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& TRUTH, JUSTICE
To the President, Congress and the People of the United
States: Let Us Make America Also Safe for Democracy
| RESIDENT WILSON, with his rare faculty of
i P condensing in a single striking phrase the
i vital essence of a great issue, has called upon
! the nation to consecrate all its energies to the splen
! did task of making the world safe for democracy. By
this one war cry—MAKE THE ‘WORLD SAFE
!‘l FOR DEMOCRACY!—he has unified the great
1$ American people, raised what might have degen
} erated into a war for revenge to the high level of a
; holy erusade, and given to the millions of our young
lj men who must risk their all in the trenches the com
| fort and inspiration that they are, and their country
| and the whole world knows them to be, the cham
il pions, and, if need be, the martyrs, of a noble cause,
?r,and the central figures in a tremendous world erisis.
The one conspicuous, perhaps the only, redeem
g‘ing feature of international or civil war is that it so
: often calls forth and develops in nations and in indi
| viduals high qualities of self-sacrifice and devotion
!! which are lying aormant and unsuspected, and
‘i might perhaps have hecome atrophied altogether for
Li wanut of use. Among war’s many demoralizing and
i.destruotiw tendencies the most dangerous of all is
perhaps its tendency to distract the attention of pa
}triofiv citizens from internal perils and the oppor
-1 tunities of mischief which it affords to wolfish
lt enemies within the fold.
» In every part of the republic traitorous finan
! cial oligarchies are striving to undermine our repub
f lican institutions under cover of the smoke and noise
iof the battlefields of Furope. The Russian extrem
| ists who have tried with too much success to offset
the effectiveness of President Wilson's eloquent ap
peals, and to destroy the influence of American ex
ample in guiding the Russian people from slavery to
freedom, by proclaiming that our nation is in fact
not a republie but a plutocracy, have grossly exag
gerated their case, but in their exaggeration there is
unfortunately far too large a grain of truth. America
‘ is not yet a plutoeracy, but we have heen for a gen
eration steadily drifting in that direction, even
though in the last two decades strenuous and in a
measure successful efforts have been made to stem
the tide. America is still on the whole a democracy,
but democracy in America is very FAR {rom safe,
The nucleus and center of the tremendous finar
cial combinations that threaten our free institutions
has been and still is the private ownership of the
|| railroads. The steel trust, the meat trust, the oil
trust, the coal trust, all were made possible by spe
l cial and secret privileges of transportation which
i publicly-owned railroads would never have afforded.
,Thé colossal fortunes which dominated Wall Street,
| and gave rise to the money trust were in the main
' acquired in railroad promotions and consolidations
|| and ‘railroad wrecking. The corruption of our
; national, Statefi and municipal politics, which has
: led able and disinterested European students of our
Il institutions like Bryce regretfully to doubt whether
f our great experiment in government by the people is
, destined to permanent success, all dates back to the
‘ :g‘teag railroad expansion of the sixties and seventies,
{ when the nation, in the throes of civil war and recon
‘struction, was beguiled into the monumental folly of
i;i;andoning to private exploitation and the Credit
“M,ob~ilier the ownership of the great transcontinental
r;flrpaas built by ‘tthe loan of public ¢redit and the
gift of public lands. From that day to this, at Wash
i;g'ington and in every#tate and Territory of the Union,
‘the baleful influence of the railroads upon our Gov
?’mment has been félt and denounced by publie
Let Love Be Without Dissimulation. Abhor That Which Is Evil; Cleave to That W hich Is Gooa.—ROMANS, Xl, 9
spirited men of all political parties. As the Railroad
Commission of Georgia well said in 1881:
“Transportation is king—he who controls it con
trols everything else. Powerful in wealth and patronage,
powerful to bribe and to punish, it is already stronger in
many States than the Government, stronge® than the peo
ple. It puts judges on the bench of the State and Federal
courts. The moral and social, as well as the political, re
; sults of these corruptions are simply appalling. Their
‘ demoralization is worse than war.’’
} Or as Judge Cooley, of the Michigan Supreme
{ Court—afterwards of the Interstate Commerce Com
| mission—more tersely and less dramatically puts it,
t in his great and famous work on Constitutional Limi
; tations:
| "“Some of the great and wealthy railroad corporations
’ actually have a greater influence in the country than the
State to which they owe their corfporate existence.’’
