grams and 2 cents for telephonic messages would pay handsomely. If so, cheaper rates would be practicable to-day. Immense public benefit would result from this change. As you are charged with fixing their rates, there is certainly room for large reduction, not only from comparison with foreign rates, but from the fact that the Western Union, which now has a capitalization, bonds and stocks, of $120,000,000, has acquired its plant and its capitalization entirely out of its earnings over and above the steady payment of dividends, for only $440,000 cashless than half a million-has ever been paid in by its stockholders. This was shown in several Congressional investigations. Though seventeen out of eighteen committees of Congress to whom post-office ownership of the telegraph has been referred have reported in favor of that measure, as well as four Postmaster-Generals having recommended it, the measure has never yet gotten to a vote, owing to the immense lobby maintained by the Western Union monopoly.

THE EXPRESS ANOMALY.

It is an anomaly that express companies (which are also in your jurisdiction) should be permitted, thus placing a double tax upon a patient and oppressed people. In other countries the post-office has a parcels-delivery branch, which collects and delivers by wagon parcels at residences like other mail matter, up to 1 and in some countries 16 pounds, and at one-half cent to 1 cent per pound, a small fraction of express charges in this country. In Austria and Germany more than $100,000,000 of goods are annually sent by the parcels post. In these matters the United States is a back number. The corporations dwarf As long as the express business remains for private emolument, not for public convenience, it should be noted that the rates charged by the post-office department abroad show that there is a large margin for reduction of rates under public control here.

us.

MAIL CHARGES.

In no particular are railroad rates more exorbitant than those charged for the carriage of United States mails, 8 cents per pound for an average distance of 440 miles, with a further charge of 200 per cent per year on their cost for rental of postal cars, while the charge to express companies is one-half cent per pound or less. This is of interest to the public, as it is the sole cause of a deficit in the postal revenue, and thereby defeats a reduction of letter postage to 1 cent and a further reduction on other matter. In fact, railway rates to the Post-Office are often 50 per cent higher than the charge for freight by wagon. This, however, should be remedied by Congress, which has full knowledge of the facts, and hardly comes within your jurisdiction. The corrective power of public opinion may effect something.

THE MATTER OF VALUATION.

Most of your boards, if not all, are charged with the valuation of railroad, express, and telegraph and telephone property for taxation. This is a government function, and it has been decided by the United States Supreme Court, in Kentucky Railroad Tax Cases (115 U. S.), already cited, that the action of such boards is due process of law

and final. But there are Federal judges who have issued their injunctions notwithstanding, esteeming their own opinion of the value of such property superior to that of the boards authorized by law. In North Carolina the railroad companies are taxing the public rates high enough to pay 4 per cent net above taxes and all expenditures upon $120,000,000; but when the board appointed by law for the purpose assessed their property and franchise at $42,000,000 (about one-third the value) those corporations which were owned by nonresidents promptly secured an injunction from a Federal judge. I do not know whether such flagrant cases occur elsewhere, but the result in that State has been universal indignation, except among the newspapers and other agencies in corporation pay. Such action gives an impetus to the growing demand for the election of Federal judges by the people and for a term of years, instead of the present unrepublican life tenure, under which they are neither responsible to public opinion nor anything else, and hold their will superior to that of the law. The acts of a State legislature are apparently held in sovereign contempt.

"THE BIAS OF TRAINING."

In saying this I wish to be understood as casting no reflection upon my brethren of the Federal bench as a body. Among them are some of the ablest and purest men and best lawyers in the Republic. But unlimited power, without responsibility, such as is conferred by life tenure with a certainty of no liability to impeachment by a busy Congress, is too great a temptation for most men, and when, as now, the Federal bench is largely recruited from those whose lives at the bar have been spent as railroad attorneys, and who know that they owe their promotion to the influence of the great corporations who have formerly employed them, it is not strange that some of these judges should yield to the bias of their training.

THE CARDINAL MISTAKE.

The cardinal mistake is in assuming that railroads are chartered for a private purpose-the emolument of their managers. They are chartered for public purposes, the convenience and service of the public, the profit of the managers being only incidental to procure the service. When railroads were owned by the original subscribers to the capital stock living along their lines, and the counties and cities which were large stockholders, public opinion, exercised through the annual election of the officers, was sufficient public control. But now, that the railroads have mostly passed into the hands of nonresident syndicates, who care little for public needs and wishes, or for aught except profits, the officers are simply local overseers of the nonresident owners. Consequently, there is no control except through public opinion formulated in legislative enactment and executed by your commissions created for that purpose.

The new doctrine that the judiciary is the supreme power in the State to set aside legislative enactments and restrain executive action is promulgated and pushed in the interest of the great moneyed combinations, so that when their lobbyists can not defeat legislative action they may fall back upon the small body of judges in whose selection they can have a hand. But this attempt to suppress the popular will

by a judicial oligarchy (which is without warrant in our constitutions) will prove as futile as the attempt to suppress the popular will by the executive power in England. The result there was that one king lost his head, another his throne, and for two hundred years no sovereign has dared to veto an act of Parliament and no judge has ever imagined he had power to declare unconstitutional an act of the legislative body. The corporations which are urging the claims of judicial supremacy in this Government may bring the bench to ruin, but they can not, destroy the inherent sovereignty of the people, who must speak their will through their legislative bodies and have that will executed by such agencies as they shall select. Those who can not trust to the wisdom and justice of the people have no business in a free country.

