Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 96, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1907 — FEATURES OF THE DECISION. [ARTICLE]

FEATURES OF THE DECISION.

To lake from a corporation oue-iliirfi of its net revenues accrued during a period of violations is not as much real poweras is employed when sentence is imposed taking from a human being one day of hrs liberty. It is rhe business of a judge to administer the law as he finds it, rather than to expatiate upon the inadequacy of punishment authorized for its infraction. Common honesty among men ought not to be altogether ignored in business, even in this day. It is the substance of the thing and hot the mere form with which the law is concerned. Waiving the question of the studied insolence of this language, in so far as it may be aimed at the present occupant of the bench, the court can, of course, only leave to the discretion of the Standard Oil Company the wisdom and propriety of a $100,000,000 corporation gratuitously inaugurating agitation about the “mob.” If a carrier enters the field for traffic destined to points beyond its line and a shipper turns his property so destined over to it, such transportation is as clearly subject to the requirements of the interstate commerce law as would be the case if the carrier owned and operated the line through to destination. Motive is not material in a case where the proof is clear that it was the defendant who committed the crime. The court is not impressed by the doleful predictions of counsel for the defendant as to the hardships upon the honest shipping public to be anticipated from the enforcement of this rule. The honest man who tenders a commodity for transportation by a railway company will not be fraudulently misled by that company into allowing it to haul his property for less than the law authorizes it to collect. Under the doctrine insisted upon by the defendant, the railway company might give the Standard Oil Company a very low transportation rate and,-by contract, obligate itself to withhold the same rate from the very man the taking of whose property by condemnation rendered possible the construction of the road. It is novel indeed for a convicted defendant to urge the complete triumph of a dishonest course as a reason why such course should go unpunished. The conception and execution of such a commercial policy necessarily involves the contamination of subordinate officers or employes, even looking to the time when testimony will be required for the protection of the revenues of the offender from the exactions of the law for its violation. We might as well look at this situation squarely. The men who thus deliberately violate this law wound society more deeply than does he who counterfeits the coin or steals letters from the mail. Where the only possible motive of the crime is the enhancement of dividends, and the only punishment authorized is a fine, great caution must be exercised by the court lest the fixing of a small amount encourage the defendant to future violations by esteeming the penalty to be in the nature of a license.