Stat., sec. 1302) that "he shall receive pay for such articles of clothing as have not been issued to him in any year, or which may be due him at the time of his discharge, according to the annual estimated value thereof."

While this provision may work well in its application to the Army, it is believed that better results will be secured, so far as the enlisted force of the Navy is concerned, by giving to all classes of enlisted men upon their first enlistment the necessary outfit, as is now done in the case of apprentices under the act of March 1, 1889, above mentioned. The fact that under the present system enlisted men are for a considerable period after their first entry into the service handicapped by the indebtedness incurred in purchasing an outfit, and are in consequence of such indebtedness deprived of certain privileges enjoyed by those not so situated, not only offers a serious obstacle to enlistment, but has proven a source of discontent, and the not infrequent cause of desertion during the first months of enlistment. If every enlisted man upon entering the naval service were furnished with an outfit, thus receiving a fair start unencumbered by debt, it is believed that enlistments would be stimulated to such a degree that the quota allowed by law could be readily filled and desertions reduced in number.

The satisfactory operation of the provisions of the act of March 1, 1889, in the case of apprentices suggests that the evils referred to may be corrected by the simple extension of the benefits of that act to the service generally. A draft of a bill intended to accomplish this object is herewith transmitted (marked A); but in addition a clause has been prepared in form suitable for insertion in the naval bill, should the committee concur with the Department in its estimate of the importance of this matter and deem it proper to insure its enactment by putting it in the naval bill.

Very respectfully,

Hon. EUGENE HALE,

JOHN D. LONG,

Secretary.

United States Senate.

Chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs,

1st Session.

No. 46.

ACQUISITION OF RAILROADS BY THE UNITED STATES.

DECEMBER 18, 1899.-Ordered to be printed.

Mr. PETTIGREW presented the following:

THE LIFE ARTERIES OF THE REPUBLIC-ADDRESS TO THE CONVENTION OF RAILROAD COMMISSIONERS JUSTICE WALTER CLARK-THE CLEAR RIGHT OF THE PUBLIC TO CONTROL RATES.

[To accompany S. 1770.]

The following is the speech of Justice Walter Clark, of the supreme court, delivered by invitation before the national convention of railroad commissioners at Denver, Colo., August 10, 1899.

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION: I appreciate the compliment of being requested to address this eleventh annual convention of your honorable body, composed of the Interstate Commission and the railroad commissioners of thirty-four States. There are few men to whom more important interests are confided than you, upon whom rest a people's hopes for the regulation of the great transportation business of this country. Upon your success in the discharge of that duty awaits the public decision whether we shall rest content with this form of regulation or whether, slowly it may be, or suddenly it may be, but in either event reluctantly, the people shall be forced to take over the ownership of railroads as the sole solution of one of the greatest problems which now vex the public mind.

Your conventions have, I believe, with one exception, been held in the city of Washington. Appropriate as for many reasons that city is for your gathering, and pleasant as it is for any assemblage, you are to be congratulated that for this occasion you have selected the capital of the Centennial State, the center of the wild and breezy West. Here the air is purer. You are at a higher elevation, and can take a broader and more comprehensive view of men and affairs. It would look as if you were at the very center and hub of the universe, for, as Proctor Knott said of the "zenith city of the unsalted seas," the sky fits down at the same distance all around us. At any rate, you are at the center of the great country which stretches from the Mississippi to the Pacific-a section which embraces two-thirds of this Union, though many men east of the Mississippi have never suspected it. Political parties are so little alive to it that all our Presidents save one have come from the one-third of the Union that lies east of the Mississippi, and that one lived on the very bank of the river, at Baton Rouge. Two of the three great parties in 1896 combined in the nomination of a candidate from west of the great river, and the probabilities are that he will be nominated again next year.

The mountain barriers which once divided this immediate section from the golden slope of the Pacific are like Louis XVI said of the Pyrenees-they exist no longer, for we

Have ridden our iron stallions down to drink

Through the canyons to the waters of the West.

The steel rails of commerce have riveted State to State by bands that can never be burst asunder. Beneath the tread of the iron horse mountains have vanished and rivers ceased to exist.

A LESSON FROM ROME.

From the golden milestone in the Roman forum radiated those magnificent roads which to this day tell how Rome built for the ages. Along them poured the tide of the Republic's and the Empire's commerce; over them tramped her legions, and as the god Terminus successively removed farther and farther the limits of her domains, these magnificent viaducts carried to the remotest verges the-arts, the literature, the laws, the civilization that was Roman. Indeed, her roads made possible the vast extent of her dominion and bound together for so many centuries so many countries in that Roman peace which created and maintained the civilization and the learning without which humanity would not occupy the advanced stage that it does to-day. Suppose for a moment that those Roman roads, the arteries of the Empire, had been owned by private companies of millionaires; that not a wheel could roll, nor a man move along them, nor even the legions, except on terms dictated by the corporations; would not those corporations have had the Empire by the throat? Would they not have appointed consuls and proconsuls, every senator, every general, and every judge? They would have been the government.

A greater than Rome is before you. In these United States the 190,000 miles of iron way are no less the life arteries of the Republic. Along them pours a tide of travel, of freight, of wealth far beyond what the Roman ways, even those nearest the capital, ever witnessed. Indeed, though our railway system dates back only seventy years, over any one of our many great through lines the volume of freight and travel exceeds that of the entire world a century ago. It is needless to say that the control of this immense power must be in the Government, that is, in the people, for with us the Government is still, in theory at least, the people.

