ments, I am unable to see. It seems to me, clearly it is a violation of the rights of property, and the rights of the laborer to receive a compensation for services performed.

It is also a discouragement of this class of investments. The railroads up to this time have received the peculiar indorsement of being of such a highly beneficial character that the State could exercise the right of eminent domain to the end that the road might be built. If this bill shall become a law its consequences will be most disastrous, in my judgment, to the varied business interests of the country. When you think that most of the products of the country pass one or more times over its railroads, of the many thousands of people who are engaged in their operation, the many more thousands whose calling depends upon these roads, and the vast volume of business and its great value that moves over them, it seems to me that Congress ought to consider with great care how far these investments, these industries of all kinds may be disturbed. That they will be largely disturbed it seems to me must be plain to the dullest comprehension. While the railroad companies have practically been as free to manage their business under the common law as those engaged in other callings the country has prospered, accommodations have been given and are given that promote the prosperity of every industry. There has been no taking of property without compensation, no control without ownership, and the anarchists in the history of the country have thus far found little justification in the example of the Government for violent taking of property. There can be no valid objection to police regulation, but only to that attempted regulation which goes to and affects values directly and inevitably.

FINAL REMARKS OF MR. CULLOM.

IN THE U. S. Senate, January 14, 1887.

MR. CULLOM. Mr. President, I feel that I ought to say something in reference to this bill before the vote is taken. I believe no other Senator has indicated a desire to speak. I have great reluctance to saying anything upon the subject myself at this late hour in the night, and I promise the Senate that I shall detain them but a very few minutes, and will then allow the vote to be taken.

I have been sitting here to-day listening to assaults upon this bill until I have almost become convinced that I am the most vicious man toward the railroads of any man I know. I started in upon the investigation of this subject two or three years ago with no prejudices, no bias of sentiment or judgment, no disposition whatever to do anything except that which my deliberate judgment told me was the best thing to do. I have believed that I occupied that position ever since until within the last twenty-four hours, when the attacks upon this bill have been such that I have become a little doubtful whether I have not been inspired from the beginning, so far as my action has been concerned, with a determination to destroy the railroads of this country. To listen to the Senator from Alabama [MR. MORGAN] descanting upon the provisions of the bill, one can scarcely resist the conclusion that it is a bill to destroy the commerce of the country, and especially to break down all the railroads.

So far as I am concerned, I repeat I have had no disposition of that kind, and I am unaware that either of the Senators upon the conference committee with me has had any such disposition. We tried to do the best we could with the bill that the Senate passed during the last session, to keep the bill as near to what the Senate had it as we could do, and to arrive at an agreement between the House and the Senate confreres.

I submit that the majority of the assaults on the bill now under consideration have been against provisions that were in the bill when the Senate voted for it during the last session of Congress. I am of the opinion that if this discussion lasted another day Senators would find in every line of the bill a very serious objection to its adoption. They started in by objecting to some portions of the fourth and fifth sections. The Senator who has just concluded his remarks got over to the thirteenth section, and I believe went one or two sections beyond that, and if there were any more speeches to be made against the bill I suppose the very last section of it would be attacked before a vote was taken.

The Senate conferees regarded it as their duty to cling to every portion of the Senate bill as it was passed that they could cling to and reach an agreement between the conferees of the House and the Senate. Hence it was that all those portions of the Senate bill not objected to by the

House conferees were allowed to remain in the bill by the Senate conferees, the Senate conferees, as a matter of course, believing that the Senate of the United States knew what it was doing when it voted for the bill in the first place, and thinking that it would remain of the same mind still.

The attacks upon the fourth section have not been based so much upon the changes the conference committee made in that section as upon the language which was placed there by the Senate of the United States by its vote; and yet the conferees of the Senate have been regarded as at fault, to say the least, because they did not strike out the words which the Senate had put in.

The Senator from Georgia [MR. BROWN] assaults the bill because he says that under it the provisions are so rigid that the railroads of the country can not do business at all. The Senator from Oregon [MR. MITCHELL] assaults the bill because, he says, the fourth section amounts to nothing, and that the words "under like circumstances and conditions" ought to be taken out.

The Senator from Massachusetts [MR. HOAR] assaults the bill because, he says, it is going to interfere with foreign commerce, and that the fourth section will be construed as not allowing a rebate of 5 cents a hundred upon commerce shipped across the country for exportation. So he thinks the bill ought not to be agreed to, while, except as to the words "from the same original point of departure and the same point of arrival," the section is substantially just the same as it was when it passed the Senate before.

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So I might go on referring to every Senator who has spoken against the bill, and nearly every one of them has founded his objections to the bill upon the use of language that he had previously voted for in the Senate of the United States before the bill went to the conference committee at all.

I shall detain the Senate only a few moments, but I desire to reiterate what I uttered upon the subject before, confining myself to the shorthaul provision which is contained in the fourth section of the bill. The Senator from Massachusetts and others have arraigned me as having placed a construction upon the bill different from the other conferees on the part of the Senate as to the question whether in a line made up of a number of roads the proportion that one road was to get was a criterion by which it should be governed in the charges over its own road according to the published rates made out by the road itself.

In other words, as I said before, taking the Albany and Boston road as an illustration, it may take freight from Kansas City, from Chicago, from Detroit, or from any other point coming in on different lines, and the rate per cent. that it gets of that through traffic has no control whatever over the charges that it sees proper to make over its own line and over the freight that it gets along its line. The conferees on the part of the Senate agree with me in that proposition, and when you agree that that is the right construction to be placed upon the bill, then I say that all this long-haul business that goes from west to east or from east to west is not seriously affected by the provisions of the fourth section.

