continue to run beyond the safety

line indicated by the results of competition. This is peculiarly the fact with railroads, because the competition is so direct, and often to a certain extent personal, that it becomes bitter and degenerates into strife. Any arrangement, whatever it may be called, that liberates these waning interests from such a position should be welcomed. It seems to me that the only cure is such a settlement as will secure a fair division of the business and equitable rates of freight. Under such circumstances ultimate combination is inevitable.

A famous railroad authority asserts that where combination is possible competition is impossible. These two antagonistic principles, like all others, may be carried too far, in which event each produces its own peculiar evils. Congress certainly will not insist that destructive competition shall continue to a bitter and disastrous end, and prohibit the use of the only means that can prevent it by a mutual agreement to charge reasonable rates.

The effect of such a law would be to destroy a large proportion of the railroad property of the country and to build upon its ruins a railroad monopoly more odious and oppressive than any we have seen. To prevent such a result I would allow the roads to make such arrangements as would protect their stockholders and would not injure private rights or public interests which are entirely compatible with such arrange

ments.

The gradual diminution of the rate of charges within a few years to their present low standard proves that this problem is being satisfactorily solved and as rapidly as the most sanguine could expect. That there are evils in railroad management which require correction is unquestionable. These evils should be corrected by some authority which can decide each case upon its merits. This authority could be exercised by a commission appointed by the General Government, which could investigate all charges of unjust discrimination and exorbitant rates and advise the parties of their conclusion. If not acceded to the commission could suggest arbitration, and if this were declined by the offending party could prosecute the delinquent at common law. The commission could also report to Congress facts relating to railroad management and suggestions respecting needed legislation.

The conclusions of this body would be sustained by public opinion, which in our country is sufficiently powerful to compel obedience to its mandates. The decisions of the commissioners would therefore have immediately the force of law, as is proved in my own State by an experience extending over many years. If it should be necessary to appeal to the law, then it would be difficult to enact a code of statutes that would apply to each case as fairly and fully and would result in such exact justice between the parties as an application of the principles of the common law.*

This famous system of jurisprudence, whose maxims are derived from and are applicable to an infinite variety of cases, is the result of the accumulated judicial experience and wisdom of many generations. It touches every case like the atmosphere which surrounds us, and is as firm as the foundations of justice; it has long been regarded with respect and even reverence by lawyers and laymen alike-a sentiment which is confirmed by the lapse of time and the accumulating proofs of its wisdom and efficiency.

Having merely indicated my objections to the bill, without attempting to argue them at length, I close with a confession of the extraordinary difficulties of the subject from a legislative point of view and

the impropriety of adopting a Procrustean method for the solution of a problem so complex, delicate, and difficult as railway management.

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Mr. O'NEILL, of Pennsylvania. I yield for seven minutes to the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. HITT].

Mr. HITT. Mr. Speaker, both of the bills pending here, the Senate or Cullom bill providing for a railway commission to regulate railway transportation, and the House or Reagan bill to regulate it by a strict law which is to be enforced by individuals bringing lawsuits at their own expense, contain many wholesome principles and excellent provisions. But the Senate bill is, I think, manifestly the most effective of good, and a vote for it will be the most practical in its results. Both prohibit unreasonable charges, rebates, drawbacks, special rates, and unjust discriminations, and both require the railroads to publish and keep posted the schedules of rates. Both contain the provision prohibiting a higher charge for a long haul than for a shorter haul over the same road. That provision, though it seems fair in words, is one which, unwisely applied, may work great hardship and oppression to the people shipping their products in the Northwest.

The Cullom or Senate bill fortunately gives a discretion to the commission in the application of this harsh provision, and I prefer it greatly on that account. It is the good fortune of the people who live at or near the termination of the long system of water ways extending from the sea to Lake Michigan and at the end of the lines of great competing trunk railways running from New York to Chicago to have, by the double effect of this cheap water transportation in competition with the roads, and by the fact of the trunk lines of roads themselves competing with one another as well as with the propellers and canal-boats in transporting hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of products, to have very low rates comparatively from Chicago to New York-one-third or onehalf the ordinary rates charged elsewhere in the United States for railway carriage. In some cases and at certain times the disproportion is greater than this.

Now, at the stations on these trunk lines east of Chicago, and eastward for a long distance, the roads charge local rates on freight going to New York higher than the through rate from Chicago. They take from a station a few car-loads; they take from Chicago ten thousand train-loads, and in the struggle for it with each other and with the water way by the lakes they carry it at the lowest possible point, sometimes at a slight loss. They get a profit from the hundreds of stations paying local rates, and this keeps them running and pays their fixed charges. Even these local rates on the trunk lines are lower than in other parts of the United States. If then by law you absolutely force them to put the local rates down to the through rate, to charge no more for the shorter than for the long haul, or to put up the through rate so that they will not be charging less for a long than for a shorter haul, what will they do? They must keep their roads running; the local rates are the life of the roads; they will, instead of giving them up, raise the through rate.

In a word, this Reagan bill strictly carried out as it is severely drawn, would result in compelling our people in the Northwest to pay local rates on their products going eastward to market. In effect it would stop them from going at all and shut us off from the great markets of the East and Europe, for prices are so low now that if you raise the

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burden of freight charges to be borne by the farmer's crop he can not send it, can not get any adequate reward for his hard labor. A meddling law, inflexibly enforced, though it may be designed with good intentions, can do incalculable harm.

