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“Confiscatory” because it reduces passenger
fares to 2 cents per mile.
They ask the courts to act as prophets and
to decide, in advance, what the effect of a cer
tain law will be. They ask the courts to de
cide that cheaper travel will not mean in
creased travel.
They ask the courts to decide that a railroad
must be guaranteed a net profit on watered
stock and fictitious capitalization, as well as
upon honest investment.
They ask the court to indemnify them at
the expense of the public, against all their
own mistakes, mismanagement, errors of omis
sion and of commission. They ask the courts,
in effect, to decide that the way in which they
manage the railroad is the right way, and the
manner in which they spend its gross earnings
is the best way.
They ask the courts to decide, in effect,
that a showing made today of their earnings
and expenses must necessarily be the same to
morrow, when every sane man in America,
knows that actual conditions are always
changing, and that the unprofitable business of
this year may become the profitable business
of next year, while the profitable business of
this year may lead us into bankruptcy.
So, you see, the Trainer is expecting a good
deal of the Parrot.
That word “Confiscatory” is a little bit
harder than the words, “Injunction,” “Re
ceiver,” and “Reorganization,” which the in
telligent bird learned years ago, but that’s nd*
matter: —the corporation lawyer is a persis
tent trainer, and the judicial parrot is a teach
able species of poultry, and he will learn his
lesson.
In a short while the word “Confiscatory”
will be as easy to him as it is to his Trainer.
n h n
"Funniest Thing I Th er Heard. 99
It seems to us that we have read somewhere
the story of a Grecian philosopher who, upon
seeing a donkey munching solemnly on this
tles, was so profoundly tickled by the sight
that he laughed himself to death.
We regret to report that both the philoso
pher and his longer eared brother, the donkey,
departed this life without telling anybody
what the joke was.
Consequently, each reader of the story, from
that day to this, has been left to figure out for
himself the secret of the philosopher’s fatal
amusement.
Not long ago John I). Rockefeller came
mighty nigh laughing himself to death. Didn’t
quite do it, unfortunately, but came mighty
near it. You couldn’t guess, in a coon’s age,
what it was that tickled the old man so im
mensely.
We will tell you—it was the testimony of
Edward H. Harriman before the interstate
commerce commission. Yes, sir! that’s what
it was. It made old John double up and bub
ble over, and cackle like an ecstatic young pul
let that had just scored her first success.
Harriman has no sense of humor, no con
ception of morals, no idea of conscience, no
care for so inconsequential a triviality as pub
lic sentiment. In the coolest manner imagina
ble he related how he had bonded and mort
gaged a railroad that never existed; how he
and his partners had added $92,000,000 to in
debtedness of a railroad without adding one
dollar to its value; and how he had .unloaded
worthless stock, to the amount of $19,000,000,
upon the public—stock that never could, by
any human possibility, earn a cfent of dividend.
The commisssion inquired of Harriman:
“Did you think you were justified in put
ting out $19,000,000 of stock that would never
pay a dividend to the public?”
Harriman replied to this question by asking
another:
“We never told the public that the stock
would pay any dividend, did we?”
And Rockefeller, being a past-master in
commercial rascality himself, laughed over
WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN.
this answer with unaffected merriment, ex
claiming:
“Well, that’s the funniest thing I ever
heard.”
So far as we are concerned, we can see no
reason why old John should have been so in
tensely amused unless the secret is that he
got hold of a good big block of that particular
stock, and included it all in that $32,000,000
“gift” which he made’ to higher education.
In that case, we can see the joke. The
laugh will be against the miscellaneous, obscure
givers who must put up five dollars in hard
cash before one dollar of Rockefeller’s “dona
tion” of doubtful stocks becomes effective. To
see a procession of human donkeys browsing
on thistles in that way WOULD be sufficient
to make any well regulated philosopher laugh
himself to death.
* H *
Editorial Notes.
Ex-President Cleveland puts up the poor
mouth for the railroads, saying that “the rail
roads have been having a hard time lately.”
In what way?
What is it that they wanted and did not get?
Has any big railroad thief or murderer been
sent to prison?
Harriman, George Gould, James Stillman
and Jake Schiff still hold the $24,000,000 which
they stole from the Chicago & Alton. Morgan
has enough loot left to buy another assort
ment of European “art” junk, and to pay sl,-
200,000 for it. J. J. Hill has got a “decision”
from the supreme court of Minnesota author
izing him to load up the public with another
stock issue of $60,000,000.
So it goes all round the circle of High Fi
nance. What hardship is there in this to the
railroads?
It seems to me that they are getting their
sleeping quarters right in the center of the
bed. What more could Mr. Cleveland ask?