RAILROADS AND THE PUBLIC.

The Supreme Court of the United States held in the Granger cases (Munn v. Illinois, 94 U. S.), and has reiterated in many a case since, that time out of mind the control of common carriers and their regulation as to rates and in all other matters rested in the Government. "Though in this country transportation by railroad is carried on by private corporations," said the Interstate Commerce Commission in their last report (1899) to Congress, "it is essentially a government function. This appears from the necessary conditions of railroad construction. It is a universal maxim that private property can not be taken for private uses, but only for the public use. Yet no railroad can be built without the appropriation of private property. It equally appears from the relation of the carrier's business to the com

munity. A merchant may sell to one customer for one price and to another customer for another price, as best subserves his interest, without violating any sense of right and wrong, but it is universally felt that the rates of public transportation should be uniform to all. The railway is, from its very nature in respect to the greater part of its business, a virtual monopoly. If the business of transportation is essentially a government function, then the Government must see that it is properly discharged. If it is in essence a monopoly, then it must be regulated. The two things of necessity go hand in hand."

THE PUBLIC IS SOVEREIGN.

This is a very clear statement of the proposition. Railroads can only be constructed by reason of having rights of way condemned for them as a public use, and being a public use they are necessarily subject to public regulation. Indeed, the fact that you sit here, that we have an Interstate Commission, and that thirty-four States or more have their railroad commissions is conclusive that the sovereign, of whom the Supreme Court of the Union and of every State, is merely an agency-the sovereign people have decided once for all that these iron horses shall be bitted and bridled. The sun will not, can not, go back a single degree on the dial at Ahaz. Mr. Ingalls, president of two great systems, in his address to you last year frankly said: "Regulation by the people has come to stay, and a railroad manager who does not recognize that fact is a back number." He further said that the mass of railway managers fully recognized the permanence of public control and regulation and were earnestly seeking a solution of the difficulties attendant upon it.

No one can doubt that if all railway managers loyally accepted the yoke of the law, all questions of differences between railways and people would be fairly settled by these boards provided by the law for that purpose. It is because many managers do not accept it but resort to injunctions (often issued by their former attorneys, promoted to the bench) to set aside rates, regulations, and tax assessments made by your commissions that the present unsatisfactory condition of affairs exists.

OWNERSHIP V. CONTROL.

It results that the real question-and we are face to face with it-is whether it is practicable to control these great forces, these immense aggregations of capital, by commissions and by statutes, or shall it be necessary to take the absolute ownership of them over in the Govern

ment.

In all the countries of the world save Great Britain and the United States the answer has been that government ownership is indispensable to a safe and just control. Accordingly, in almost all other countries, including even the Australian and other British colonies, the railroads, or at least the controlling lines, are owned by their respective governments. In the United States and the contracted territory embraced in the British Isles the experiment of government control without government ownership is on trial.

There are evils in government ownership. There are difficulties in government control unless it has ownership. It is those difficulties.

which you have had to face since the creation of your respective commissions. You know their magnitude. The history of your various bodies, and the published proceedings of your meetings in these joint sessions for ten years past, show how fully you have grasped the situation and with what ability you have discussed the problems it presents.

ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM.

There are many aspects in which the railroad problem presents itself: 1. The relation of common carriers to their stockholders.

2. To one another.

3. To their employees.

4. To the Government.

5. Their relation to the humble individuals who are often treated as if they had no right to express their opinions on such serious and intricate matters as railroad management, yet without whom not a car wheel would roll, not a magnate would draw his salary-in short, the men upon whose broad shoulders rest the entire support of this immense system-the patrons of the roads.

In looking over your proceedings last session I see that the invitation was extended to me upon the ground that the investors, the great railroad presidents and their attorneys, the employees, the representatives of the Government had been heard by you, and it was suggested that it would not be amiss if the people, the Joneses who paid the freight," they who supported the railroads instead of being supported by them, should be heard from also, and a friend of mine proposed that I should be selected to represent this "Forgotten Man." Your convention did me the very high honor to ask me to represent him and I am before you. This forgotten man elects no president, superintendent, or board of directors, but he has to bear whatever burdens they see fit to place upon him. He has no voice in fixing the salaries, many of them as high as or higher than that of the President of the United States, but he pays them to the last cent. He rarely rides in a palace car or upon a free pass, but he pays the fare of those who do. He has no hearing as to the tax which shall be levied for the movement of himself, his produce, or his purchases, but he pays it more surely than he does the taxes for the support of his city, State, or Federal Government, for the station agent, like that other tax collector, the custom-house officer, extends no credit or delay, but requires cash in hand.

OWNERSHIP NOT DESIRED.

Speaking for this client you have assigned me, I shall not say that he desires government ownership. On the contrary, I think he does not-as yet. He is patient; he is conservative; he has government control, without ownership, on trial; he is watching it closely, I may even say doubtfully, but he will give it a fair trial. If it succeeds, so much the better. If it shall fail he will be heard from further.

Let it not be thought that there are limitations upon his power, for from ocean to ocean and from earth to sky this land and all that in it is are his. He conquered it with his blood. He created it with his labor and has defended it with his life. As to constitutions, he made them and he can make others when he deems that justice to himself and to those dependent upon him shall require it. Justice has ever