It is not fair to us, Mr. Speaker, that the advantages of our position, with the lake route and the trunk lines competing for our vast trade at low rates, should be taken away by an arbitrary law. Nature placed the lakes there, and shaped the continent, and marked out the sites of cities and ports and the easy path for the construction of railways. Legislation did not do it for us, and should not interfere to mar the operation of the laws of nature and of trade. I trust this Congress will not attempt by law to compel Western farmers to pay local rates on the enormous crops of the Northwest.

The Cullom bill, it is true, also contains this provision, which seems so fair and plausible, and can do so much harm. But the Cullom bill, while declaring generally that no more shall be charged for a shorter than for a longer distance over the same line, very prudently and carefully provides that upon application to the commission the road may in special cases be authorized to charge less for longer than for shorter distances. Under that provision the commission can prevent the law from operating unjustly, especially in cases where roads and water ways compete, and a fair commission would not allow the law to be so applied as to raise the freight rates on the region lying at and just west of Chicago. The Reagan bill contains nothing to soften the inflexible strictness of the prohibition applied everywhere, and it would bear heavily on us.

It is a very strong practical reason to my mind for preferring the Senate bill which is to be carried out by a commission, that it is a system that has been tried and works well in Illinois and many other States. It is found to be a good way of practically dealing with cases of oppression by railroads, a prompt, sure means of getting a decision from the courts in spite of all the law's delay that the ablest lawyers may attempt. It is not a system of experiment, but of fact, of experience. In various States in this country, in England, in Belgium, and substantially in France, it has been tried and is in successful operation. The House bill is altogether experiment, and this is too vast a business to experiment with if we can avoid it.

We should aim at results. Voting for the Senate bill and passing it here will secure a law, for it has passed the Senate and will become a law as soon as signed. Voting for the Reagan bill, even passing it here in this House, will have no effect, unless it be political effect, for we all know it will not pass the Senate. That has been tried too often. The people want legislation to regulate railways, want a law, not bills or speeches. They demand that something be actually done that will practically answer their complaints and protect their rights. The Cullom bill is a good one even to the mind of the advocate of the Reagan bill as far as it goes, though he wants it more inflexible in its terms. Let us pass it now, and the people will all prefer this far better than talking, debating, speech-making for years about reform and never reforming.

Both these bills aim at the same thing but by different methods; one is to be enforced by five commissioners at the public expense for the public good; the other by lawsuits brought by individuals against the railroads a method that people in our region, especially poor men, do not feel encouraged by their experience to undertake.

The Cullom bill enables the poorest man, the tenant as easily as the rich farmer or mercantile house, to present his complaint in a plain way and if he has a fair case to set in motion all of the machinery of the courts with able counsel and without any expense or risk to himself, and secure redress for his wrongs as quickly and completely as the richest. Under the Reagan bill he must take the risk of a lawsuit, that may wear him out and beggar him of what little he had. Is it likely that such men will readily try such a contest? Is it not more likely that these severe provisions of law will be abused by rival interests, rich and powerful, to foment and instigate lawsuits to harass competitors, and the law merely made an instrument in the struggles of the strong to weaken and exhaust the weaker roads?

There is a softening discretion allowed to the commissioners by the Cullom bill, and it is the better for it. I have pointed out a striking and beneficial instance where it deeply affects the people of my own district. How much better this is than to fix in advance by inflexible law the whole body of rules to govern the most complex business known to our civilization and the most extensive, involving the largest amount of property and the greatest number of individual interests in the whole world. It is well to have five wise, able, experienced men of reputation, commanding general confidence, clothed with a limited discretion in applying and enforcing a law that touches every man and every interest so closely.

[Here the hammer fell.]

Mr. O'NEILL, of Pennsylvania. I now yield seven minutes to the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. HEPBURN].

Mr. HEPBURN. Mr. Speaker, it is not my purpose to attempt any very extended comparison of the respective merits of these two bills. I wish to urge upon the House such action as will result in some legislation on this question of interstate commerce. It is a question of primary importance. None other within my knowledge is regarded of more importance, at least in the section of country where I reside, than that of wisely and justly controlling the railroad corporations. I want to secure some legislation on this subject. I want to secure at least a start in that direction. I am thoroughly satisfied that if the recommendation of the Committee on Commerce of this House be adopted there will be no legislation whatever on this question. They have to-day given us, substantially, the same proposition which they have been urging upon the House year after year; and so far as my knowledge goes, it has never received in the other branch of Congress more than 11 affirmative votes. It is, with slight changes, the Reagan bill of past sessions. It has been repudiated in the Senate upon every occasion when it has been presented; and I do not believe that any of its friends of the House Committee on Commerce have the slightest hope of securing favorable action upon it in that, body.

The Cullom bill, for which our Committee on Commerce propose to substistute the Reagan bill, while it is not all that we desire, is certainly a step, and a long step, in the right direction. It will at least secure reasonable charges by the railroad companies and do away with very many evils. I admit that provisions looking to the same end are to be found in the Reagan bill, but the differences in the methods of enforcing the remedies are great. The bill of the House committee simply commends the aggrieved individual to litigation-litigation in the courts, in which all the odds of wealth, experience, and knowledge of the subject-matter involved are against him. Against these odds of