RHODE ISLAND. Lumber Dealers' Association of Rhode Island. Rhode Island State Grange, Patrons of Husbandry. Pawtucket, Southern Woodlawn Improvement Society. SOUTH CAROLINA. North Carolina Pine Association (comprising North and South Carolina and Virginia). Anderson Chamber of Commerce. Charleston Bureau of Freight and Transportation. Charleston Chamber of Commerce. Charleston Commercial Club. Charleston Cotton Exchange. Columbia Chamber of Commerce. Gaffney Business Men's Club. Georgetown Board of Trade. Piedmont Wholesale Grocers' Association, Anderson. SOUTH DAKOTA. South Dakota and Southwestern Minnesota Millers' Club. South Dakota, Southwestern Minnesota, and Northwestern Iowa Retail Implement Dealers' Association. Western South Dakota Stock Growers' Association. Utah Live Stock Association. Utah Wool Growers' Association. Ogden, Weber Club (The Business Men's Association). VERMONT. Vermont Jersey Cattle Club. Vermont State Grange, Patrons of Husbandry. Vermont Sugar Makers' Association. VIRGINIA. North Carolina Pine Association (comprising North and South Carolina and Virginia). Danville Commercial Association. Danville Tobacco Association. Richmond Branch, National League of Commission Merchants. Richmond Tobacco Exchange. ICL-05-26 WASHINGTON. Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho Lumber Manufacturers' Association. Washington State Grange, Patrons of Husbandry. Wisconsin Cheese Makers' Association. Wisconsin Retail Lumber Dealers' Association. La Crosse Board of Trade. La Crosse Manufacturers and Jobbers' Union. Marinette County Good Roads Association. Milwaukee Association of Steam and Hot Water Heating Engineers. Milwaukee Builders and Traders' Exchange. Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce. Milwaukee Merchants and Manufacturers' Association. Milwaukee Millers' Association. Milwaukee Retaii Grocers' Association. Muscoda Dairy Board, Spring Green. Peshtigo Good Roads Association. Superior Retail Grocers' Protective Association. WYOMING. Colorado and Wyoming Lumber Dealers' Association. Saratoga Board of Trade. The legislatures of the following States have memorialized Congress within the past two years to enact legislation of similar character, viz: Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, South Dakota, Wisconsin. National and sectional organizations 62 State and local organizations, representing 44 States and Territories_ 401 The State and local organizations enumerated in the foregoing, including 17 State granges of the Patrons of Husbandry, are situated as follows: Chairman Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives, Washington, D. C. SIR: In support of the oral statement which I made before your committee this afternoon, to the effect that the net earnings of many of the railways of the country have produced a return on the capital stock of the several companies ranging from 10 to 20 per cent, I beg leave to present the following detailed statement showing the percentage on the capital stock of the railway companies mentioned produced by the net earnings of the companies mentioned after paying fixed charges, including taxes and interest on outstanding bonds, during the years ending June 30, 1902 and 1903, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, a daily newspaper published in the city of New York, devoted especially to financial interests. I also include several companies whose net earnings have produced a return of between 7 and 10 per cent on their capital stock during the years mentioned. In cases where blanks occur, the return is not given in the journal mentioned. The dividends declared by the several companies mentioned have in most cases been less than, and in some cases very much less than, the percentage earned as shown in the above figures, the surplus having been applied in some cases to betterments and permanent improvements, and in other cases to an accumulated surplus fund. The aggregate amount of such surplus fund accumulated by all the railways of the United States during the four years ending June 30, 1903, as shown in the annual reports on railway statistics of the Interstate Commerce Commission, amounts to $358,440,000. The amount reported as having been expended for permanent improvements during that period (when not included in operating expenses) was $92,500,000. This amount added to the accumulated surplus makes an aggregate of $450,940,000 derived from the net earnings of the railways of the country, in addition to the dividends declared and paid to stockholders. Respectfully submitted. E. P. BACON. STATEMENT OF H. B. MARTIN, OF NEW YORK, NATIONAL SECRETARY OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-TRUST LEAGUE. Mr. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN OF THE COMMITTEE: In view of the short time at the disposal of the committee I respectfully ask permission to file a brief statement on behalf of the American Anti-Trust League and numerous commercial and agricultural organizations, including shippers, consumers, and producers from many States, who have presented petitions to Congress urging the enactment of H. R. 13778, the bill amending the interstate-commerce law, introduced by Representative Hearst, of New York. The organizations and citizens who indorse the Hearst bill and urge its passage do so for the following reasons among others: First. Because the bill empowers the Commission to fix freight rates when existing rates have been found by it to be unreasonable or discriminating. Second. It prohibits change of rates without thirty days' notice to the Commission. Third. Makes all its orders effective within thirty days after service and requires the Commission to decide every case within sixty days after it is closed. Fourth. Unlike all other bills, it makes the execution of the law effective and expeditious by creating an interstate-commerce court, with exclusive jurisdiction to review all orders of the Commission