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

RAILROADS COMBINE.

THE DAY OF RECEIVERSHIPS PASSING AWAY. In ft Few More Veer* All the Railroad* of the Country Will Be Owned by a Half Dozen Great Syndicates, Perhaps Fewer Than That. “A prominent railroad attorney said yesterday that the day of receiverships for railroads is fast passing. Every change now lessens the number of railroads through consolidation and strengthens them financially. In New England, the New York, New Haven & Hartford was securing most of the roads in those states; west of New York the Vanderbilts, the Pennsylvania company and the reorganized Erie are taking in all the small roads; in the Central states the Big Four and the Brice syndicate are helping the Pennsylvania to cover all the Central Traffic association territory;, in the South the Southern Railway company is gathering in everything in sight; in the West the Pennsylvania and the Vanderbilt lines are steadily getting better hold, as in the case of Chicago & Northwestern and the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. The Gould syndicate is getting a strong hold on the Southwestern lines, and Huntington on the Pacific coast lines. From, this it will be seen that in years to come the demand for receivers will be limited to a very small mileage of railways.”— Indianapolis Journal.

The above tells a tale that is worth the noting and the prophecy therein is eminently sound. In a few more years all the railroads of the country will be "owned by half a dozen great syndicates, with a tendency to grow to even a fewer number than that. These will be called systems. It is only a question of time when all the smaller roads, and even. the single lines that are rich, will be swallowed up. They can’t hold out against the gigantic systems.. These will be practically under one presidency, by virtue of ironclad agreements aS to rates. A hint of this is furnished by what is called “The president’s agreement,” now in process of formation in New York. The bosses of the great systems are engineering this deal and the object is to compel a universal compliance with a fixed tariff for passengers and freight. It was to this that Senator Chandler called the attention of the inter-state commerce commission in a remarkable letter which was reproduced in these columns. If perfected, and no doubt it will be, it will get around the antipooling clause of the inter-state commerce law, and that in fact is its prime object. Huntington, of the Southern Pacaflc, said in an interview some years ago that it would be better if there was only one president for all the railroads in the United States. His order would be law for all, and there could be no cutting of rates by competing lines. Here you have the spirit of what the populists contend for, only with the wrong head to it. There ought indeed to be only one supreme control for all the railroads, but that should be the people acting through the government at Washington. The railroads themselves, by processes described above, are gravitating that way, and in time it will be found absolutely necessary to take charge of them or abdicate the government in their favor. This is an immense question, and it can only be settled right in pursuance of the transportation plank of the Omaha platform. Just as trusts are proving the advantages, as well as the absolute necessity, of co-operating in great enterprises, and thus foreshadowing the co-opera-tive commonwealth, so the railroads, by forming these systems and reducing the number to the smallest possible compass, are showing that the mighty transportation interests of this muntry cannot be left to cut throat competition of hundreds of lines, big end little, but for their own efficiency as well as the public welfare, demand central control. This we call government ownership. They call it the formation of a trust where a few men are to have the undisputed control of all the highways between the oceans. —Nonconformist.

The following from a prominent republican paper, the Atchison Champion, indicates how Kansas was “redeemed” last fall: There is no good reason for attempting to conceal the fact that if a state election occurred in Kansas next month with the same candidates and the same feeling that prevails to-day, the present administration would be in a minority of many thousand votes. * * * There is no longer an 80,000 republican majority in Kansas; nor is there even a 50,000, or even a 30,000 majority over a united opposition. Indeed, if things keep on going as they are now, there will be no majority at all. There is much more in the contest next year than to provide bread and butter for hungry republicans, no matter how deserving they may be. * * * Public offices as gifts of the party in power, have crippled the present administration, and its broken promises and unkept obligations have made the men in office the target for much malice, mendacity and hate. If the republican party exists only by grace of the fellows in office and the fellows who are sore because they are out of office, the funeral program for the party in Kansas had better be arranged for at an early date. The body the temple of the living God! There has always seemed to me something impious in the neglect of personal health, strength and beauty. —Charles Kingsley.