The heart of the railroad problem: The history of railway discrimination in the United States, the chief efforts at control and the remedies proposed, with hints from other countriesParsons, Frank
History
The heart of the railroad problem: The history of railway discrimination in the United States, the chief efforts at control and the remedies proposed, with hints from other countries
Parsons, Frank
Railroads -- Freight -- Rates -- United States; Railroads and state -- United States
_Ibid._, p. 20. Glass, for example, costs 53 cents a hundred from
Boston to Chicago, while it will go all the way from Antwerp to
Chicago for 40 cents, and the railroads get only a fraction of the
through charge.
Footnote 341:
Ind. Com. iv, p. 194.
Footnote 342:
I. C. C. Beef Hearing, Dec. 1901, pp. 106–107; see also pp. 87, 88.
Footnote 343:
Sen. Com. 1905, p. 1462.
Footnote 344:
See evidence adduced in Chapter II. The words of the Industrial
Commission are still true: “There seems to be a general agreement that
the issue of free passes is carried to a degree which makes it a
serious evil.... Passes are still frequently granted to the members of
State and national legislatures and to public officers of many
classes.... And stress is often laid on the opinion that the issue of
passes to public officers and legislators involves an element of
bribery.” (Vol. iv, p. 18.)
Footnote 345:
Salaries are paid to favored persons; stock is given to influential
people; and tips on the market are given to congressmen and others
whose favor may be of advantage. And the railroads act against those
they dislike as vigorously as they act in favor of their friends. A
curious illustration of the extent to which railways will sometimes go
in their breaches of neutrality occurred in connection with the recent
trip of Thomas W. Lawson in the West. During the Chatauqua exercises
at Ottawa, Kansas, the Santa Fe advertised specials to run every day.
The day that Lawson was to speak, however, no specials ran, and
thousands of people were unable to go, as they had expected, to hear
the man who was attacking Standard Oil and its allies. The specials
ran as advertised every day up to “Lawson Day,” and began running
again the day after. The Santa Fe may not approve of Mr. Lawson’s
statements and in common with all other citizens it has the right to
oppose him with disproof, but isn’t it a little strange in this land
of liberty, free speech, and equal rights, for one of the best
railroads in the country to boycott a Chatauqua day because a man it
does not approve of is to speak?
Similar experiences with the railroad service are reported from the
Chatauqua at Fairbury, Neb., when Lawson spoke there.
Footnote 346:
Mr. Appleton Morgan, writing in the _Popular Science Monthly_ for
March, 1887, said (p. 588): “Rebates and discriminations are neither
peculiar to railways nor dangerous to the ‘republic.’ They are as
necessary and as harmless to the former as is the chromo which the
seamstress or the shopgirl gets with her quarter-pound of tea from the
small tea-merchant, and no more dangerous to the latter than are the
aforesaid chromos to the small recipients.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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