nation, so that in its construction millions were divided in profits, then cities, precincts, and counties often bonded to build branches, depots, and machine-shops, would allow the people of small means but great courage, contending with the privations of pioneer life, to share in the beneficence of the nation. But not so. West of the Missouri River the rates are about fourfold greater than east of the river.

In their early history, Kansas and Nebraska were told, there are but few people to transport, but little of freight to haul, you must be charged for railroad and telegraph service fourfold; but now those States are populous; the productions marvelous, but the discrimination continues. The imports are equally marvelous. All the lumber must be transported from the Northern pineries; they can obtain none within their own borders.

The Government protects the labor of the farmer west of the Missouri by imposing a tariff of from one to three dollars on a thousand feet, which goes into the pockets of the pine barons of the North, and then tolerates a charge to the dwellers west of the Missouri fourfold, and this goes into the pockets of the millionaire lords of the rail; with no protection to the people from State or national legislation. In this Government of the people, by the people, for the people, the people have really but small voice. True, they have the right to vote, that is for the men whom corporations, through the machinations of ring politicians and manipulations of county and State conventions, put in nomination; and then the same corporations shirk the honest portion of taxation by owning or controlling State boards, and at the first demonstration against their robberies the civil power must be called, then the military ordered out to protect their stolen millions, and all this expense, even the transportation of troops over their own roads, must be borne by the toiling millions who can not shirk the burdens of taxation.

THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT.

Every year by slow stages the opposing ideas, and forces, and camps are nearing each other. For years capital has been organized, bold, unscrupulous, rapacious, God and law defying, moving as did Gould, according to his sworn testimony, in New York and Huntington, by the evidence of his own written history, upon State Legislatures, upon the courts, and the Congress of the United States, unblushingly purchasing judges and legislators. In any monarchy or kingdom in Europe their "sins would have found them out," and punishment followed; in a republic they despise the people and control its representatives.

But the issue is approaching. Labor heretofore, in scattered and incoherent forces, was easily captured, driven from the field, and trampled beneath the feet of organized capital.

But the impending crisis is coming. As in the days of slavery and in all the past and will be in the future there has been and ever will be an irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery, between right and wrong.

The greater the effort to smother and subdue the demand for justice and right the more certain and determined the struggle, and, no matter at what cost, the final victory. The feeling of injustice and wrong in the human heart of the one or the multitude can never be quenched. The heavier the burden the more certain and violent will be the outbreak. As well expect the hidden, seething fires in the earth's bosom could be restrained or checked from eruption by piling mountain after mountain upon them, as to attempt to deaden in the heart the fires kindled by extortion and avarice, or seek to check by piling a greater volume of atrocities.

This dynamite thus generated in the human heart will explode by reason of the great burden by which you seek to repress it, and will produce the very disasters you pretend to fear. Can you make the men of this nation or any other believe that the four billions-a sum greater than ever was our national debt-of watered stocks and bonds is honest property and really deserves protection from courts or Legislatures? Can you make the men of America believe that the three hundred millions claimed by Vanderbilt and the two hundred millions claimed by Gould were honestly obtained?

WHAT THEN?

This fiction of property above all things needs that protection which can only be secured by recognition and manly concessions to other interests that are real, and to labor. A huge volume of fictions, printed on paper by conspirators against the nation's prosperity and then called values, property, inverted and standing upon the small end, reeling and vibrating, as quotations among the gamblers in Wall street attest, by the least breath of discontent-the owners of these fictions, of all men, should accord decent treatment to the remainder of mankind from whom they expect to force dividends and interest on the stolen four billions.

History in the annals of crime always repeats itself; and the holders of illicit gains always presume that bold, aggressive conduct will insure abject submission. Slavery made that fatal mistake. The English lords who stole Ireland's land made that mistake. Now the plutocrats of America will not profit by their example. Do not say that I judge harshly. The Senate committee have incorporated these facts substantially in their report. But they fail at the point where the monster evil should be grappled by the strong arm of the law.

If the industries of this nation were only required to pay fair dividends on the real cost of railroads we would be prosperous to-day. Certainly, the committee's report says, we were prosperous when roads were building and money being spent, just as the individual improving his property by borrowing and spending $10,000, but in order to raise the $10,000 has given a mortgage of $30,000, on which he is to pay yearly interest. You will not wait long to see the end and ruin of that

man.

The committee point with pride to the many miles of rails within our borders as evidence of wealth. So it would be if the nation was not charged up and taxed for sufficient to build triple the number of miles.