Said President James A. Garfield, when a Con
gresman, in 1874:
l ‘'Not merely have the officers and representatives of
x States been subjected to the railways, but the corporations
have grasped the very sources and fountains of power and
controlled the choice of both omc9rs and representatives.’’
l’ And Governor Larrabee, of Towa, added, twenty
! vears later:
| "'The influence of the railroad managers extends from
| the township assessor’s office to the national capital; from
i the publisher of the small cross-roads paper to the editorial
! staff of the metropolitan daily. It is felt in every State and
| national election. The settled policy of these men is that if
'], they can prevent it no person not known to be friendly tq
‘ their cause shall be placed in public office. Their means
i of controlling legislation are, first, the election of men who
§ for personal reasons are adherents of the railroad cause;
[ next, the delusion or even corruption of wealk or unscru
] pulous members; and, thirdly, the employing of lobbyists
and the subsidizing of newspapers.”’
‘ From California and Oregon, from Nebraska,
‘ Kansas and Missouri, from Wisconsin, Michigan and
i Ohio, from New York, New Jersey, Maryland and
| Penmsylvania, comes the same testimony of the cor
i rupt dominance of the railroad corporations still en
| dured or partially escaped. Governor—now United
; States Senator—Hiram Johnson, of California, de
. clares that for more than a quarter of a century the
i Government of California was a mere part of the
| Southern Pacific Railroad Company, and was admin
| istered as a department of that great corporation,
{ The Republican State Convention of Nebraska has
i denounced “*the viefous and demoralizing attempts
| of the railroad corporations to eontrol all depart
| ments of our State government—llegislative, execu
’ tive and judicial.” 7
| And Professor Frank Parsons, whose painstak
| ing, thorough and impartial studies of transporta
tion problems have rarely been equaled and never
surpassed, sums up the results of his long experi
ence and observation in these emphatic and almost
despairing words, published a vear or two before hiss
untimely death: ‘‘ After traveling through many
lands, studying their railroad syvstems, the conclu
sion forces itself upon me that this greatest of all
| republics is the only country 6f any importance on
i earth that is dominated by industrial interests in the
| hands of private corporations, among which the
| railroads and their allies ave the chief. At the na
; tional capital and in more than twenty States T have
| studied railroad conditions. Nearly evervwhere the
' dominance of railroad influence is a settled fact, ex
| ceptin spasms of popular upheaval. The legislative
. bodies of many of the States are as wax under the
+ manipulations of these great corporations. The cor
| ruption of political machinery has proceeded al
| most simultaneously with the growth of raiiroad
« ATEANTA®B-GEORGIAN
Wednesday, November 28, 1917
combinations. Against their insidious power the bal
lot is\ineffectual and even revolution almost hope
less.”’
The American people have paid for their rail
roads over and over again, and ought now, like Ger
many, be deriving from them, as they do from the
postal service, a handsome revenue for the relief of
l war taxation, instead of finding them a vampire ever
| seeking to increase its stealthy drain upon the life
‘ blood of the nation. They have been paid for once
| in grants of more than eighty million acres of the
l best farming and timber lands of the public domain,
| an area nearly equal in extent to the entire territory
l of the thirteen colonies that formed the original
United States. If the nation had built the roads, and
sold these lands when the provision of transportation
facilities had made them available for settlement
and use, THE PROCEEDS WOULD HAVE MORE
I THAN PAID FOR ALL THE EXISTING RAIL
'\ ROADS AND RATLROAD EQUIPMENT IN THE
! UNITED STATES.~ The roads have been paid for
again in overcharges required to pay interest and
l dividends upon an enormously inflated capitaliza
[ tion.
| : As Professor Ripley states in his *‘Railroad Fi
g nance and Organization,” the outstanding indebted-
I ness of the roads in 1914 totaled in round numbers
i ten billions of dollars, of which tremendous sum the
bonded indebtedness alone exceeded the actual cost
‘ of railroad construction taken as a whole, the rail
road stocks representing no actual investment what
ever. The Union Pacifie, for instance, issued one
hundred and ten millions in securities to cover an
actual cost of construction of only sixty millions, and
the West Shore issued seventy-six millions to cover
an actual investment of only twenty-nine millions.
