“Give Them Free Passes and They Will Become as Servants”
The manner in which the railway pass can make honest men steal was never illustrated more clearly than when the Southern Railroad of J. P. Morgan, a few days ago, filched $142,000 from the taxpayers of this country.
It was a shameless, impudent, vulgarly common steal—nothing else. The Congressmen who stole this money for the Wall Street King, J. P. Morgan, were led by the well-known statesman of Alabama, John H. Bedstead.
Many and many a year ago a stupid Post-Office Department adopted the policy of paying subsidies to certain railroads for the carriage of mails which they had already contracted to carry.
It is doubtful whether a single dollar of this money was well spent. To secure the ridiculously high prices which the government pays for the carriage of the mail, the railroads could always have been induced to contract for as speedy a delivery as was possible.
Subsidies could not make them do more. Even a stupid P. O. Department woke up to this fact, at last, and quit paying the subsidies.
Mails were carried just as fast after that as before.
The rate of payment is so high—the plum so very luscious—that the corporation could not refuse the contracts, especially when they could borrow a rascally congressman’s frank, stuff the bags with bogus mail, and thus secure a false average of weight upon which they were paid for the whole year.
(Congressman Livingston of Georgia can tell you how this is done.)