Not only are individuals thus oppressed, but for reasons which only the initiated can fathom there are seemingly purposeless discriminations against localities, as shown in the following extract from the Coal Trade Journal of March 25, 1891.
“Capt. Thomas H. Bates, before the railroad committee of the Colorado Senate, said: The Grand River Coal & Coke Company mine their coal in Garfield County, about fifty miles west of Leadville, and all they sell in Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo, has to be hauled through Leadville. At Leadville the individual consumer has to pay $7.00 per ton for this coal, while in Denver, with an additional haul of 150 miles, the coal from the same mines is delivered to the individual consumer for $5.50 per ton. The Colorado Coal & Iron Company produce all the anthracite coal sold in Colorado. It is mined at Crested Butte, which is 150 miles nearer Leadville than Denver, yet this coal is sold in Leadville for $9.00 to the individual consumer, while the same coal is hauled 150 miles farther, and sold to the individual consumer for an advance of twenty-five cents per ton over the Leadville price, and is sold in Denver for $7.10 per ton in carload lots.”
With the government operating the railways, discriminations would cease, as would individual and local oppression; and we may be sure that an instant and absolute divorce would be decreed between railways and their officials on one side, and commercial enterprises of every name and kind on the other.
There are but three countries of any importance where the railways are operated by corporations permitted to fix rates, as in all others the government is the ultimate rate-making power: these are Great Britain, Canada, and the United States; and while the British government exercises a more effective control than we do, there are many and oppressive discriminations, and complaints are loud and frequent, and English farmers find it necessary to unite for the purpose of securing protection from corporate oppression, as is shown by the following from the Liverpool Courier of January 29, 1891.
LANCASHIRE FARMERS AND RAILWAY RATES.
After the counsel given them yesterday by Mr. A. B. Forwood, of Ormskirk, it may be expected that the Liverpool District Farmers’ Club will be on the watch for tangible evidence of their grievances against the railway companies…. Under certain circumstances competition operates to the advantage of the public, and rival carriers are constrained to convey goods from place to place at moderate charges; but where a company is not held in check, the tendency is for rates to advance. In many cases, too, special interests of the companies are promoted at the expense of localities, and even individuals are subjected to the wrong of preferential charges. (There are no complaints in Britain that these discriminations are practised for the purpose of enriching the officials.) Hence the necessity for the Railway Commission to regulate the magnates of the iron road, who when left without restraint pay little regard to interests other than those of their shareholders.
Although Mr. Acworth fails to mention this phase of English railway administration, it would appear that the evils of discrimination are common under corporate management in Great Britain, and that they are inherent to and inseparable from such management; and that the questions of rates, discriminations, and free traffic in fuel can be satisfactorily adjusted only by national ownership, and if for no other reasons such ownership is greatly to be desired.
The failure to furnish equipment to do the business of the tributary country promptly is one of the greater evils of corporate administration, enabling officials to practise most injurious and oppressive forms of discrimination, and is one that neither federal nor State commission pays much attention to. With national ownership a sufficiency of cars would be provided. On many roads the funds that should have been devoted to furnishing the needed equipment, and which the corporations contracted to provide when they accepted their charters, have been divided as construction profits or, as in the case of the Santa Fe, Union Pacific, and many others, diverted to the payment of unearned dividends, while the public suffers from this failure to comply with charter obligations; yet Mr. Dillon informs us that the citizen commits an impertinence when he inquires why contract obligations, which are the express consideration for the exceptional powers granted, are not performed.
Another great advantage which would result from national ownership would be such an adjustment of rates that traffic would take the natural short route, and not, as under corporate management, be sent around by the way of Robin Hood’s barn, when it might reach destination by a route but two thirds as long, and thus saving the unnecessary tax to which the industries of the country are subjected. That traffic can be sent by these round-about routes at the same or less rates than is charged by the shorter ones is prima facie evidence that rates are too high. If it costs a given sum to transport a specific amount of merchandise a thousand miles, it is clear that it will cost a greater sum to transport it fifteen hundred; and yet traffic is daily diverted from the thousand mile route to the fifteen hundred one, and carried at the same or lower rates than is charged by the shorter line. It is evident, that if the long route can afford to do the business for the rates charged, that the rates charged by the shorter are excessive in a high degree.
Under government management, traffic would take the direct route, as mail matter now does, and the industries of the country be relieved of the onerous tax imposed by needless hauls. Only those somewhat familiar with the extent of the diversions from direct routes can form any conception of the aggregate saving that would be effected by such change as would result from national ownership, and which may safely be estimated as equal to two and a half per cent. of the entire cost of the railway service, or $25,000,000 per annum.