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PAGE TWO
Public Opinion Throughout the Union
TELEGRAPH RATES IN AUSTRA
LIA AND AMERICA.
The Western Union Telegraph
Company, which is a particularly ob
noxious branch of the Telegraph
Trust, is sending out a circular aimed
to counteract the public indignation
aroused by the recent arbitrary in
crease in telegraph rates.
The natural suggestion enforced by
these increases is that if the Govern
ment owned the telegraph lines in the
United States, as governments own
4he telegraph lines elsewhere in the
world, we should not be garroted and
robbed every time we send a tele
gram.
The telegraph pirate responds with
a comparison between the government
telegraph system of Australia and
the corporation-owned system of
America. The Australian system cost
to construct SIBO a mile. At this
rate the capitalization of the Wes
tern Union would be $225,000,000,
whereas it is but $126,000,000. Hence
the Western Union is not overcapi
talized; hence also the American peo
ple are not robbed to pay interest
charges of ficticious capital. Further
more we are to conclude that govern
ment telegraphs are more expensive
than privately owned ones.
There is assuredly some kink in
the corporation mind that prevents it
from being honest about anything.
The circular carefully obscures the
fact that the great total cost of tel
egraph construction in Australia was
due to the building of the line across
the vasts interior desert, a wholly
uninhabited region, without food or
water, more than 1,000 miles long;
the greatest, most difficult and costli
est piece of overland telegraph con
struction in the world. The cost of
telegraph construction in the rest of
Australia was at the rate of about
one-half of the Western Union wa
tered capitalizajtion, on which the
public pays the dividends.
The same circular contains a simi
larly dishonest comparison of rates.
You can send a telegraph message
from one end of Australia to the
other, or say 1,600 miles, sixteen
words for twenty-four cents, the ad
dress and signature being counted.
The circular then gives the following
specimen of an American telegram:
New York, Oct. 28, 1906.
Hon. John H. Brown,
336 Four and One-half street,
Southwest,
Washington, D. C.
Will arrive six thirty train, Penn
sylvania; meet me with carriage.
(Signed) MRS. JOHN H. BROWN.
It says that this message could be
sent in America for twenty-five cents,
while in Australia, since the address
and signature contain twenty words
and the whole telegram thirty words,
the charge would be fifty-two cents.
In the first place, you could not
send this message in America for
twenty-five cents. The change from
New York to Washington is thirty
cents.
In the next place, there is not one
message in ten million in whiifc the
address and signature contain twen
ty words.
The average telegram contain# only
fourteen words, including address
and signature.
In the next place, to send these
fourteen words (two less than the
Australian limit) a distance of 1,600
miles would cost in America from
sixty to seventy-five cents, and in
Australia twenty-four cents.
It is too pinch to expect that men
engaged in systematically robbing
the public should tell the truth about
their methods. But there is no rea
son why any person of fairly intel
ligence should be deceived by their
misrepresentations nor by their
41 tainted news” press agents.—N. Y.
American.
ANOTHER FLASH IN THE PAN.
It is reported that the
ment of the President’s resolution
or decision, or whatever he may call
it, not to prosecute Harriman, has
materially relieved the pressure on
the market in Wall Street. Now, we
doubt whether this relief is more than
temporary, and such as it is, it is
more than likely that it is the result
of carefully prepared manipulation.
It is difficult to perceive how this
proclamation of immunity to a great
criminal who has been circumstan
tially charged with having misappro
priated to his own use —embezzeled
under the forms of law —huge sums
derived from the sale of corporate
stocks and bonds instead of applying
these funds to the purposes for which
they were sold; and who, first and
last, after careful and exhaustive ex
amination by the Interstate Corpor
ation Commission, has been ascer
tained to have deliberately violated
practically every law, common and
statutory, that exists for the protec
tion of the public, and the safeguard
ing of the property rights and inter
ests of the stockholders and inves
tors.
It would be a curious way Mkre
store confidence in banks, fo:r in
stance, to demonstrate that presi
dents, or 4 4 powers behind the throne, ’ 1
with the morals of burglars, could
secure control of their boards of di
rectors and deliberately loot the
banks without fear of prosecution or
punishment.
So far from restoring confidence,
this decision of the President not to
permit the prosecution of Harriman
will cause widespread and profound
disappointment, not to say indigna
tion.
Has it been determined to let the
real offenders —the individuals who
misuse and abuse the powers of the
corporations they happen to control
—go free, and visit vengeance for
the misdeeds of these men upon the
the helpless stockholders by imposing
heavy fines upon the corporation?
Just last Friday the Western Tran
sit company entered (by its officers,
of course) a plea of guilty to an in
dictment charging payment of rebates
(by the officers, not the stockholders),
and was fined SIO,OOO, which was
promptly paid out of the funds of
the stockholders, not the officers. The
officers were in no wise punished.
Is this ridiculous travesty on jus
tice to continue indefinitely “by
command of the king”? Will the
WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN.
precedent be established in the Sante
Fe case be adhered to?