Then they assert too many roads have been built on parallel lines to make a pretext for speculation and fraudulent issue of stocks and bonds; that the people must be taxed to support two lines instead of one. Finally they recommend, what would increase the very evils they point out, as the only remedy to the people, to build more rival lines in the shape of canals and improving water ways, while they know the Pacific road, which the Government controls, is allowed to buy up the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by paying over a million dollars yearly to the Pacific Mail line to prevent the very competition the committee desire by expending millions on canals and rivers.

A remarkable position indeed. I would cheerfully vote millions to dig canals and clean rivers if I could be assured we had a government that could protect the people and prevent creature corporations of its own creation from stealing millions from the pockets of the people to deny them access to two oceans which require no digging or dredging for commerce.

The bill denounces discrimination against persons or places, against

more for a short than long haul.

Now if we add limiting the dividends to the actual cost of roads, and then that for any claim for damages to the person or penalties to the public the corporation may be prosecuted in the State courts, and be prohibited from removing such suits to federal courts, then a fair beginning will have been made.

The people will never be relieved of these evils if we are content to sit down before them and lament they are too large to handle.

AN EXAMPLE FOR THE NATION.

The nation can take an example from Jay Gould. The Senate Committee on Education and Labor industriously obtained from that worthy individual a complete history of his life, presumably for the youth of America to imitate. If this Republic had as much persistence in right as a single individual had in wrong the remedy would soon be effected; neither courts, Legislatures, nor law stood in his way. It seems the courts, the law, Legislatures, Congress, and the people can not rend the spoiler of his prey or obtain relief against his villainies.

That biography is an amusing chapter in the testimony referred to. The committee tremblingly and beseechingly implored him to give a minute detail of his daring exploits and wonderful life, and he most blushingly consented. Early in life, when he was hard pressed for dinner, he adopted, he says, his sister's method, and went behind the blacksmith shop and prayed. Only one prayer was necessary, for the blessing came in great measure; so much so that in a few years the tanning business in which he and his partner were engaged was in financial stress and perit; so overwhelming that the partner was driven to suicide, and Gould, the other distressed partner, at once bought a railroad nearly 100 miles in length. For the prosperity of the country the wrong partner suicided.

Still the Committee on Education and Labor delicately forced the blushing Gould to proceed with stories rivaling Aladdin's lamp, he omitting the millions stolen from Erie during his lively management, and the dark shadows that lowered on Black Friday when he could not gloat over the financial disaster of a great Republic, although thousands were ruined, but was voluble as to Union Pacific. How the innocent, guileless creature was inveigled into purchasing the stock, and when he was really forced into the ownership that his only ambition was to put that enterprise on a substantial foundation, and to accomplish that immediately pumped so much water into the concern that he succeeded admirably in placing it on a foundation so liquid that its weight submerged it from the hopes and almost the sight of men.

He bought worthless roads and unloaded them on the Union Pacific at an advance of millions to himself, when he triumphantly and with great emphasis exclaimed that he surprised every one by paying dividends, a most wonderful feat when it was equally evident to every one that the dividends were never earned. He was only preparing the way to capture the surplus millions of Massachusetts and other New England colonies.

Then the grand achievement of purchasing at a nominal price the bankrupt Kansas Pacific and consolidating with the dividend-paying Union Pacific, whereby he and his pals realized from twelve to fifteen million dollars. Then, as there were no more worlds to conquer, he generously consented that the widows and orphans of Massachusetts should be allowed the golden opportunity, and he unloaded at par and upward, and turned over the wreck to the management of Mr. Adams. No wonder the Committee on Education were dazed, doubtless as much so as by reading the exploits of Jack the Giant Killer or the

life of Kidd, the pirate. The recital was fearfully exciting, but between the long-drawn breath of admiration of the committee they could beg of him to proceed, that the world as they were breathlessly waiting to hear still more. When he regained his own breath, after detailing the Union Pacific marvel, he proceeded with the tale of the Missouri Pacific. He gently stated that in this as all other projects from the time he prayed behind the blacksmith shop and his partner committed suicide, that he desired to do some great and good thing, and that he obtained the Missouri Pacific, not higgling about the price, but paying the owner his own figure, and he adds taking no longer time to make negotiations than in relating it to the committee. Not to make money. Oh, no! But to see what good he could accomplish, and at once with great energy commenced pumping into it water as he did into Union Pacific.

Gould through modesty refrained from telling a portion of what was the current history at the time. At Kansas City he was overtaken with another religious spasm, and he wrestled for the second time in prayer, and told the people how happy he felt; that he wanted no more money; that filthy lucre led to death; that he had purchased the Missouri Pacific only for good to mankind, and should use it only for the glory of God and the benefit of the people.

