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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.