People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1897 — THE RAILROAD ISSUE. [ARTICLE]

THE RAILROAD ISSUE.

Fabllo Ownership of Transportation Facilities Under Modern Methods. Just now the transportation question Is in the glare of the country’s searchlight, and Populist doctrine will prevail in the examination. Sixty-five years ago, when our fathers were experimenting with steam and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company was offering a prize of $4,000 for a locomotive that would draw a load fifteen miles an hour, the subject of transportation was not a national problem. It was but a local affair. Railway companies, like ordinary business establishments, were strangers to one another, and goods in transit were rehandled at the end of every road. There were no through lines, there was no through traffic, there were no through tickets or bills of lading. All that has passed away under the operation of the law of development, says the Topeka Advocate, and now we have a judicial declaration of the law of the land —which is, in this case, also nature’s law —that no combination of private interests shall be permitted to stand in the way of the common interests of the whole body of the people. The combinations among railway and other corporations were but so many evidences of nature’s law working through the selfish interests of individual men; and not until their conduct came in conflict with public interests were they arrested and brought , before the bar of the people's court. The testimony shows that means for the distribution of the people’s surplus productions are absolutely necessary if society and government are to be maintained, that every member of the social organism is interested more or less In the interchange of commodities, and that justice requires the establishment and maintenance of uhTfiJrm and reasonable rates of charge for moving property from producers to consumers. The testimony further shows that the private and personal Interests of individual men are not safe guides for the administration of public justice. The law of the case, as it has been delivered by the court, is that public rights are paramount and that nothing is lawful which interferes with them or abridges them, and that the people In their organized capacity have an inherent right to proteot themselves as a social or political entity. The verdict and judgment will be that public transportation is the exercise of a public function, that therefore the means employed for its exercise ought j.o be owned and operated by public agents, and charges ought to be no more than for the use of other public property—enough to keep it in repair.