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I
Discrimination
by Railroads.
address •
— BY —
Hon Robert E. Pattison,
GOVERNOR OF PENNSYLVANIA,
BEFORE TUE
Institute ^ú (^Bnei^al FarmBr^' ConVBntion,
HEDT> AT
LOCK HAVEN, CLINTON COUNTY, PA,
January 21st, 1886.
IIARRISBURG ;
EDWIN K. MEYEH8, PKINÏEH AND HINDER.
1886.
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BISGEIMIIATIOlí BY EAILEOABS.
PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
Farmers' Institute and General Farmers' Convention,
Lock Haven, Clinton County, Penn'a,
JANUARY 21, 1886.
—
Govemor Robert E. Pattison, being introduced, said :—
The most important economic question presenting itself for de"
cisión to-day is the prevention of discrimination by common car¬
riers. It is by no means a new question, and it is more prominent
now than at any past period, simply because its evils, with the
growth of years, have increased so enormously that they can no
longer be hidden or denied. But anti-discrimination is the most
important economic problem of the day, for the reason that its
evils are the most wide-spread, and afñict the masses of citizens
least able to bear or resist its injury, namely, the consuming and
small-producing class. In this latter, I include farmers, the most
numerous body of producers in the country. Another and a prin¬
cipal reason why this question ranks as the first demanding solu¬
tion is, that it has been and is the parent of a long line of evils
that, but for it, would hardly be possible. The immediate wrong
of railroad discrimination is as nothing compared with the social
business and industrial inequalities it has created and fostered. It¬
self -a result of monopoly, it has, by a natural inevitable law, en¬
gendered monopoly. Indeed, discrimination might, with perfect
accuracy, be defined as the unlawful act of a monopoly, whereby
it creates and ¡protects other monopolie.s. Or, by analogy, it might,
with equal truth, be termed a railroad tariff protection—an act of
di.scrimination by which one producer is charged a greater rate of
freight than another, in order that he cannot sell cheaper than the
other, (as, if they were on a perfect equality, he might,) is the prin¬
ciple of tariff protection carried into freight charges—with this
difference, that, in one instance, the discrimination is by the Govern¬
ment and against an alien, and in the other by private, selfish, and
irresponsible speculators, and against a citizen entitled by law to
equal treatment with every other citizen. Discrimination benefits
the few at the expense of the many; it enriches organized capital
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ami large producers to the impoverishment of ¡jrivate capital and
small producers; it fosters corporate speculation to the destruction
of individual enterprise ; it builds up great fortunes in a few, and
reduces to the ranks of dependent laborers masses of men that
would otherwise enjoy the fruits of their industry in enterprises of
their own. One need not travel outside of Pennsylvania to find
illustrations for all these evils. Pennsylvania has been an especial
sufferer from all these injuries. Railroad discrimination built up
and established the Standard Oil monopoly, by which a source of
natural wealth, illimitable and marvellous, was entirely deflected
from our State. Thousands of citizens were bankrupted, and in¬
dividual enterprise was driven from the oil regions. But for dis¬
crimination. the Standard Oil Company would not be in existence
to-day. We shall estimate the wide-spread evil this single creature
of discrimination has caused. Not alone has it taken the oil in¬
dustry from Pennsylvania and private enterprise, but jt has taxed
the consumers of the country for its benefit, has debauched Legis¬
latures, has corrupted the avenues of justice, has mocked the law,
and is stretching out its arms in every direction to monopolize other
sources of wealth and means of supply. Discrimination has made
Philadelphia, at one time the first commercial city in the Union,
and still with the highest manufacturing resources, little more than
a mere annex to New York. Those great beds of anthracite coal
which seem to have been reserved by nature to make Philadelphia
one of the chief industrial and manufacturing marts of the world,
have, through discrimination, been made to burden her citizens
and retard her development. Discrimination has built up here and
there, throughout the State and country, along the lines of rail¬
roads, populous towns that are tliQ seats of enormous iron, steel,
and other works, that have enriched their owners and interested
railroad officials, but have peopled those cities with a mass of de¬
pendent laborers who live from hand to mouth, who are thrown
out of work at the will of their employers, and who can hope for
nothing but the merest necessaries of life in their existing social
condition. Railroad discrimination has given to the New Republic
a line of princely railroad nabobs and lords of the soil, with for¬
tunes that out-rank royalty, and domains of virgin soil that exceed
in area a German State. But it has given us, too, in little more
than a generation, a mass of restless and discontented laborers,
often eating the bread of idleness, and clamoring for concessions
from a few great employers. It has reduced the owners of farms
in number until they are a million less than the tenant farmers,
and everywhere it has tended to centralize wealth and increase the
ranks of dependent labor. It may be said that many of these
evils resulted from other causes than discrimination, and that it
alone should not be charged with faults that are the outgrowth of
many causes. This, however, is taking but a superficial view of
the subject My position is that had railroad corporations acted
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as the just public trustees, which in law they are, and not as private
enterprises managed by selfish speculators—had they used their
franchises fairly, justly, and impartially—had they confined them¬
selves to their duties as common carriers—had they obeyed the
laws and not corrupted Legislatures, judges, and Executives to en¬
able them to defv the laws—the greater part of the evils that I
have enumerated would not now exist
It is unnecessary, however, at this day, to prove that discrimi¬
nation is an evil. That it is, is admitted by every one but those
who profit by it. The question is as to what is its proper remedy.
