tions were confined to a smaller number of the patrons of the road, and were harder for the victim to discover. Under the unrestricted rebate system, almost anyone who conducted his business on the proper basis, and was able to keep his mouth closed, could secure rates necessary to meet his competition. Under the new system he frequently could not tell what hurt him. The disregard of the law grew until there was the utmost contempt for its provisions! When the decision in the Brown case was handed down, confirming the right of the Commission to compel testimony, and after some prominent railroad attorneys had visited Washington, and been told they meant business, there was such a house cleaning all over the United States as would have fired with envy the New England matron. It is safe to say at this writing that rebates or special privileges are few, and ⚫ such as do exist are probably confined to devices having at least a color of legality. The severe penalties of the Interstate Commerce law were really its weakness, as hitherto no man could be found who would be willing to testify concerning a penitentiary offence, which was to him simply a business transaction. Granting that the rebate system is practically ended, there are evils as great, which seriously affect the merchant. Although the discrimination against individuals is small, the discrimination against localities and trades has not disappeared, and there seems to be at present no feasible way of reaching it.

The remedies usually suggested for the present evils are government ownership, government operation, government control, and by the railroads legalized pooling. The old pools were certainly not a sure preventive of wars and rate manipulation. It was during their life that the abuses arose which brought about the Interstate Commerce law. The pools usually went to pieces because some line, dissatisfied with its portion of the tonrage, cut the rates to secure a larger revenue, or increase its pool percentage. It frequently happened that a road when ordered to turn over tonnage, or to pay over a balance, would decline. In one instance, where a forfeit had been deposited to the chairman's order, and was drawn upon by him, the offending road stopped the payment of the check by some legal process. With legalized pooling the roads could enforce their penalties, but it remains a debatable question whether by that means the abuses of the old pools would be avoided. Legalized pooling

under control of the Commission, as proposed, would not be safe until that body is better equipped, and is clothed with something more than "power to scold," as one railroad president has described it. If the railroads really wish the popular consent to a repeal of that part of the law, they should first maintain a more respectful attitude towards the Commission, cease from making tatters of its decisions, and divert the acumen of their lawyers into more patriotic channels.

Government ownership, or government operation, are not feasible in this country, until our public business generally is conducted upon a higher plane. A railroad train manned by political appointees, of the grade which one frequently meets in public offices, would not be safe for passengers; and anyone whose business takes him to the City Hall would be slow to entrust his commercial affairs to a similar outfit. Collection of claims, also, from the railroads, is hard enough, but anyone who has a claim against the government would be very glad to trade it for a similar one against a transportation company. If we leave where it is the ownership and operation of the roads, and endeavor to strengthen our present attempts at government control, we will be proceeding in the right direction. The Interstate Commerce Commission should have the support of public opinion, and also of the courts. The chairman has complained that the courts are against him, and that Congress is deaf to his recommendations. The shipper feels that an appeal to the Commission is practically handing down the question to posterity. An order of the Commission, dated May 29, 1894, was obtained by merchants of Cincinnati, requiring the Southern railroads to reduce their rates from that city into the Southeastern States, in conformity with the lower scale applying from New York. The roads paid no attention to this, except to go out of their way to defy the Commission. The matter has been in the courts ever since, and there is no guessing as to when it will emerge.

The anti-railroad legislation of the past has been largely in the direction of providing a schedule of maximum rates. So far as known, there is no Commission, national or State, whose power has been confirmed to fix a specific rate, or to advance too low a rate. Experience has shown that rates in the long run will decrease through competition, but that too low a rate may cause as great injustice and discrimination as a rate that is too high.

The personnel of the national and State Commissions should be more carefully watched. The work of the former is, apparently, performed by three members. Everything points to greater demands upon them for the future. Anyone who realizes the size of their undertaking will know that so small a number of men cannot hope to administer it successfully. There should be on the Commission, besides lawyers and politicians, at least one good business man of commercial training, and one man of experience in transportation, either as a railroad man or as a shipper. There have been unsuccessful cases under the Interstate Commerce law, where evidence was secured, but concealed by railroad technicalties, which are sometimes as obscure to the lawyer as legal diction often is to the ordinary citizen. The State commissions should be induced to act in harmony with the national Commission, or else the latter should have some authority or veto power over their acts, for the reason that any change of importance in rates, within a State, will immediately react upon interstate business. The Interstate Commission, if it is to amount to anything, should have the power, recently denied by the Supreme Court, of naming specific rates in its decisions and enforcing its decrees, subject, of course, to a court decision that they are reasonable and just. The Supreme Court decision, denying the right of the Commission to regulate the inland proportion of a through rate upon imports, is probably good law, although a vigorous dissenting opinion throws doubt upon it ; but if so, the act should be amended, for it is not common sense from the standpoint of the merchant. Articles manufactured in competition with industries in the United States have been shipped, for example, from Wales to Denver, at a cost actually less in dollars and cents than the rate from Chicago to Denver. If a protective tariff is right, the transportation companies ought not to be allowed to abrogate it, and if it is not right, Congress, and not the railroads, should settle the question. One of the first steps to unravel the tangled skein of transportation would be uniform classification. There is now a measure before Congress empowering the commission to prepare one, and put it into effect. That it is desirable is self-evident, and that it is feasible is evidenced by the fact that the railroads spent years in an endeavor to secure such action by mutual agreement. A classification was actually prepared and submitted,

containing some objectionable compromises, although a step towards reform, but its adoption was defeated by one or two negative votes, out of the hundreds of corporations interested.

There should be friendly co-operation between the railroad associations, the public, the State and the national Commissions, to procure legislation strengthening the latter, and to uphold whatever is good in the railroad pools, and that there is much good in them no shipper can deny. The boards of managers are composed of broad-minded men, having large experience, who, no doubt, realize that the ultimate success of their associations lies in an administration producing exact fairness to persons, localities, and interests. If the personnel of the railway commissions can be kept upon as high a plane, and legislative bodies induced to act upon their suggestions, we can safely leave the solution of this problem to such a combination.

JAMES J. WAIT.

IN DEFENCE OF KANSAS.

BY THE HON. EDWIN TAYLOR, OF THE KANSAS SENATE.

IN nearly every newspaper that comes to us from our old homes, we find this sentiment put forward with apparent sincerity: That our adopted State of Kansas has fallen into political idiocy, and that we, who were once the neighbors of those writers, have renounced common honesty, and have forfeited all claims to their respect. To some extent the pattern and example in this denunciation has been set by irresponsible writers, living amongst us, whose communications to the Eastern press have been characterized by an airy indifference to facts and results. But mainly it is due to an entire misunderstanding in the East of the conditions existing here a few years ago, which placed Kansas then on the top shelf of prosperity, and of the succeeding conditions which have turned so much of that fair-seeming fruit to ashes on her lips.

Ignoring any gibes at the dominant politics of Kansas further than to say that no one State which voted for McKinley is shown by the census of 1890 to have so small a percentage of illiteracy among its white population as Kansas; that ninetenths of our large colored population, 46 per cent. of which in 1890, as shown by the census, was illiterate, voted for McKinley; and that the Italians, Poles, Hungarians, Armenians, and Russians, who neither speak our language nor understand our institutions, are overwhelmingly Republican-ignoring all that, it is the purpose of this paper to explain the extent and cause of her disasters; and, for the information of those who may desire to know the truth, put the blame of her recession where it belongs.

For the

The State of Kansas is 408 miles from east to west. present purpose it will be considered as divided into two equal