it. It is fortunately true that people in the country generally do not pay much attention to such statements.

Mr. BACON. As I said before, I have no recollection of saying that and had not at the time, although I saw it within two or three days after the convention.

Mr. MANN. I sincerely hope, Mr. Bacon, that a gentleman of your standing and I do appreciate the high standing you have would know better than to make a statement like that, which you ought to know is false.

Mr. BACON. I did inquire of two or three persons at the convention if they heard me make such a statement, and they did not recall it.

Mr. MANN. You said, however, in your address in St. Louis that "four of the members of this committee have declared that they will permit no action on the part of the committee upon any bill which is before them until definite action is taken upon this particular bill," relating to the Cooper-Quarles bill?

Mr. BACON. I think I did make that statement, which I did from statements made to me by the gentlemen.

Mr. MANN. I do not ask who the four members are.

You were here this morning when we reported a number of bills without opposition?

Mr. BACON. I hardly think it would be proper for me to give the names. It was stated to me in private conversation.

Mr. MANN. I am not asking for it. You probably believed that statement?

Mr. BACON. Yes.

Mr. MANN. You made it?

Mr. BACON. Yes.

Mr. SHACKLEFORD. Did you make that from talking with members themselves?

Mr. BACON. I think I made it in an address.

Mr. SHACKLEFORD. But did you derive your information from talking with these four members?

Mr. BACON. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHACKLEFORD. I desire to ask you if Mr. Shackleford, of Missouri, was one of them?

Mr. BACON. No, sir; he was not.

Mr. TOWNSEND. When was that address delivered?

Mr. MANN. In October, last fall, just before the election. Now, the fact is that the Cooper-Quarles bill was the bill drawn by the attorney of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company in all of its features, is it not?

Mr. BACON. It is, as I have said before, a redraft of the bill which the late Judge Logan, general counsel of the Pennsylvania Railroad, originally drew, with some changes and modifications.

Mr. MANN. Of not any importance, however, you say?

Mr. BACON. The most important one was the one which I mentioned.

Mr. MANN. The others are not of any importance?

Mr. BACON. The others are principally verbal changes, with the view of making it clearer and more specific and less liable to miscon

struction.

Mr. MANN. And yet, because the members of this committee were

not willing to report that bill without a hearing, a bill drawn by the attorney of the principal railroad company of the land, you and your secretary denounced this committee as railroad representatives. Mr. BACON. I never have characterized the members of this committee, nor the members of Congress, as railway representatives.

Mr. MANN. I have just read to you what you stated. Both you and your secretary characterized members of Congress as railway representatives, under the influence of the railways, and opposed to making any change whatsoever in the power of the railroads to fix rates, because we would not report without hearing a bill drawn by the general counsel of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. Do you think that that was fair to the members of the committee?

Mr. BACON. That bill had been before this committee, in the bill that was introduced by Mr. Wanger of the committee, after having been before the Senate for some two or three months, I think, and both the Senate committee and House committee had been holding hearings for two months upon that, together with the other bills. The principles contained in that bill were substantially the same as those contained in the Corliss bill, which was the House bill upon the same subject; but our committee upon negotiation with the Pennsylvania Railroad Company officers accepted the Elkins bill as a substitute for the Corliss bill, the Corliss bill having embraced several provisions that were not embraced in the Elkins bill. We waived those other provisions and acepted the Elkins bill in its place, the provisions of the Elkins bill, I say having been already included in the Corliss bill, which had been the subject of investigation.

Mr. MANN. In other words, you went over to the railroad bill, and because the committee would not follow you fast enough you say that we are under the influence of the railways?

Mr. BACON. I have not said any such thing, Mr. Mann.

Mr. MANN. I am very glad if you will say you did not say that. When I read it to you a while ago you would not say that you did not say it.

Mr. BACON. The question has often been put, is not Mr. So-and-so under the control of the railroads, and I have denied it. I have said that they are actuated by their own views and sentiments in regard to legislation, and that I believe they are doing it honestly. I have said that repeatedly.

