Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 April 1887 — INTERSTATE CMMISSION. [ARTICLE]

INTERSTATE CMMISSION.

A Chicago man has written to the Commission asking that Section 22 be suspended for the Chicago and Northwestern Road. He complains that he now has to pay his fare, whereas formerly he had a pass.... Counsel for the League of American Wheelmen complains that the Covington and Cincinnati Suspension Bridge Company compels bicyclers to dismount and walk over its bridge, and yet to pay an extra charge for their bicycles. The bridge has street railways over it. hence the writer assumed that it falls under the provisions of the interstate commerce act.... Several petitions have been received fri>m California business men asking for relief from heavy overland freight rates..... Representative Payson, who is strongly interested in railroad matters in the House, said to an interviewer at Washington that he was disappointed and disgusted at the state commerce law. He declared that the Commission had no warrant for the suspension of the long and short haol clause, and exceeded their authority in suspending it. The arguments upon which they acted in doing so, he said, were the same that were made against the bill in Congress, -and were then overruled. If there was anything Congress insisted on, it was that clause. He thought that at the next Congress the friends of the bill would propose to repeal the clause which gave the Commission any discretion at all in the matter, and he thought Congress would insist thf,t

the long and short haul clausa be given a trial. Geoboe Gbat, attorney for the Northi ern Pacific Railroad, appeared before the j commission and stated that on an examination of the fourth section be had reached tbe conclusion test the railroads could not J take it upon themselves to determine what constituted "similar circumstances and conI ditions.” The traffic officers and the managers of the road had prepared schedules to be submitted in an honest effort to comply with the law. He filed s petition substantially similar in purport to those presented by the Southern Pacific. Gen. William Belknap, representing tbe St Louis and San Francisco Road, presented a petition setting forth tee circumstances infiu-‘ : encing the company’s through traffic, and asked that the fourth section of the act be suspended. James F. Goddard, Assistant General Manager of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Company, was sworn, and in reply to inquiries by counsel substantiated under oath the matters set forth in the petition mentioned above. He was informed that since the new rate went into effect the steamships had raised their rates materially, keeping just enough below those of railroads to take the traffic. A. T. Britton, attorney of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, read a petition setting forth that tho road and its connections were engaged in transcontinental traffic. In an honest endeavor to j comply with the law it had put in operaj lion new schedules, which, while they in- | creased the thrdugkftates, largely reduced Ihe rates lo intermediate points. The average reductions were from 5 to 30 per cent., according to the class of freight carried. While this had not resulted in increasing the way traffic, it had entirely destroyed the through traffic. Charles H. Tweed, of New York, addressed the commission in behalf of the prayer of the Southern Pacific Railroad for a suspension of (he fourth section of tbe law in its behalf. A telegram was received from the manager of the New Almaden quicksilver mine at San Jose, Cal., the largest in the United States, saying that the present transcontinental rates shut his industry out of the New York market. The operation of the fourth section of the interstate commerce law has been suspended for seventy-five days on the Nortnern and Southern Pacific, Atchison, and St. Louis and San Francisco roads. A box factor}* at Swanzey, N. H., is to suspend operations on account of the interstate commerce law.