As he was contemplating another raid, he seemed to feel the necessity of another installment of Divine grace; so he went short on the promise by pretending he would not benefit himself by the blessing.

How well he kept his promise is evinced by cruel treatment and breach of faith to the thousands of employés on the same road, in the determination to force them into absolute starvation or abject submission to his demands.

Theologians have never fully understood this feature in the wonderful history. There is no mystery, they say, in the prayer and getting religion behind the blacksmith shops, but why he should seek a new installment of Divine assistance and reasonably hope to expect it from Kansas City is past finding out.

For the comfort of the present and future residents of the New Jerusalem it is to be hoped he will not indulge in a third prayer on earth, for that might tide him through this life, and should he in the end secure an entrance into the Celestial City he would soon be conspiring there to lay a railroad from force of habit; when he tore up the shining avenues the angels could not restrain him from stealing the golden pavements.

PROTECTION TO LABOR.

To secure by legal and proper methods that protection which is due to labor it is organizing, impelled by the avarice and exactions and power of organized capital; and a portion of the pulpit and press, as usual, are imploring peace and observance of the laws. Certainly, labor is not proposing to violate either. To-day it has but little more power to do so than theslave in his chains. His advancement is through peace, his protection through the law.

Such appeals are always made to the weak; they were made to the slave. The sacredness of the law and the sanctions of religion were duly preached into him even to submitting quietly to chains and stripes. At that time there was no preaching to the slaveholder as there is today but little preaching to the corporation monsters in iniquity. Why not implore them to restore what they have stolen from the nation; to relinquish their unjust demands; to emancipate labor from a despotism as grinding as that which the colored man endured?

The object of the organization of labor is to preserve peace, to obtain concentrated and intelligent action, to obtain redress through the ballot and not the bullet. The strong arms of labor have always protected the nation in the day of peril. There need be no fear to the Republic from that source. Bold, wealthy slavery precipitated the war, but the men from the ranks of toil preserved the life of the Union. I hope not to grate too harshly on Senatorial nerves, and will break the story gently in this solemn presence, that not many of the names of Gould, Vanderbilt, and the millionaires of the money centers appear on the rolls of the Union Army.

The ranks of the Union Army were recruited from those who were delving in our mines, toiling in our factories, filling our prairies with bountiful crops, running our railway trains, and when the nation is again in peril from within or without the brave hearts and strong arms of the same class of laborers will rescue it again.

Far better turn your entreaty to overgrown corporations and beg them to regard the sacredness of law. Go to the Standard Oil Company, which transgresses all law and honor in its methods to crush out smaller industries, conspiring with great railroad corporations, who seek to set at defiance the statutes and the courts.

So the money-lenders, who seek to violate and nullify the Constitution and law which makes silver and gold a legal tender, by requiring in their contracts, notes, and mortgages to be paid in gold alone.

These are the great criminals who would imperil the prosperity of the nation to feed their own greed. Yet Congress is paralyzed, not so much by the great transgressions as the giant wrongdoers with whom they fear to grapple.

The wealth of this nation is made alone by the toiling hands. The power of this nation is alone in the ballots in the same toiling hands. And to make that wealth, abstracted into the pockets of the few, subservient to the prosperity of the nation, the ballot must represent the men who hold it and not their enemies.

Mr. STANFORD. Mr. President, I desire to occupy the attention of the Senate briefly in explanation of what I believe to be the principles involved in the bill under consideration.

This bill purports to be an act to regulate commerce between the different States. I have read it with a good deal of care and I do not find anything in it that regulates commerce. Everything in it is as to the carrier only. The word commerce has a well-defined meaning. It means trade, barter, interchange of commodities, with which the carrier in the transaction of his legitimate business has no concern whatever. I therefore think the title of the bill ought to be changed to express its true meaning, and, instead of reading “A bill to regulate commerce," it should be "A bill to regulate carriers."

If it were a bill to regulate shippers and owners, whose material the carrier moves, the title would be more appropriate. I may be told perhaps that there are judicial decisions that the regulation of the carrier is the regulation of commerce, but here when we propose legislation it is entirely legitimate to discuss the question as to the original matter and to determine it upon the principles which seem to be involved. There is a great difference between the possession of a power and its exercise.

Of course the Constitution plainly gives Congress the right to regulate commerce between the States. But as the carrier has nothing to do with the control of the shipment of goods, wares, and merchandise, with their ultimate disposal or destination, therefore regulating him or determining the price he may receive for his services can have no relation