Mr. MANN. I am very glad to know that. Personally I have always considered you a gentleman of high standing and honor, but I must say that when I saw that you and Mr. Barry had flopped over to a railroad bill and then proceeded to denounce the Members of Congress because they did not chase you up on the bill that I had some doubts about the honesty of one of you.

Mr. BACON. You would be surprised, and probably some of the other members of the committee would be surprised, if you knew to what extent I have kept back certain elements, certain interests, in regard to this legislation, which I have done with as much energy as I have used in bringing forward those that sought reasonable and proper and suitable legislation.

Mr. MANN. Did you not during that summer after the revised Elkins bill was agreed to endeavor to have that become the law? Mr. BACON. I did; yes, sir.

Mr. MANN. I was invited to attend a dinner at the Union League

Club by the Chicago Board of Trade members of this association, who insisted that I should support the revised Elkins bill. I laughed at them when they read to me the pooling clause in that bill and told them that it had as much chance as a snowflake in Hades. But you were in favor of it?

Mr. BACON. You understand-or I should explain-that in the arrangement with the Pennsylvania Railroad officials it was distinctly understood that our organization would stand entirely neutral in relation to the pooling provision; that we would not oppose it, and they could not expect us to advocate it, because our convention had taken no action upon that particular subject.

Mr. MANN. And yet Mr. Chadwick and Mr. Lyons, now the treasurer of your association, at this Union League Club dinner informed me that at your request they were urging me to support that bill in the committee, with the pooling clause in it. Would you deny that you made such a request to them?

Mr. BACON. I say we supported the bill, but with the distinct understanding that we were not favorable to that section.

Mr. MANN. Do you think this committee wouuld have been wise to have reported that bill favorably to the House simply because you favored that bill-to have reported it to the House without hearing?

Mr. BACON. I do not think the committee would be wise to report any bill because I advocate it or recommend it or because any other individual did so. I suppose the committee has to determine for itself upon the wisdom of any bill which it has to report.

Mr. MANN. Now, that is preliminary, of course, as to what the committee should do. I want to direct your attention to the proposition as to whether this committee should be denounced by the officers of your association, because, without hearings, they did not report a bill which originally was drafted by the general counsel of a railroad

company.

Mr. BACON. It has not been the intention of the association or of any of its officers to denounce this committee or any committee of Congress.

Mr. MANN. Well, your intentions and your acts are widely asunder. Mr. BACON. We have simply stated what we understood to be the facts of the case.

Mr. MANN. Now the truth is Mr. Bacon, I think you will admit that while your secretary was denouncing this committee for nonaction, we did report a bill at your request last winter, now called the

Elkins law.

Mr. BACON. I do not understand the House committee reported that bill.

Mr. MANN. Well, then, you are mistaken, because the House committee did report the bill. I reported it in the House by direction of the chairman. The Elkins law

Mr. BACON. You are speaking now of the final Elkins law that was reported and passed?

Mr. MANN. The Elkins law that was passed?

Mr. BACON. That was simply one section of the original Elkins bill, but not very materially changed.

Mr. MANN. Was that a section that you wished enacted in the law? Mr. BACON. We wished that as much as we did any other section. Mr. MANN. And we did report that bill?

Mr. BACON. Yes.

Mr. MANN. Was that showing that we did not wish to consider any proposition of this sort?

Mr. BACON. We have given the committee great credit for the prompt reporting of that bill and its action in relation to it, as well as that of the House, has been highly appreciated.

Mr. MANN. I would be very glad if some time at your leisure you would call the attention of this committee to any place where you have ever given the committee credit for anything, except being under railroad influence.

Mr. BACON. I have done it hundreds of times, Mr. Mann.

Mr. MANN. I have read everything that I have ever received from you, clear through from beginning to end, and I have never found a line or suggestion of that sort.

Mr. BACON. I am very glad to know you have done so

Mr. MANN. I have, and I have been profoundly instructed very often, too.

Mr. BACON. But I have written and said a great deal which has never come to the knowledge, probably, of any of the members of the committee.