If Mr. Cleveland had said that the public
had been having a hard time lately, he’d have
said something.
Most of the people who patronize the rail
roads have either been killed or crippled, or
scared half to death. The train that goes any
where now, and gets there on time and with
out calling for the ambulance or the hearse,
sets all the town bells to jangling.
The hospitals have been crowded as though
we were in the midst of war. As to the grave
yards, they have fattened. The fact that high
officials of the railroads are sometimes pulled
out of the burning wreck along with the com
mon victims, yields no consolation to those
whose wives, sons, daughters, husbands, fa
thers, mothers have been hurled to a horrible
death to satiate the greed of Wall street scoun
drels. . I
Mr. Cleveland says that railroad problems
are not to be settled while the country is in a
delirium, but are to be adjusted “in a quiet
hour.'* If the naming of the hour were left
to Cleveland, he would probably name some
quiet midnight hour, like that in which he
adjusted a celebrated bond issue with a Wall
street king named Morgan—a bond issue
which saddled this country with a debt of
$262,000,000, and which gave to Morgan and
his crew the gilt edged gold securities of the
United States government at a lower price
than the niggers of Jamaica were getting for
their bonds.
Woe is me!
I see that Rockefeller has “given” Mercer
University a certain sum of money on condi
tion that all the rest of us give five or ten times
as much.
Being an ex-Mercerian, I see trouble ahead.
I have got to help Rockefeller pay his share by
shelling out for gasolene and kerosene at
higher prices, and then I’ve got to go down
into my other pocket and fish up my share.
Thus, like a man standing before a brush wood
fire, in the open, on a cold day, I bake on one
side and freeze on the other.
Such “giving” as Rockefeller indulges in
causes me to regret that I have forgotten how
to write “sarkastical.”
From Thomson, Ga., I shipped one thou
sand feet of lumber to Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
The lumber consisted of undressed planks, and
was tied securely in bundles, so as to be easily
handled along with other freight in a box car,
the value of the lumber being about ten dol
lars.
The freight bill presented by the railroads
was fifty-seven dollars and some cents.
Before paying this freight bill of $57 on lum
ber worth $lO, I want the opinion of ex-Presi
dent Cleveland as to its reasonableness. And
I want him to give me the benefit of “a quiet
hour” cogitation. No delirium tremens busi
ness will fit this case.
Being in no hurry to pay the bill, I will give
Mr. Cleveland all the time he wants. If he
wants to wait till after Gabriel blows his horn,
so much the better.
In the meantime, the railroads have got my,
lumber.
Is THAT “confiscatory”? I pause, in order
that the corporation lawyers may incubate.
The delights of wintering in Florida are
manifold. One of mine consisted in paying the
Southern Express Company nine dollars for
delivering to me a case of vichy water that cost
me ten dollars. The express company could
have pulled me for eleven dollars just as easy
as it did for nine, and I have spent many happv
hours laughing at the company for missing
such a chance.
Always look on the bright side. While
others mope in Shady Dale, go thou and
prance in Sunbeam Square. When the poor,
down trodden railroads want you to pay $57
before you can get possession of ten dollars’
worth of your own lumber, don’t let a little
thing like that sour the sweet milk of your
cheerful serenity. Let them take your lumber,
while you open out your newspaper and read
the latest decision which the corporation
judges have “handed down” on that blessed
word “Confiscatory.”
And when an express company, in the ten
derness of its mercy, charges you nine dollars
for the transportation from New Orleans to
Fort Lauderdale of a ten dollar box of mineral
water, exalt thine horn, lift up thy voice in ac
cents of joy, do about and kill a bear—for the
charges for bringing you the ten dollar box
might have been twelve dollars.
In this case, the saddest words of tongue or
pen are not “it might have been.”
Senator Foraker is daring the whole presi
dential outfit—Teddy, Taft and Company—
to come over into Ohio and try to put him out
of the senatorship or the running for the Re
publican presidential nomination next year.
Foraker is not simply a fire-alarmer; he is
a fighter to whom a good hot political shindy
is as dear as a head-whacking is to an Irish
man at Donnybrook fair.
Nothing would please Joseph Benson For
aker better than to wipe up the Buckeye
commonwealth with the presidential tennis
party, with son-in-law Nick Longworth
thrown in for lagniappe.
n
T he act of the Western Union Telegraph
Companv in raising its rates of toll just now
is one of those fool feats that make one be
lieve that “whom the gods would destroy
thev first make mad.” The W. (T. T. C. has
shaken a red flag at the approaching Georgia
legislature. We w ; ll see. now, whether the
taurine Master of the Highways will stand
for the flaunt and the flagrant extortion it
heralds?
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