DETERMINING TAX VALUES.

Returning to the matter of taxation, there should be no difficulty on that subject, for, as the Supreme Court of the United States held in Taylor v. Secor (92 U. S., 575), the actual value of a railroad and its franchise is exactly that of the market value of all its bonds and stocks. In that case Justice Miller said:

It is therefore obvious that when you have ascertained the current cash value of the whole funded debt, and the current cash value of the entire number of shares, you have, by the action of those who above all others can best estimate it, ascertained the true value of the road, all its property, its capital stock, and its franchises; for these are all represented by the value of its bonded debt and of the shares of its capital stock.

"This is a simple and unerring plan," says Senator Ford in the North American Review, "sanctioned by long usage in many States and approved by the Supreme Court of the United States."

There are some States which levy a tax on gross earnings, which is perhaps as fair as any that could be devised. These commissions were created precisely because the public were dissatisfied with the conduct of the railway, telegraph, and express companies, and decided to regulate them otherwise than by individual actions in the ordinary courts, which few individuals had the financial ability to sustain with such powerful adversaries. It is a defect in all these acts that no officer is appointed to represent the State, for the amount of an overcharge demanded by the complainant is usually too small to justify him to retain counsel. While the relief, if granted by you, being usually a reduction of rates or other general regulation, is of general benefit to the public and of great interest to the corporation, which last is therefore usually represented by numerous and able counsel. Their ex parte statements and arguments, the plaintiff being unrepresented, put you at a disadvantage. As Judge Cooley said to your convention in 1892: "The people's cause is lost by default." This is a grave defect. and should be remedied.

THE CASE SUMMED UP.

To sum up for the client you have assigned me. He is just and moderate. He asks no unjust reduction in rates, nor that any undue share of taxation be placed upon the railroads. He knows that he gave these corporations the breath of life, and that by aid of his right of eminent domain they have laid their tracks. He knows that private S. Doc. 46-2

and public subscriptions to their construction have been often submerged by reconstructions and other methods, and that these great corporations are nearly all owned by nonresident bankers-usually in London and New York. My client demands that discriminations be stopped, whether secret rebates of freight, or free passes, or donated mileage books. He demands a just modification of freight rates, and especially of those south of the Ohio, which the Interstate Commerce Commission has adjudged excessive, and that passenger rates should be reduced to something like the rates in other countries, without special privileges to any. He demands that these corporations shall take their hands off our politics and leave the people free to select their own public servants, and that the process of Federal judges, whether appointed by corporation influences or not, shall not be prostituted to defeat public control or the assessment of law of their property for taxation.

He would be glad to see the telegraph, telephone, and express (or parcels post) made a part of the post-office, as in other countries, or, failing in that, secure a just reduction of their rates by your commission. He asks that safety appliances and moderate hours of labor for employees be required in order that the present annual casualty list of 40,000 to 50,000 killed and wounded may be diminished.

In these demands there is nothing unjust. Railway managers should gladly and frankly concede them. If so, the utmost harmony will prevail. But be assured nothing less than these things will satisfy the great American people.

THE PEOPLE SUPREME.

It was Marie Antoinette, of France, who, when told that the people were demanding the removal of abuses, gave the historic answer, "Rulers should pay no more attention to the clamors of the people than the moon to the baying of dogs." She learned later that an absolute monarchy with a thousand years behind it was not as strong as the demands of a people for justice.

It was a railroad king in this country who, when the dissatisfaction of the people with his rates and his management was reported to him, replied with brutal frankness, "The people be d-d." Let us hope that there be few like unto him, for there is nothing stronger than a wrong unredressed when a great people is the sufferer.

Gentlemen, I thank you for the honor of your invitation and for the patience and attention with which you have heard me.

PARTIAL LIST OF LOTS IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SOLD BY THE UNITED STATES.

LETTER

FROM

THE SECRETARY OF WAR,

TRANSMITTING

A LETTER FROM THE CHIEF OF ENGINEERS, UNITED STATES ARMY, RELATIVE TO LOTS IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SOLD BY THE UNITED STATES.

DECEMBER 18, 1899.-Referred to the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds and ordered to be printed.

WAR DEPARTMENT, Washington, December 14, 1899.

SIR: I have the honor to transmit herewith a letter from the Chief of Engineers, United States Army, of yesterday's date, transmitting, in connection with previous correspondence and in further compliance with Senate resolution of January 27, 1898, a communication from Col. Theodore A. Bingham, Corps of Engineers, the officer in charge of public buildings and grounds, this city, together with lists of lots in the District of Columbia sold by the United States, covering squares numbered from 247 to 760, both inclusive.

The Chief of Engineers remarks that in this list, and also in that published in Senate Doc. No. 47, Fifty-fifth Congress, third session, certain squares are not reported upon. Such squares as are omitted were deeded back to the original proprietors and will form a separate list by themselves, the squares and lots now reported upon being those sold by the United States and for which money has been received.

Colonel Bingham states that there remain about 450 squares yet to be reported upon, and the Chief of Engineers adds that a further report will be presented so soon as the very limited clerical force available for the work will permit the examination of records and tabulation of results.

Very respectfully,

ELIHU ROOT,
Secretary of War.

The PRESIDENT PRO TEMPORE OF THE UNITED STATES SENATE.