Mr. MANN. I do not really see how it is possible, because we get so much from you. Now, if you will permit me to draw your attention a moment to the real subject. In a statement before this committee two years ago Mr. Knapp, the chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission, used this language:

Under the present law the carriers exercise without restraint the initiative in rate making. They are free to put in just such tariffs as they see fit. They are under no legal restraint whatever in that regard, and there is no proposition to change the law in that respect. I do not advocate, and so far as I am aware no member of the Commission has ever advocated, that the initiative in rate making should be taken away from the carriers and given to the Commission or any other tribunal.

And then

Now, all that is proposed is that in such a case as I have named, in order to give the Commission jurisdiction at all there must be a formal complaint served on the carriers, opportunity for them to answer, and a full hearing conducted, with all the formality of a judicial inquiry. Then, if the Commission in such case and upon the facts thus disclosed, reaches the conclusion that the rate in question is wrong, it shall have authority to name the rate which it thinks would be right to be put in place of the one in controversy.

I think you have also in a number of cases stated that what your committee wanted was power where a rate was found to be unreasonable that the Commission should have authority to determine what the rate should be to take its place. Now, I wish you would tell us just what your object is.

Mr. BACON. That is the precise thing that we want, but in the fixing of any rate there are other rates so closely related to it that it is absolutely essential that they should be considered in connection with it; and for that very reason the Elkins bill which read originally a rate was changed and the words "rate or rates were substituted, following out the arrangement with Judge Logan, to whom I referred; and so the bill reads as it now stands "rate or rates."

Mr. MANN. "Freight "your great publication, "Freight "
Mr. BACON. Don't call that our publication, please.

Mr. MANN. I do, because "Freight " is the power behind the whole movement at present.

Mr. BACON. We have no interest or relation whatever to that publication.

Mr. MANN. Your committee has decided that "Freight" ought to be sent and referred to every person interested in the subject.

Mr. BACON. Our committee has been asked to indorse it and it has declined to do so.

Mr. MANN. You have indorsed it?

Mr. BACON. Not as a committee.

I have recommended it.

Mr. MANN. I will show you that later.

Mr. BACON. I have recommended it being taken and read by every receiver and shipper in the United States, and I hope that will be the case, because it contains a great deal of valuable information for that class of people.

Mr. MANN. I want to call your attention to what you have asked for in print. In "Freight" the editor says:

We do not advocate conferring on the Commission the original rate-making power, but merely the power when a rate is complained of as being unfairly high or unjust, to decide what rate is fair.

That is what "Freight" says. Your secretary, Mr. Barry, the manager of your association

Mr. BACON (interrupting). Excuse me, but does not the bill speak for itself in respect to that?

Mr. MANN. Well, we are considering the subject-matter.

Mr. BACON. We might save a litle time by referring to citations. Mr. MANN. I have one or two others here I would like to call your attention to; also the President's message on the same subjectwhich are not handy but which I will call your attention to later.

In a circular of information which you have sent out recently, as I recollect it, you have stated that you do not wish the power conferred of rate making, but that when a rate on freight is found unreasonable that the Commission shall have authority to fix the rate. Did you not recently prepare a synopsis of the Quarles-Cooper bill and send it out through the country?

Mr. BACON. A year ago, or thereabouts, I did; yes, sir.

Mr. MANN. And in that synopsis did you not omit any reference to rates, and simply say rate?

Mr. BACON. I do not recollect; but if so it was wholly unintentional. I can not now see the distinction between the fixing of a rate and the fixing of rates, because the two must go together. It is a very rare case in which a single rate is questioned.

Mr. MANN. You do not see any distinction between conferring the power to fix a rate and the power to fix rates?

Mr. BACON. Most cases which come up embrace more than one rate. They necessarily embrace more than one rate in the case of discrimination in tariff rates, which is the great cause of complaints on the part of commercial men. It is the two rates from a given point to two different points-competing points-which constitute nine-tenths of the cases that have come before the Interstate Commerce Commission, and if the word "a" has been used it has been used simply in its generic meaning.

Mr. MANN. Well, I get a great many requests from people in my city, sent at the solicitation of your association, in which they ex