Pope Brown.
In the letter just quoted, Hon. Pope Brown repeats the statement that the railroads did treat with contempt the order of the Commission; and he relates a conversation he had with one of the representatives of the Southern Railroad, in which that official gave, as a reason for not making the required improvements at Flovilla, that the people of that county had given verdicts against the Railroad.
Yet the railroad candidate for Governor has deliberately tried to deceive the people of Georgia into believing that when the Railroad Commission ordered a new depot for Flovilla, the railroads promptly obeyed the order and built a new depot right away.
Poor little rooster—crowed too quick.
In my article, it was stated that the Flovilla case was but one out of many that could be mentioned. Since Clark Howell undertakes to prove to the people of Georgia that the railroads are good, law-abiding citizens, I will mention some other instances in which they violate the law every day of their lives, persistently, deliberately, insolently, contemptuously.
The law requires them to post bulletins of delayed trains at every station in advance of the delayed train, in order that passengers may be put upon notice. This law is of great consequence to the traveler. If the train is one, two, or three hours late, and the traveler can learn that fact upon his arrival at the depot, he can dispose of himself to the best advantage during the interval. But suppose the train is three hours late and the passenger does not know it? Suppose he asks the agent, and gets his head bit off with a sharp, curt, offensive, indefinite answer? He then hangs around in the waiting room; he is afraid to leave the depot for fear the train will come while he is away; yet he may have to sit there, anxious and suffering, for three mortal hours; when, if the bulletin had been posted, he could have escaped some of the inconveniences of the situation.
The law puts a penalty of twenty dollars upon the railroad for each violation of this rule; and there isn’t a day when hundreds of violations of it do not occur in Georgia. Not ten per cent of the agents of the railroads obey this law. Ninety per cent of them constantly violate it. Ask any drummer who travels through the state! Talk about obedience to the little one-hoss Railroad Commission? Why, here is a statute of the Code of Georgia, passed by the sovereign Legislature and signed by the Governor, and the railroads treat it as a dirty piece of waste paper.
In his letter, ex-Chairman Brown says that the railroads have never put into operation an order of the Commission as to freight rates, unless that order was absolutely satisfactory to themselves. He gives an instance, at Pitts, Georgia, where the railroads went directly to the contrary of the orders of the Commission. While Judge Atkinson was Chairman of the Commission, an order was passed requiring trains to quit stopping one or two hundred feet away from the depot, and to stop at the station, for the convenience of passengers.
Ex-Chairman Brown says that this order “has been absolutely ignored by all the roads that have come under my observation.”