The Senator from Massachusetts has been apparently disposed to kill the bill by taking depositions of different parties over the country

and of the conferees on the part of the House. I submit that the answer by Judge CRISP to the questions put to him by the Senator from Massachusetts is not conclusive upon the point that we have been insisting upon. Judge CRISP does not say in any line or word employed by him that the construction placed upon that provision by the Senate conferees is different from what we have stated upon this floor. The only thing that that conferee says in reference to it about which there might be any difference is simply as to the meaning of the words "under like conditions and circumstances."

I have not said that upon any given statement of facts as put to me by any member of the Senate the bill meant one thing or the other; but I have said, and I submit that any candid man must agree with me, that in the construction of the proposed statute, in the application to the transportation of freight from one part of the country to another, where the words "under like circumstances and conditions" are used, they must be considered as an element in determining whether a shipment of freight from one point is to be governed by the same rule that governs it as to charges from another point. That is all I have contended for. Judge CRISP expressed the opinion on the state of facts put by the Senator from Massachusetts to him, that the circumstances under the bill, as he construed it, would be the same. We might differ upon that point or we might not, but it is no ground for declaring that the conference committee, either on the part of the Senate or the House, disagree as to the meaning of the provisions of the bill.

Mr. President, I do not believe that I ought to talk about this meas ure any longer, because I know every Senator wants to vote, and I suppose if I talked here two hours what I might say would not change a vote in the Senate.

MR. SEWELL. Will the Senator allow me to ask him one question ?
MR. CULLOM. Certainly.

MR. SEWELL. I desire to satisfy my own mind before voting on the bill. Suppose a merchant in New York, a grain shipper, orders, as is frequently done, two or three million bushels of wheat, taking advantage of the markets of Europe and watching closely the shipments from the Black Sea and other ports, and also the Indian market. He finds that he can make 2 or 3 cents a bushel by the shipment of a large lot of wheat. He will order from Duluth half a million bushels, from Milwaukee half a million bushels, from Chicago half a million bushels, from St. Louis half a million bushels, dividing his order. If the wheat is shipped by car-loads under similar circumstances in every particular, even under the same ownership and at the same time, and it may all arrive at Buffalo or at a point on the Pennsylvania Railroad, the pro rata on one shipment allowed to the trunk lines, taking the New York Central, for instance, going to Boston, but going through New York, that coming from Duluth may come at 10 cents a hundred; that coming from Milwaukee may come at 9; that coming from Chicago, being the greatest point of competition, may come at 8, and from St. Louis may come at 9 or 10.

All this being similar freight under like circumstances, by the same ownership, in car-loads arriving at the trunk-line point at the same time, the company having accepted the lowest rate-that is, where the greatest

competition is, say at Chicago-can that railroad company take any more for any of the freight that comes off the other lines for the same party? MR. CULLOM. The Senator's question is pretty long. I have asserted the proposition that a proper construction of the bill gives to railroads the right to make combinations or arrangements for a continuous shipment. One railroad makes its own tariff rate, another railroad makes its, and the third makes its tariff of rates, and each one of those roads, so far as its own business is concerned, is to be governed by that tariff of rates.

But here come two roads, or four roads, converging into one, if you please. It is the very same illustration that I gave the other day. One Îine is composed of roads from Kansas City to Boston by way of Albany; another line is composed of the roads from Chicago to Boston by way of Albany; a third line is composed of a railroad or railroads from Detroit to Boston by way of Albany, and so you may go on. I assert that the rate of one of those lines beginning at Kansas City, if you please, and running to Boston, has nothing to do with the rate of the road that begins at Chicago and goes to Boston, or from Detroit and goes to Boston. In other words, those continuous routes make their own arrangements, just what they please, so far as any other road is concerned, and they are bound thereby, but the other roads are not. So in a shipment from Kansas City to Albany and to Boston, if the Albany and Boston road only got 2 cents for carrying it from Albany to Boston, it would not interfere with its right to get 5 cents on the line carrying it from Chicago to Boston by way of Albany, or whatever other sum it might arrange with the other roads.

MR. SEWELL. The Senator evades the direct question.

MR. CULLOM. I think not.

MR. SEWELL. My point was the same ownership, the same individual making all these shipments, and the shipments converging on the same line.

MR. CULLOM. Does the Senator mean the same ownership of property; the same freight?

MR. SEWELL. Yes, sir; I mean that a commission merchant in New York will order two or three million bushels from different points, and that freight will converge from different lines. I say under the restriction of this bill that, having accepted the lowest pro rata rate on that portion of the line, the company is restricted from taking a higher rate, although the pro rata would allow it.

MR. CULLOM. I contend exactly the contrary in my view of the construction of the section. I imagine that any other construction of it would bring upon the railroads and upon the country great confusion. It does not make any difference what the railroad from Chicago to Boston charges if it is one line, or what the railroad from Kansas City to Boston charges if it makes another continuous line. I repeat that the per cent. the railroad gets from Albany to Boston on the shipment from Chicago to Boston has nothing to do with the per cent. that it gets on the line from Kansas City to Boston.

This is the whole case. So the argument of the Senator from Rhode Island [MR. ALDRICH] with his chart amounts to nothing if my construction and the construction of the conferees on the part of the Senate is to