The typical plan upon which the great railroad
arteries have been constructed and equipped has
| been the issue by the promoters of stocks to the full
amount of the estimated cost of construetion, togeth
er with first and second mortgage bonds aggregating
more than double “that amount, so as to leave for
themselves at the windup, over and above the profits
realized by them from the actual construction, a con
trolling interest in the companies, often used to en
able them to make a market for their shares by dis
honest manipulations of operating accounts.
The original burden of overcapitalization has
been vastly increased in the process of monopoly
building by the absorption of competing lines, and
by the issue of stock dividends. Between 1868 and
1872 the stock of the Erie road was increased from
seventeen to seventy-eight millions by stock Jdivi
dends. The New York Central declared a stock
dividend of 80 per cent in 1868, the Louisville and
Nashville a stock dividend of 100 per cent in 1880, the
Boston and Albany of 100 per cent in 1882, the At
lantie Coast Line of 105 per cent in 1.()00; and the New
Haven, in its futile aftempt to monapolize the entire
transportation system of New England, swelled its
liabilities to the extent of many millions, of which,
according to the Interstate Commerce Commission,
only a few went to increase the actual assets of the
consolidated lines. And besides all this, the publie
have been forced to pay for—without owning—the
. railroads once again in extortionate charges for
| service, enabling the companies to camouflage their
| extortion by the capitalization of excessive earnings
. which the people would never have tolerated if they
| had realized their tremendous amount. From 1887
to 1911 the Pennsylvania Railroad applied one-half
| of its net earnings to the development of its svstem,
PUBLIC SERVICE %
the total of two hundred and sixty-two millions so n
capitalized being equal to two-thirds of the entire
construction cost of its two thousand miles of line.
In the ten years ending in 1900 alone, all the rail
roads taken together capitalized their earnings to the
amount of six hundred and six millions of dollars |
And to all these vast sums adroitly abstracted from |
the pockets of the public by indirect taxation must
be added the national and State cash subsidies ofl
more millions and the vast, but never computed,\aids
in money and land obtained by railroad promoters
from counties, towns and business interests along
their projected lines. .
With all this record of waste, trickery and ex
tortion behind them, the railroads, finding their self
imposed burden of fixed charges, which ought never
to have been incurred, too heavy to permit the pay
ment of fat dividends upon stocks which ought never
to have been issued, now seek to add to the heavy
war burdens of the nation a fresh tax upon trans
portation and thereby swell still further the rising
cost of all the necessaries of life. To accomplish
their nefarious ends they will certainly bring to bear
ALL THE CORRUPT AND CORRUPTING PO
LITICAL INFLUENCES AT THEIR COMMAND.
How corrupt and how powerful these influences are
President Wilson is well aware, and he knows also ||
the advantage which these treasonablé machinations ||
will derive from the absorption of public attention in ||
the international crisis. l
The time for action is opportune; Congress has
committed to him the necessary powers; the roads|
can be taken over now at a comparatively fair valu- ||
ation, far less than will be the cost if the grant of
intreased revenues enables them to launch out in a
fresh career of inflation. The enthusiastic approv
al of the great body of the people is assured.
Regulation of the railroads and other publie
utilities has utterly failed in this country. Forty]
vears ago, when Germany faced the question of |
whether or not to attempt to regulate or own heri
own railroads, Bismarck warned the German people |
that regulation was in the very nature of things anl
impossibility, and S 0 it hqs proved in this country.g
As fast as you close one door on mismanagements
and corruption and extortion of the great publie|
corporations, the eunning managers open another |
one, and thus the people are always loeking the
barn door after the horse is stolen and-holding post- i
mortems on a wrecked railroad proper: y and B
wrecked public pocketbook. '
_ The railroads today have excessive power I
without responsipility, and in human nature nobodyu
ever enjoyed excessive power without responsibility
who did not abuse it, and when you have excessive
power in the hands of a few capable of being abused
and with a tendency to abuse it, you do not have a
democracy, no matter what the forms of Govern
ment may be. We may call ours, with some truth, a
democracy today, because the people have not vet ||
lost their DISPOSITION and capacity to overturn
and control any corrupt Government whenever
they are awakened to the fact that they have such a I
Government. |
But in time people become accustomed to things, |
and they soon form the habit of slavery and lose the I!
capacity and the WILL to reassert their power and || |
to re-establish democracy. ‘i
Therefore it is that we have come to a parting !1 ;
of the ways. If we do not want these great publi«-; ’
utilities to own and control us we must own amlJ
control them. 1t