\Editorialfrom the New York Evening Post, of Tuesday,
January jt, içoy.']
GIVING POWER TO FIX RATES CANNOT
CONTROL REBATES.
Present Law Sufficient. Why Not Exhaust
It Before Adopting New
Remedies.
Rates, Per Se, Not Unreasonable.
In the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court against
the Beef Trust, we have the most clear-cut and thorough¬
going affirmation of the power of Congress to break up
combinations in restraint of trade. As Attorney-General
Moody points out, this decision takes the court securely
back to where it was in the Addyston pipe case. That is,
the validity and efficiency of the anti-trust act are sweep-
THE BEEF TRUST AND RAILROADS.
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ingly upheld. Brushing aside nice technical points about
defective pleadings, and so on, the decision broadly, and
in the large spirit of equity, declares that such devices as
the Beef Trust used to stifle competition and effect
monopoly can be struck at and destroyed by existing
Federal statute. As Justice Holmes said, the court does
not and cannot direct the individual packers to compete
with each other; but it does bring them within reach of
the pains and penalties of the law if they seek to substitute
monopoly for competition. The law officers of the Govern¬
ment now have the fullest judicial warrant for proceeding
with the utmost dispatch and rigor against every similar
combination.
It seems to us that this important decision of the
Supreme Court has its light for the problem of Federal
railway regulation. Here was a strictly normal proceeding.
A statute of the United States has been violated. The
sworn officers of the law prosecuted the offenders. By
regular judicial process the case was brought to its final
hearing, and the sword of justice fell upon the guilty
parties. That, we think all reasonable men will admit, is
the ideal way. The representatives of the people enact a
law aimed at public evils; the officials elected by the
people enforce it; the courts uphold it. That is the regular
democratic fashion.
WHY NOT ENFORCE THE EXISTING LAW AS
TO RAILROADS?
WHY MAKE THE LONG JUMP?
Now, why cannot the Government go to work similarly
in the matter of abating evils connected with the manage¬
ment of railroads? President Roosevelt put forcibly and
s
truthfully, in his speech last night in Philadelphia, the
grievances which the public feel. In a word, the railroads
are not managed justly, as beLween man and man, or
locality and locality. They give this shipper a secret
rebate, and refuse it to another. Differentials are estab¬
lished affecting this city or that port, not on grounds of
public interest which can be publicly stated, but for con¬
cealed and often suspicious motives. Here are, indeed,
great abuses to be corrected, if possible ; but it is neces¬
sary, or desirable, to make the long jump which the Presi¬
dent does, and demand for a Federal commission the
"power over rates" ? He urges it with the object of "put¬
ting the big shipper and the little shipper on an equal foot¬
ing"; to do away with rebates, however disguised, and to
abolish discrimination of all kinds. But it is at least a fair
question whether the Government has not already in its
hands the needed weapon:;, and whether vigorous use of
them should not be made before appealing for others.
Certain it is that if existing statutes couU be stringently
enforced, and applied with as much severity as the Supreme
Court has just shown in the case of the Beef Trust, the in¬
justices of which the President properly complains would
be cured.
PRESENT LAW SUFFICIENT FOR REBATES
AND DISCRIMINATIONS.
He asks for an instrument to strike down secret rebates.
But they are outlawed by the act of February 4, 1887.
Section 2 of the Interstate Commerce Act describes them
in detail and declares them all unlawful. Appropriate
penalties are prescribed further on. The President is
incensed at the "preferences" and "discriminations" which
the railroads make in iavor of persons or localities ; they
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are all declared illegal in the act of 1887. And the so-
called Elkins bill, approved February 19, 1903, strengthens
the original law in important respects—defining the offence
more presicely, making the collection of evidence easier
and judicial process swifter and surer.
WHY NOT EXHAUST POWER UNDER PRESENT
LAWS BEFORE RESORTING TO
NEW REMEDIES.
Why not, we repeat, exhaust the power of these existing
laws before resorting to measures which may not be
necessary, and which certainly would entail a train of
consequences of which it is impossible to foresee the end?
One reason offered is the law's delay. It takes so long to
get these cases into courts. But the proposed remedy
itself would surely be tied up in the courts for three years
or so. It involves the gravest Constitutional questions,
and they would have to be threshed out in the courts
before a single step could be taken. Moreover, just as
trust cases have been expedited by legislation, so could
be railroad cases coming under the Interstate Commerce
law. That act could be stiffened and buttressed in any
way shown to be needful—and it could be done more
speedily and efficiently, we believe, then there could be
created a commission to fix rates upon practically all the
railroads in the United States. We do not say that we
may not have to come to that ; but it is only reasonable
to insist that first every club already at the President's
disposal should be brought down heavily upon the heads
of violators of the law. He does not need, for example,
a new statute in order to enable him to proceed against
that member of his own Cabinet, Mr. Paul Morton, who
has violated the Interstate Commerce act.
fi
WILL THE POWER TO FIX RATES CONTROL
SECRET REBATES?
Mr. Roosevelt is especially urgent that Congress assert
"power over rates" in order to strike down secret rebates.
But that could be done only by imposing a public rate.
Yet there are now public rates; it is under them that rebates
are made secretly. Why would they not be under the rates
fixed by the commission ? The argument appears to be;
railway managers are wicked, and will not obey the law
against rebates; therefore, we will make a new law against
rebates. In the latter case, just as in the former, it would
be necessarj' to fall back upon the criminal and judicial
machinery. It would appear to be as well to do that in the
first place. In the matter of differentials, and discrimina¬
tions in favor of or against given localities, the argument
for a Government rate-making power is stronger; but we
submit that not even it can be called conclusive, from the
point of view of prudent policy, until recourse has been
had to the legal remedies already at hand.
RATES PER SE ARE NOT UNREASONABLE.
It is not railway rates per se that are complained of as
unreasonable. So the Interstate Commerce reports assert
again an again. The great evils are underhanded privi¬
leges, hidden favors, tricky discrimination between shippers
and between localities. But the ban of the law is already
upon all these practices. The President calls for justice;
let him see to it that the justice in these laws be done.
Until he has tried to do it and failed, it is not in order to ask
us to go with him into the dark unknown of Government
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rate-making. Of this, Judge Cooley, the most eminent of
all the Interstate Commerce Commissioners, said that it
would be anywhere an "enormous task," and "in a country
so large as ours, and with so vast a mileage of roads, it
would be superhuman. * * * Its preformance
would render the due administation of the law altogether
impracticable."