The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo FRIDAY, JULY 31, 1908. THE GREAT RAILROAD FIGHT.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 182, 31 July 1908, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo

FRIDAY, JULY 31, 1908. THE GREAT RAILROAD FIGHT.

for the cause that loch* assistance For the wrong that uetd-s resistance, for the future in the distance. And the gooa thai toe can do.

The decision of the principal railroad companies in America to abandon the Eastern and Australasian transport trade rather than publish full details of their freight charges may appear at first sight like one of the great events that spring from very trivial causes. But the causes are in reality by no means trivial. The questions at issue are whether the people of America shall nave full knowledge of the manner in which the gigantic privileges enjoyed by the railway companies are being used, and, above everything else, whether the law shall be obeyed. For it is notorious that the objections to full publicity which the railroad companies maintain so strongly are chiefly due to the fact that they are all more or less in the habit of infringing the law against rebates and preferential charges. It was on this count that the Interstate Commerce Commission last year ordered the prosecution of the Standard Oil Company, in connection with the Chicago anl Alton Railroad, with the result that the District Court imposed the record fine of nearly £6,-! 000,000 sterling. Since Judge Landis pronounced his now famous judgment, every railroad company in the United States has 'been waiting anxiously for the next I move on the part of the Washington Government, and though the Supreme Courb has since reversed the Landis decision, there is no doubt about the existence of the rebate system, or its illegality, or the determination of President Roosevelt and his advisers to enforce the law in casa of every proved breach without fear or favour. The prosecution of the Standard Oil Company was based upon the Elkins Law of 1903. This enactment forbids railroads to transport the goods of a shipper at rates less than those published by the company, and filed with the Inter-State Commerce Commission, and, further, forbids shippers to receive such rates. There is no doubt about the reading of the law; the difficulty is to enforce it; and as our cable columns show, the leading American companies are prepared to give up a large portion of their gains rather than obey it. In the Standard Oil case, 1903 separate charges of evading the lawwere investigated, and the company was found guilty in 1462 cases. The company has since appealed to the people of America to accept its assurance than it did not know that the rates it was receiving from the Chicago and Alton railroad—in other words, from Mr. Edward Harrima'n—were illegal. The freight recorded by the railroad in the .schedule filed with the inter-State Commerce Commission was 18 cents per cwt; the rate reported to Standard Oil headquarters was 6 cents. The Standard Oil directors now assert that they were led to believe that 6 cents was the normal and legal rate, and that their freight clerks or some other subordinates have been really guilty of fraud. This plea was urged before Judge Landis, who refused to insult the intelligence of Messrs. Rockefeller and Rogers by believing that they did not know that a 6 cent rate was i an impossibly generous charge as a gen-! eral average on that railroad. Nor is the ' American public likely to believe that the keenest business men and the most economical financiers in the United States were so easily deluded—to their own immense advantage—by a fraudulent clerk i or a generous railway official. It may be easily inferred that the Standard Oil appeal to the American people for "fair play*' fell upon deaf ears when it had to be backed by so flimsy an argument as this. But Mr Rockefeller and his friends were not yet at the end of their resources. The legal defendant in the case in which Judge Landis imposed the record fine, was not Standard Oil proper, but a subsidiary company —the Standard Oil Company of Indiana. This smaller combine has a capital of only one million dollars, and property valued at ten million dollars. The defenders of Standard Oil insist that Judge Landis, in fixing the amount of the fine, should have taken into account not the assets of Standard Oil itself, including the wealth of the Rockefellers, but the property of the Indiana Company alone. But this plea was urged before the District Court, and it was shown in evidence that, while the Indiana Company is nominally independent, all but four 100 dollar shares of its one million dollar capital are owned by the Standard Oil Trust. How. ever, it seems that this technical distinction between the two companies is valid in the eyes of the law. The case has gone before the Supreme Court, and the Landis decision has been quashed, and the fine remitted on the ground that the two companies were legally distinct, and the fine was therefore inequitably heavy. President Roosevelt has promptly risen to the occasion by ordering the re-trial of the whole case. But whatever be the outcome of the con. test, the story illustrates admirably th» difficulty of enforcing the law of tho land against the enormously wealthy corporations which practically control the commerce and finance of the United States. It will be readily understood that by pursuing this policy of rigid and impartial administration of. the law against the Trusts, President Roosevelt and his 1 adTiaeri nave laid themaelves open to

the most ingenious misrepresentations i . and the most vehement abuse. The charge that Roosevelt is ruining the, prosperity of the country by attacking the Trusts and the railways is ceaselessly reiterated by his enemies. But the people of the United States, who have come to understand anil believe in their President, are wholly with him; and the newspapers, except those directly subsidised by the Trusts, are coming " over to his side. As the New York "Evening Post" has said, the big trusts . and their allies, the railroad companies, have behaved all along as if they be- , lieved that "the law would think twice before damning a corporation with un- _ told millions at its command"; and it 8 does not by any means stand alone in its !_ conviction that it is a good thing for _= the country "to have arrogance of that t sort brought up with a round turn." t The Philadelphia "North American" re--2 garded the Landis decision as "righteous ;. and wholly admirable"; the Springfield > "Republican" applauded the Landis fine . on the ground that "our laws must have c teeth in them if they are to be of the . slightest use"; and scores of other . papers like the Pittsburg "Dispatch" . and the Baltimore "American," representing all shades of public and political | I opinion, concur in thi) view that it is I c only by persistently evading or defying 1 the law that the trusts and the railg roads have been able to secure the su-1 .- preme authority and the prodigious t wealth that they now enjoy. The con--3 flict between, the railroad companies and c the 'American Courts is only one phase a of the great struggle between the Plu- ' I, tocracy and the masses; and though the' t victory may be long delayed, in the end i ,-1 the people must win. I i