That the condemnation of the rates south of the Ohio River by the Western roads rests upon the best of grounds no one will doubt under the disclosure of the following facts: In a suit of the Cincinnati and Chicago freight bureaus before the Interstate Commerce Commission, brought in 1891 to require the roads to reduce the rates from the West to the Southeast, which case was decided by the commission in favor of complainants, but nullified by the Supreme Court's decision, which held that the act to regulate commerce does not empower the commission to prescribe rates which shall control in the future, on the testimony introduced the commission found in substance the following facts: That the rates on manufactured goods from Eastern territory to Southern territory, and those on the same classes of goods from Western territory to Southern territory are so fixed or adjusted with reference to each other as to give to merchants and manufacturers in Eastern territory (a line drawn from Buffalo, N. Y., to Wheeling, W. Va., is the dividing line between Eastern and Western territory) an "undue or unreasonable preference or advantage" over those in Western territory, and consequently subject the latter to "undue or unreasonable prejudice or disadvantage" with respect to the former when they meet in competition in Southern markets.

The injury resulting from the relation of rates from Eastern and Western territories to the Southeast is one that falls both upon the merchants and manufacturers in and shippers from the West, and upon the merchants, manufacturers, and consumers in the Southeast. It was found, further, that an agreement had been entered into between the Eastern and Western lines through the medium of the Southeastern lines (my own opinion is that it was under the dictation of the Southeastern lines, for they practically controlled the situation), the purpose of which was to let the West supply the food products-that is, grain and its products and packing-house products for Southern consumption-while all manufactured articles and notions should be supplied from the East. The agreement for this division of business was first entered into in 1878 at a convention of the Eastern and Western lines and those of the Southeast.

At the period the Western lines consented to and became a party to this contract there were but few manufactured articles in the West. In a very few years, however, the conditions were materially changed. While formerly agricultural products had constituted a large excess of the western business, the proportion of manufactured articles, especially all articles of wood manufacture, such as furniture, wagons, carriages, etc., and boots and shoes, clothing, saddlery, harness, agricultural implements, and all articles of iron manufacture, had been steadily growing. It was this new development which caused the roads north of the Ohio River to protest against the excessive rates applied by roads south of the Ohio River on business from the West and to demand an entire re-forming of the rates. Their (the roads north of the Ohio) condemnation and denunciation of these rates was as pronounced and emphatic-more so, in fact, in the case brought by the cities of Chicago and Cincinnati in 1891, referred to in the foregoing as it has been in the suit recently brought by the bureau of freight and transportation of Charleston.

But the arrangement into which the Western roads were entrapped in 1878 has been perpetuated from year to year, until it has become apparently as immutable as the laws of the Medes and Persians. It

has reached that petrified state where they (the Western lines) characterize it as a stone wall, which they can do nothing to break down, in whole or in part. I have placed before you the statements of prominent representatives of roads north of the Ohio River that the continuous attitude of those roads has been for years to break down at the Ohio River the wall which is deemed by those roads to be a great wrong, not only to them, but to both the West and the Southeast. It should be plain to you, therefore, that we are not the only accusers, shriveling up, as we are, under this unjust system.

The arraignment of the rates of roads south of the Ohio River by the roads north of the river, which feel that the Southeast and the West ought to be bound together in commercial fellowship, is just as severe as that made by us. And the fact must be patent to you that it is only the bigotry of the managers of the lines south of the Ohio River that prevents the adjusting of the old institution of rates to the new conditions. The railroads south of the Ohio River are responsible, if not for absolute commercial severance of the Southeast and the West, at least for placing a limitation upon the amount of trade that shall be done between the two sections. If the railroads of the country can and do, as an abstract proposition, bind it together, in truth, with hooks of steel, so too, as is here shown, they can and do, in a commercial sense, rend its sections asunder when they will.

Another fact that I desire to bring to your attention is that, by the exorbitant rates charged south of the Ohio River on provisions from the West to the Southeast, the roads are responsible for a tax upon the people of the Southeast of from 5 to 6 per cent above the cost of living in the State of Virginia, the testimony in the Charleston case having shown that the difference between the rates on provisions from the West to Norfolk and Charleston, equidistant from the West, is two wholesale profits on the goods in favor of Norfolk. This proposition I would not make did I not know that it could be successfully maintained. It shows as plainly as anything could how vital are all these questions of railroad freight rates when the full effect and bearing of the rates prescribed are brought out.

