People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 December 1895 — GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP. [ARTICLE]

GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP.

The Safety of the People the Supreme Law. “Freights and fares on the government road would be regulated so as to pay a reasonable profit upon its actual value, and a corresponding reduction on other transcontinental roads would necessarily result. The rights of the government and of the public generally, would be secured, and an enormous incubus would be lifted from the people of the west. Imagination can hardly realize the extent of the relief that would thus be afforded to the hard working and poverty oppressed farmers of this territorial division of the country, and to the people generally. In the history of the human race but one statesman, in a position of authority, great enough to rise above the immoderate prejudices by which the interests of wealth and capital are buttressed, has ever appeared. His policy, though in conflict with what are ealied sound financial principles, in fact rescued Athens from the throes of impending dissolution, and inaugurated the most happy and glorious part of her history. It has been approved by all historians; and by the Athenians themselves it was justly regarded as the cause of their subsequent prosperity, and its adoption under the name of the great Seisactheira (or “shaking of fetters”) was ever afterwards commemorated as a great anniversary. The lesson that it teaches is that the safety of the people is the supreme law, (Salus Populi, Suprema Lex); and that, whatever views we may entertain as to the general expediency of the government’s operating railroads, or other industrial enterprises, they must give way to (he higher principle when necessity demands.

Tbat, in the necessity of freeing the people of the Trans-Mississippi states from practical serfdom, the occasion is now presented for the application of the maxim, cannot be doubted. Nor can it be doubted, if the government proves equal to its manifest and imperative duty, that the acquisition of the ownership of the Union or Central Pacific railroads by it, will be to us, as Solon’s policy was to the Athenians, an occasion to be forever commemorated in our history.”—American Law Review.