The number of those who defend or excuse it is so small as to oe
unworthy of consideration. The times are ripe for redress and
correction. But what will work the redress—^^what will correct the
evil ? There are those who say that the true remedy is more rail¬
roads. Competition, they say, will put a stop to monopoly; there¬
fore, give us more railroads. This argument, applied to railroad
injustice, has recently, in the State, been put to a severe test. In
the hope that by the application of this doctrine Pennsylvania
might get some relief fi-om the monopoly of her great trunk line
and its continued injustice, I was induced, in 1883, to sign the
bills which made possible the construction of the South Pennsyl¬
vania raih'oad, which, it was raid, would give our citizens another
western and seaboard outlet A partial result of the experiment
is known to the world to-day. The people of our southern tier of
counties particularly have learned a bitter disappointment—the
hollowness of the promises of organized capital to redress the
wrongs of another organized capital. The South Pennsylvania
railroad is, to-day, claimed as the property of the corporation of
which it was projected to be the rival. Against law and justice,
in the face of plighted faith and popular protest, an effort was made
to sell it out,—to strengthen and establish the power for evil of the
vast corporation that had so far proved itself stronger than courts
or Executives, Constitutions or the people. If will soon be ascer¬
tained whether its lawless supremacy is to be perpetual. The
opinions of the Dauphin county court, recently filed in the railroad
cases, are full of encouragement to the people if they do but ap¬
preciate them. They strengthen greatly the efforts of those who
are laboring for the supremacy and enforcement of the Constitu¬
tion. They are robust and masculine in tone and in the treatment
of the great subject to which they relate. They are singularly
free from the fitness of mere lawyer minds, and are wonderfully
strong, because of their frankness, simplicity, and directness. The
failure thus far, however, of that attempt to correct railroad dis¬
crimination, by the erection of another road, has gone far to prove
the hopelessness of the people ever deriving any relief from such
means. It has proven that corporate capital is everywhere alike,
animated by the same pui-poses, controlled by the same influences.
Though corporations may, for a time and for selfish purposes.
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resist the iniquities of cacli other, it is only for so long as it is ne¬
cessary to strengthen each other for great or public wrongs; and
tlien tliey make common cause, and join hands against the people.
" Set a tliief to catcli a thief" does not apply to corporations. You
only set loose two thieves instead of one to prey upon the public.
I am convinced, after long reflection, that there is only one sure
remedy left for the people of Pennsylvania, and that is to enforce
the existing laws of the State by penal statutes. It must be made
a crime, punishable by the imprisonment of the officials, for rail¬
road officials to break the law. Since all other efforts have failed,
I am now for trying the efficacy of the prison law. And why not?
You would punish a county official who stole your taxes, hy put¬
ting him in prison. You would send to the penitentiary the pri¬
vate trustee who corruptly profited by his trust. And why shall
not the publie trustees of railroad corporations be jailed for robbing
the citizen and oppressing the community corruptly ? There is no
trouble at all about the laws so far as they declare the rights and
duties of tlie people and the railroads. The seventeenth article
of the Constitution needs no addition or amendment. It is suffi¬
cient in all its parts to correct every evil of railroads from which
the people now suffer, if it be enforced. It is just,' true, lawful.
It is legally and equitabl}' sound in every member. It simply
needs honest legislators to pass the laws to enforce it and pure
judges to interpret those laws. Let the next Legislature pass a
statute simply making it a penal offense, punishable by imprison¬
ment, to violate the provisions of the seventeenth article, and let
a jury of honest men pass upon the fact whether that article has
been violated under the instruction of unsubsidized judges, and
from that day we will have law-obedient railroad corporations in
Pennsylvania. It is useless to listen to the sophistry of paid rail¬
road attorneys, either in the Legislature or out of it, about the diffi¬
culty of drafting'a penal statute based upon the seventeenth ar¬
ticle. There is scarcely a section of that article that is not suffi¬
ciently descriptive for a penál statute. Leave it to a jury to say
whetlier the South Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania railroad
were parallel and comj^eting lines, and twelve honest men would
convict the conspiritors who concocted the "sell out," without
leaving the box, and an upright judge would send them to the
penitentiary before the court adjourned. What difficulty is there
about a jury finding whether a pass given, to a legislator or a judge,
and for which he gives no tangible return, is a free pass or not?
Where is the trouble about a jury finding whether mining coal is
the business of common carrying? And so of all the sections of
the seventeenth article. Merely attach the penal clause to each
of them, and leave the rest to a jury and an honest court At
least let us try this just for a while. Honest men, honest railroad
ofiScials, would not fear such laws ; and as for dishonest ones, we
simply want that there shall be some laws they will fear.
ERRATA.
On page 2 în. Une 14 from top, rencl "Wlio " for " VVe."
On page 3 in line 8 from botfran, read ■' finesse " for " fitne«!.
On page 4 in line 2 from top, read " greater " for " great or."