Some conception may be had of the tax imposed by the railroads on the Southeast for food products when the statement is made that at the hearing of the suit of the Charleston Freight Bureau before the Interstate Commerce Commission it was proven, and is a matter of record in that suit, undisputed by the railroads, that grain was carried from St. Louis and Kansas City to England through Charleston at a less rate than the cost of transportation from those cities to Charleston. It was transported to Liverpool at a rate of 24 cents from Kansas City, and from St. Louis to Manchester, England, at a rate of 23 cents, while the rate from Kansas City to Charleston was 34 cents and from St. Louis to Charleston 28 cents. I can add nothing to the denunciation contained in that record in its unanswerable arraignment of the rates charged by the roads from the West to the Southeast. Whatever may be the pressure to get rid of the surplus grain going out of this country, there has never been, nor can there ever be, warrant for the railroads making rates to feed the people of a foreign country at a less price than that at which the inhabitants of this country, at the port through which the grain passes, are fed.

Upon the question of the railroads undertaking to sever different sections of the country and hinder the freest commercial intercourse,

the views of Mr. J. P. K. Bryan, an able and profound lawyer, counsel for the Charleston Bureau of Freight and Transportation, as announced before the Interstate Commerce Commission in the bureau's suit heretofore referred to, deserve record here. They are worthy of your closest study.

"Now, those are the astounding facts. They bear upon the great question, which is a fundamental question, here in all these freight cases. Every one of them is founded on the fundamental principle when wrong is complained of under the Constitution of the United States that is, that there is not only political equality, that abstract thing of equal civil right for each individual and State, but there is a fundamental conception of commercial equality as between these States and as between these sections, communities, cities, and individuals. It is the intimate bond of commerce. Historically it was the very origin of the country as it is, as against a confederation that lacked the cement of a commercial union. It was that bond of commerce that made the new Union and the Constitution. It is that bond of commerce that keeps alive this nation. To break it, to make it unequal, to discriminate as against localities or against individuals, is disunion. It is a grave crime against the organic life of a nation to separate section from section, locality from locality, individual from individual, either breaking or keeping asunder the bonds of commercial fellowship in this country. It was the bond of commerce, that which nursed it to life, the concrete life and power of the people in trade and fellowship. It is that which preserves this Union-the commercial bond of fellowship. That is the reason why all these questions are so vital.

"I say that that picture as we see it on that map [pointing to map in the case], and as we see it in these tariffs against Charleston, is a picture without a parallel in the history of rates in this country. I say that if the framers of the Constitution that made commerce the bed rock of this Union, in distinction from the old commercially useless Confederation, could have imagined the United States Government itself to have made such a decree; if they could imagine any State itself to have made such a decree, or that such a principle could have operated to dry up one section of this Union, it would have been to them a spectacle in advance of severance of sections, of disunion, and subversive of the fundamental principle on which the commercial union was founded. This wrong which is here as a decree imposed on our section, sapping its lifeblood, is a thing which the Colonies themselves were powerless to effect, even in their jealousies and discriminations. I mean the setting up centers of trade and determining that trade must go in this direction, determining that it shall not come by the natural route to the sea. It was the one thing, the prevention of which was insured perpetually by the formation of the perpetual commercial union. And yet these roads, these railroad systems in combination, as we have shown you in the old Southern Railway and Steamship Association and its successors, and also in the present Associated Railways of Virginia, through the decree of these rates, producing this result, have done in effect this very wrong against that Constitution, which no State could have done, and which Congress itself could not have ordained without violating the Constitution. And yet these railroads, State and interstate, are nothing but the delegated agents of sovereignty of the State and the United States. They are the turn

pike with extended powers, and nothing more. If we place in the old time a wagon at Chicago, proposing to go to Norfolk by the public highway, and the toll is 50 cents-goods and wagon go over the King's highway for 50 cents, 1,000 miles to Norfolk, across the mountains and down to the sea. What is the toll over the King's highway for same wagon and goods to Charleston, the same distance over the mountains and plains down to the sea? One dollar!

