Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 October 1874 — A Fair Statement. [ARTICLE]

A Fair Statement.

Hon. Schuyler Golfax delivered an interesting address before the Colorado Agricultural Society, at Denver, from which we clip the following paragraph in regard to the railroad issue, which, says the TVidw'siwa/ Aa'c, presents the main points with a terseness and force that must carry conviction to all impartial readers: “iJuquestionqbly there are railroad rights as well as railroad wrongs. While condemning, therefore, any unwise or oppressive legislation toward those who have been engaged in the great and beneficent work of internal improvements, yet, wherever there is a power or a combination of powers that looms up and startles us with its vastness and its demands, it is a power that by wise "legislation you have a right, and it is a duty as well, judiciously to restrain. Recognizing fully and frankly their usefulness in developing the resources of the nation and opening vast areas to settlement, and conceding+he equitable right of their stockliolders to remunerative divitlemka on the actual cost ot construction, still, they-must understand-that they are to be, and must be, common carriers for.all on common grounds, and at equitable rates, without favoritism’ or unjust discrimination in business between places, and people and companies. Chartered by legislative authority as public highways, and compelled, in construction, to use that most important element of State sovereignty, the right of eminent domain, by which a railroad can be run against your will over your homestead Or your children’s graves on the payment >of appraised compensation, which is justifiable on account of the great public service expected, it is absurd jo say that the -same legislative authority* is powerless to prevent a company it has itself created from absolutely defeating that end at will by becoming an oppression instead of a benefit to the people. And, as turnpikes, bridges and ferries are public works, though their ownership is private, and as their rates of toll can be controlled by tjm legislative authority* if excessive, it is hard to understand why other corporations, chartered by similar legislative authority, can claim to become higher and more potential than their creator, as to exactly similar charges. For, as has been .30 unanswerably asked, if the miller who grinds wheat can be limited by legislation as to his tolls, why cannot the railroad which brings the wheat to his mill to be ground? 1 ’