... CHAPTER XIV "AMERICA had reached the point," so wrote ex-Senator Albert J. Beveridge, "where a transition from an outworn to a modern economic and social order was indispensable. For a long time there was no labor congestion - first, because there was so much work to be done and secondly, because free land constantly drew people away from industrial centers. . . . Finally this outlet was closed. Free land was all gone." Labor troubles came. There was a "general unrest among the masses of the people." Then Theodore Roosevelt became President, tackled the question and, according to Beveridge, constituted "The Roosevelt Period." 1 Roosevelt appreciated fully the task. "At this moment," he said, "we are passing through a period of great unrest social, political and industrial unrest." 2 The railroads were the largest aggregate of capital representing fourteen and a half billions of dollars, and were the most salient object of attack by the reformer. For on the old theory, they were built on the King's highway and were subject to the State. But admitting this, with a power of generalization the envy of all, Senator Lodge said, "It is the railroads which have made the rapid yet solid development of the United States possible"; they are a great "proof of the energy and intelligence of the Amer 1 Sat. Eve. Post, Apr. 5, 1919, 10. 3 Apr. 14, Review of Reviews, ed., 718. ican people." The railroad rate legislation of 1905 and 1906 was "stimulated by the aggressiveness of the Executive,' "2 and it is a proper classification to call it Roosevelt's work, although by the progress of events he was led to a more radical stand than he at first proposed. On December 6, 1904, in his Annual Message to Congress he said, "While I am of the opinion that at present it would be undesirable, if it were not impracticable, finally to clothe the Interstate Commerce Commission with general authority to fix railroad rates, I do believe that, as a fair security to shippers, the Commission should be vested with the power, where a given rate has been challenged and after full hearing found to be unreasonable, to decide, subject to judicial review, what shall be a reasonable rate to take its place; the ruling of the Commission to take effect immediately, and to obtain unless and until it is reversed by the court of review." But the House of Representatives was more radical than the President and by a very large majority passed a bill on the principle, "Resolved, That we don't like railroads and wish we knew some way to bang 'em good." 4 This is known as the Hepburn bill fathered by William P. Hepburn, a representative from Iowa, and passed the House on February 9, 1905. There the matter rested, as it was the short session of Congress, expiring March 4, 1905; therefore the Senate and the country had the opportunity to look at the question on all sides. Roosevelt held to his original position. "My proposal," he wrote in his Message to Congress of December 5, 1905, "is not to give The Interstate Commerce Commission 1 Feb. 12, 1906, Record, 2415. Review of Reviews, ed., iii. 134. 2 Washburn's Roosevelt, 129. power to initiate or originate rates generally, but to regulate a rate already fixed or originated by the roads, upon complaint and after investigation." Nevertheless, as it was a new Congress, the House repassed the bill on February 8, 1906, by a vote of 346:7. Three answered "present," and twenty-nine did not vote.2 The discussion in the Senate was illuminating. Senator Philander C. Knox said, "The framers of this bill have succeeded in producing a measure which permits an administrative body to make orders affecting property rights, gives no right to the owners of the property to test their lawfulness in proceedings to enforce them and penalizes the owner of the property in the sum of $5000 a day if it seeks a supposed remedy outside of the provisions of the bill by challenging either its constitutionality or the lawfulness of the acts performed under its provisions." Knox referred to two United States Supreme Court decisions, one of which was, "When we recall that as estimated over ten thousand millions of dollars are invested in railroad property, the proposition that such a vast amount of property is beyond the protecting clauses of the Constitution, that the owners may be deprived of it by the arbitrary enactment of any legislature, State or nation, without any right of appeal to the courts is one which cannot for a moment be tolerated." Then Senator Knox went on to say: "From the decisions of the Supreme Court it will be seen that railroads have a constitutional right to just compensation for services rendered, and that by direct act of legislation or indirectly through an administrative body, as through the Inter2 Record, 2303. 1 Review of Reviews, ed., iv. 568. 2 state Commerce Commission, they cannot be deprived of this right. They are entitled to their day in court." 1 Senator John C. Spooner said on the day that the bill passed the Senate, "The bill as it came to us from the House failed to provide affirmatively for a judicial review of the order of the Commission fixing rates. That objection has been eliminated." The Senate made such an amendment and by its other action improved the bill. It passed on May 18 by a vote of 71:3; not voting, 15. Among the yeas were Knox and Lodge. Foraker made one of the three nays. Aldrich and Burton were among the "not voting." 3 As the Senate and House disagreed, the bill went to a Committee of Conference and the report of the Committee was adopted by both houses. The bill was approved by the President on June 29, 1906, and therefore became a law. The important difference between advocates and opponents of this legislation lay in the question: Should the Government have the right to fix rates through the Interstate Commerce Commission? Roosevelt who began with tentative recommendations was finally brought to the position that the Interstate Commerce Commission should have that power. It is a quality of great minds that when they set out on a reform the bent of their thinking runs to action in the same direction and carries them further than they at first intended. I would not venture 1 March 28, 1906, Record, 4377, 4381. 3 May 18, 1906, Record, 7065. In addition to other authorities cited see Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life, ii. 210 et seq.; Cullom, Fifty Years of Public Service, 330. 3 3 Record, 7088. Aldrich was absent. The statement was made that he would have voted yea; his general pair, Teller, voted yea. Burton evidently had no pair; no statement was made in his behalf. Depew was silent. Tom Platt was "unavoidably absent"; he would have voted yea. to differ with so great a man as Roosevelt were I not buttressed by the opinion of Henry Cabot Lodge, Roosevelt's intimate and faithful personal and political friend. If one will compare the German assertions favoring complete action by the State, freely indulged in before the Great War of 1914, with Roosevelt's arguments in favor of the Interstate Commerce Commission, one will be struck by their similarity in their ascription of power respectively to the State and a creation of the State. It was asserted that the Hepburn Act led to socialism but any such result was resisted by Roosevelt. "Public ownership of railroads," he declared, "is highly undesirable and would probably in this country entail far-reaching disaster." 1 As to this result the President and the Senator were at one, the Senator referring to Government ownership as "the worst of all disasters."2 Nor did Roosevelt alter his conviction. In a speech delivered on October 4, 1906, he spoke of Government ownership of railroads as "a policy which would be evil in its results from every standpoint." "Great corporations," he said in his Message of 1904, "are necessary, and only men of great and singular mental power can manage such corporations successfully, and such men must have great rewards." "The corporation has come to stay just as the trade union has come to stay," he said a year later. "We must all go up or go down together." I have no "hostility to the railroads. . . . On the whole our railroads have done well and not ill. . . . The question of transportation lies at the root of all industrial success."4 1 Message of Dec. 5, 1905, Review of Reviews, ed., iv. 576. Feb. 12, 1906, Record, 2422. 3 Review of Reviews, ed., iii. 128, v. 837. * Review of Reviews, ed., iv. 562, 572, 573, 575. |