People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1893 — THE BETTER WAY. [ARTICLE]

THE BETTER WAY.

t it Government Ownership of Railroad* ie What the People* Want. Not many months Ugo Justice Field decided that the inter-state commerce commissioners Had no authority to compel Collis' P. 'Huntfpgton to bring hia railroad records into court and have them used in evidence against him. In a case somewhat similar, Judge Gresham has. practically decided that that wonderful, regulator of railroads, the inter-state commerce commission, ha| no authority to send for persons and papers in' the prosecution of railroad corporations for violations of the law. Inother words, the law is inoperative, unconstitutional. It is like a huge reyolyqrjlowjed with, blank cartridge* And our law makers knew it when the law was enacted. And the railroad corpbrations knew it, hence aid not oppose tt, and have ever since its enactment' snapped their,fingers at it The only way to make the law operative is for Uncle Sam to keep the companies', books, to run the companies' engines, to employ and superintend their Conductors and brakemen—in fact run the whole business. Ax better way is for Uncle Sum to make a new law whereby the roadbeds and rolling stock of every railroad shall be condemned and taken for public use. Then let the railroad companies go into the courts and ’get for their property Whatever they can prove it to be worth —just as an ordinary individual has to do wheh he finds a locomotive running across his meadow or through his front yard. That is the kind of law we want. We don't want any inter-state commerce cppimisslon, that is supposed to regulate railroads operated wholly by -their Owner* One might as well try to regulate a watch that another fellow oyvns and carries about with him. Government ownership of railroads is what the people want and are going to have.— Chicago Express.