"There is no principle you can summon to justify the delegated agent of that sovereignty standing over that public turnpike-the modern railway, the highway of the people-charging over like roads, under the same conditions, a double rate on the same goods. There is no refinement of logic that could possibly justify it. That system is the artificial and cruel system we have shown you here that artificial and cruel system that says you shall not be a center of trade. It is a railroad decree that these Virginia cities shall be the distributing centers of the Southeastern section; a railroad decree that wipes out State lines and proclaims itself greater than the power of States; a railroad decree that subverts the principle of the United States Constitution and is greater than the Constitution. I say there is nothing but this artificial system, a thing that goes to pieces as soon as you touch and analyze it."

It is undoubtedly necessary for the proper conduct of the commerce of the United States that there should be some intelligent and responsible body empowered by the United States Goverment to fix, adjust, and decide rates and all questions arising on complaint between railroad carriers and shippers. At the time of the passage of the interstate-commerce act the universal belief was that Congress intended to give the commission such power. But the act having been construed otherwise by the courts it now devolves upon Congress to remodel the law so as to give to it the force originally intended. The rehabilitation of the commission has already been too long delayed, and it is not too much to say that the people throughout the length and breadth of the land begin to feel that their patience has been abused. The number of those reaching this conclusion who have given to the law deliberate and conservative consideration, analyzing it from every point of view, taking it in every possible bearing, is legion. In that number are many of the closest students of political and social economy, and many of the most profound lawyers in the country. The conclusion of these persons and of the masses generally after twelve years of experience with the law is that in its present impotent condition it is a burden upon rather than a help to commerce, and that the powers of the commission should either be enlarged to the extent provided in the Cullom bill or it should be entirely abolished.

Has any member of this committee or of Congress the courage to hold and declare that the law should be destroyed rather than its force enlarged as is universally demanded? The operation of the present law is forcibly suggestive of Rabelais's satire of four centuries ago depicting in Judge Bridlegoose the court procedures of that day, with all their procrastinating and burdensome proceedings, defeating, rather than promoting, the ends of justice, the determination of suits being held back upon the theory "that all things ripen and mature of themselves if long enough time is allowed." In the prosecution of Interstate Commerce Commission cases we have progressed but little beyond the legal proceedings of four hundred years ago.

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Under the present dispensation of things a suit must be tried before the commission, then in the circuit court, circuit court of appeals, and the Supreme Court of the United States before a carrier can be compelled to grant relief to an aggrieved shipper, and the time consumed has ranged from two to nine years. A suit brought eight years ago by South Carolina parties (the Behlmer case) has just been remanded by the Supreme Court for a new trial, and in this case unusual effort was made by the plaintiff to bring it to a conclusion. He died, however, about six months before the decision of the Supreme Court was rendered. There can be no stronger commentary upon the inefficiency of the present law, with all its attendant delays, than is contained in this case. These delays, it should be stated, are caused by the dilatory procedure in the courts, resulting from the entire new trial in the courts conducted without regard to the investigation before the commission. Under the procedure outlined in the Cullom bill these delays would be reduced to a minimum.

The bill provides for the establishing and enforcement of a uniform classification of freights-a measure strongly favored by many, if not the majority, of railway officials. The argument used by those railway officials opposed to the adoption of a uniform classification for use throughout the country is that the interests and the character of traffic of different sections are too diverse to allow a universal classification; that it would force them to load up and burden their tariffs with numberless special and commodity rates in order to have rates under which freight could move. That argument is absolutely specious and should be so recognized when the statement is made; and it can not be truthfully contradicted that the tariffs now in force on every railroad in the country using the several classifications now in effect are honeycombed with special and commodity rates. My opinion is that a uniform classification would reduce rather than multiply the special and commodity rates.

In conclusion, I have only this to say: The producers, the manufacturers, the merchants, and shippers have grown tired of having the interstate-commerce act treated in a theoretical fashion, and they now demand that it be given full practical effect.

ADDITIONAL STATEMENT OF FRANK BARRY.

Mr. BARRY. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, you have heard but eight of the nineteen gentlemen who have appeared here to-day, and some have left, not desiring to take up any more of your time; but quite a number are still anxious to be heard on this subject. The intense interest of the people has been shown by the length of time consumed and by their earnestness here to-day. There are others who have points of value which they wish to bring forward. I ask for an opportunity at some future time to place some more matters before you which will interest you. We hope you will also request the Interstate Commerce Commission to be heard on this subject."

The CHAIRMAN. Very well. I fully expect that the committee will hear the commission. I have a dispatch from someone in New York who also wants to be heard.

Mr. BARRY. There are quite a number who could not get here.

At 2 o'clock and 30 minutes p. m. the committee adjourned.