I don’t think that Mr. Bryan is a thief, but he had the Populist platform borrowed so long that he has perhaps inadvertently fallen into the habit of thinking it is his own.
Railroads under private ownership form the strongest prop on which the trusts lean. Through special and reduced rates in the way of rebates they are enabled to freeze out all competitors.
It is stated that the rebate given to the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company by the Santa Fé Railroad while Paul Morton was its traffic manager amounted to $400,000 a year. Morton was a heavy stockholder in the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. If this is true, and this is the kind of man President Roosevelt is depending on to reform railroad rates and abolish rebates, we may know just what to expect.
The supreme test of any question is, is it right? If it is, then no man should hesitate to declare himself for the right.
Direct legislation is the very essence of democracy, and that is why the politicians don’t want it.
If Thomas Lawson is telling the truth it appears that about three-fourths of the Captains of Industry ought to be wearing striped clothes behind prison bars.
The President’s recommendation for the control of the railroads, and the plan he seems to have adopted to go about it, consultation with the railroad magnates, reminds me of a story I once heard related by a German speaker at a public meeting. A man who had been considered as having an unsound mind was found one morning hanging to a beam in the barn, the rope under his arms. He was promptly cut down, and on being asked why he hanged himself that way he answered that he was trying to commit suicide.
“But why didn’t you place the rope around your neck?” he was asked.