In that case, it will be remembered,
Mr. Morton paid rbates and admitted
it. His road was heavily fined, while
Mr. Morton was not only shielded
from prosecution by an act of ar
bitrary power exercised by the Prese-
but he was actually translated
to a Cabinet.
This was sinning on tick and suf
fering by attorney with a vengeance.
It seems that Mr. Morton had ren
dered some sort of service to the
President that in his eves not only
cancelled all of his statutory sins,
and justified the arbitrary exercise,
for his protection, of a dispensing
power by the President, but entitled
him to public honors.
Have the services heretofore ren
dered by Mr. Harriman (that $50,000
contribution to the campaign fund,
among other things), and a lively an
ticipation of similar services in the
future, had anything to do with the
sudden discovery that he cannot be
successfully prosecuted for his mis
deeds in connection with the rail
ways?
There is an interesting constitu
tioiral question that suggests itself
in connection with the President’s
course in regard to these prosecutions. *
Therei ! is not a doubt that the
President not only has the power,
but it is his duty, to order the De
partment of Justice to proceed with
the prosecution in a proper case
where there has been unnecessary or
negligent delay. This is simply a
part of the general duty imposed upon
him by the Constitution to see to the
due administration and execution of
the laws of the United States.
But we know of no provision of
law, constitutional or statutory, that
vests the President, with the dispens
ing or suspending power in criminal
cases, or that empowers him to stay
or to prohibit a prosecution under the
law.
He has undoubted right to par
don a criminal after he is convicted,
but he has no right to pardon him
before conviction, and he has, there
fore, no light to stay or to prohibit
his prosecution. The guilt or inno
cence of the accused is a matter for
the judiciary and the Department of
Justice to determine in accordance
with law, and without reference to
partisan or personal services render
ed the President or anyone else.
By what warrant of law d'es the
President order these proposed crim
inal prosecutions to be stopped or
abandoned?
Does the President propose to take
into his own hands and to exercise
personally all the functions of Gov
ernment —legislative, judicial, and
executive?—Richmond Evening Jour
nal. <
TRIUMPH OF JUSTICE.
The law is very hard at times, and
sometimes the officers of the law are
relentless in their determination to
punish crime. A New York scrub
woman, who stole a cake of pink
toilet soap from an express company
has been held in S3OO bail for troal
It is said the cake of soap cost the
express company not less than 3 cents,
and it is determined to set a. whole
some example in this case to warn
others who might be tempted to theft.
The Washington Star, referring to
this case, says:
4 4 Justice is stern and swift with
those who trifle with the law and
tamper with the goods of others —in
small lots. Sometimes there are de
lays, to be sure, as when a man with
a large roll kills another man, and
fights his case from court to court,
and works off half a dozen years
with appeals, or is implicated in the
trifling offense of wrecking an insur
ance company and surrounds himself
wiht capable attorneys, determined to
preserve his rights against the im
petuosity of public clamor. But
these are merely the exceptions that
prove the rule.” —Nashville Banner.
‘‘DISCREDITING” MR. BRYAN.
“The New York World has been
working overtime lately trying to dis
credit Mr. Bryan,” snarls the Elmira
Gazette. Was there ever baser in
gratitude for years of conscientious
endeavor to persuade Mr. Bryan to
step discrediting himself?
We remember Mr. Bryan as far
back as the Wilson bill, when he was
ambitious to sacrifice a beautiful and
promising young life upon the altar
of free trade. We remember him in
the convention of 1896, when he
hurled defiance at the money devd
and the gold standard. Young, hand
some, earnest and magnetic, with a
voice like a pipe-organ and the stage
presence of a -consummate actor, not
even Patrick Henry could play more
skilfully upon the emotions of an
audience.
Mr. Bryan wove dismal economics
into poetry. He riveted wings of
song to the price of wheat. He lisped
in numbers, and the numbers were 16
and 1. The cross of thorns and
crown of gold scanned like the prayer
of Chryses to Apollo.
It was then that the World under
took his political and economic edu
cation. Eventually we tore him away
from free silver, only to see him fall
a victim to Government ownership
of railroads. No sooner had we be
gun to alienate his affections from
the Government-ownership idol than
he commenced burning incense to the
strange gods of the initiative and
referendum.
We shall wean him from them
eventually, but he will have something
else. There is usually one child in
every family that catches all the in
fectious diseases known to the com
munity. He goes from whooping
cough to measles, from measles to
mumps and from mumps to scarlet
fever. He will even develop a spo
radic case when there- is none in the
neighborhood.
That is what Mr. Bryan has been
doing for nigh unto a dozen years.
And the World, which always sends
for the family physician, calls up the
Board of Health, has the house quar
antined and helps nurse the sufferer,
finds itself accused of trying to 4 4dis
credit” a patient who has been th3
object of some of its tenderest minis
trations.—N. Y. World.