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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? 9