and power to enforce them by contempt proceedings. Fifth. This does away with double trials, and limits stays to cases found on hearings to be clearly unjust. Sixth. No appeal lies to the Supreme Court unless either the commerce court or the Supreme Court certifies that a constitutional question is involved which ought to be reviewed, in which cases, however, no stay can be granted. Seventh. It empowers the Commission to fix classification of freights that will be just and fair to all persons. The opposition to this legislation regulating rates, as formulated by the railroad owners and their representatives, has substantially resolved itself to this: They claim First. That Congress has no right to delegate to the Interstate Commerce Commission the power to fix rates. Second. That Congress has no right to delegate to the courts the power to fix rates. Third. That Congress itself can not fix railroad rates. Fourth. Their logical conclusion and consistent contention is that the railroad managers alone have the right to fix rates, and thereby to fix the value of all the billions of dollars worth of movable property owned by the 80,000,000 people of the United States, who would thus be helpless in the hands of the few who own the highways. Are the Interstate Commerce Committees of the House and Senate willing to accept this conclusion? Is Congress itself willing to accept it? Are the sovereign people of the United States willing to accept it? The self-evident answer to these questions and to the untenable claims of the railroad managers is most emphatically "No." The present system of private management of those great public highways, the interstate railroads, has been tried in the balance and found wanting. The abuses which have attended the system from the beginning to the present have become so aggravated that they are now intolerable, and the people are determined that a change must be made. The power to fix the rates of transportation for the property and persons of 80,000,000 of people is too great a power to be safely trusted in the hands of any small clique of private individuals. This much is certain and settled in the mind of most intelligent American citzens outside the ranks of those who serve or share the railroad monopoly. Every man's property, every man's labor, every man's livelihood, every man's hope of the future is at the mercy of the men who, with an eye solely to the increase of their own wealth and power, now control the public highways in derogation of public rights and in defiance of public law. This is a condition that can not and will not long be endured by the people. There is a remedy for these evils arising from the private monopoly of the public highways. It is the high privilege, prerogative, and duty of this Congress of the United States to find and apply that remedy before the disease becomes too deep rooted to be removed. It is also the privilege and duty of the citizens to suggest and to petition to Congress for the adoption of the reforms needed to cure the evils complained of. To this end we have here presented to this committee and to Congress numerous petitions signed by many citizens, both shippers and consumers, from all parts of the United States in favor of the enactment into law of bill H. R. 13778, known as the "Hearst bill." The objections against this line of legislation provided for in H. R. 13778, which are presented by the railroad men and their friends, are as I have before stated: First. Because they claim it is unconstitutional for Congress to delegate its legislative power to fix rates to the Interstate Commerce Commission, a body appointed by the President, and thereby conferring the legislative power on the executive branch of the Federal Government and is unconstitutional. This is sufficiently answered by the decisions of the United States Supreme Court to the effect that the Commission is a legislative body and that Congress can delegate the rate-making power to it. Second. Because they claim that the courts, by virtue of the provision allowing appeals from the orders of the Commission, would be in fact allowed to fix the rate, and that would be delegating a legislative power to the judicial branch of the Government and thereby disturbing the balance of powers between the legislative and judicial branches. The sufficient answer to this is that all legislative acts are subject to judicial review as to their constitutionality; but that does not necessarily mean that Congress thereby delegates to the courts any part of its proper legislative power. Third. They claim that Congress itself, although empowered to make rates, can not do so, because it is too complex a subject to be dealt with properly by so large a body of men, inexperienced in railroad affairs. A sufficient answer to this is the fact that a Congress competent to enact so complicated a thing as a customs-tariff schedule is certainly qualified to enact a railroad freight and passenger schedule. This argument and the fourth argument of the railroad managers, viz, that they alone are competent to fix just and reasonable freight and passenger rates, is akin to the old argument of the friends of monarchy and nobility, viz, that only the wealthy and well born are competent to govern. That all question of Government were, as the railroad managers now claim the rate question is, too deep and too complicated to be dealt with by the common people and their representatives in Congress. The claims of the monarchist proved to be utterly absurd; and the common sense of the people to-day emphatically repudiates the equally absurd claim to superior wisdom and virtue on the part of the railroad managers. The fixing of just and reasonable rates is not so complex a matter as they would have us believe. It is the making of unjust discriminatiton and extortionate rates that is the complex and complicated things. that makes the rate-making business look so complicated. |