be to put the section in force. As I propose to amend the section the sixty days will apply to the time after the appointment of the commission. The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator will send the amendment to the desk. Mr. CULLOM. I will send up the bill with the amendment marked on it. Mr. HARRIS. I have it here, Mr. President. Mr. CULLOM. The Senator from Tennessee has it also. The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The amendment will be stated. The CHIEF CLERK. In section 5, line 2, after the word "after," it is moved to strike out the words "this act shall take effect" and to insert "the appointment of the commission hereinafter provided for;" and in line 3, to strike out the first word "the," between the words "with" and "commission," and insert the word "said;" so as to read: That every common carrier subject to the provisions of this act shall, within sixty days after the appointment of the commission hereinafter provided for, file with said commission appointed under the provisions of this act copies of its tariffs of rates, &c. The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The question is on agreeing to the amendment. The amendment was agreed to. The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The question recurs on agreeing to the amendment proposed by the Senator from West Virginia [Mr. CAMDEN]. Mr. CULLOM. I do not know whether the Senate understands that the Senator from West Virginia desires the last amendment he offered to be first voted upon. on. Mr. ALLISON. Let the amendment be reported that we are to vote The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The amendment will be stated. The CHIEF CLERK. In section 4, line 5, after the word "direction," it is proposed to strike out "and from the same original point of departure;" so as to read: SEC. 4. That it shall be unlawful for any common carrier to charge or receive any greater compensation in the aggregate for the transportation of passengers or property subject to the provisions of this act for a shorter than for a longer distance over the same line, in the same direction. Mr. HARRIS. That is the amendment first to be acted on, because it perfects the text and it is in order before the motion to strike out is put. Mr. CULLOM. So I understand. Mr. HARRIS. In order that the Senate may comprehend the precise effect of that amendment I will say a single word. Under the provisions of the bill as it now stands common carriers are prohibited from charging more in the aggregate for the short than the long haul over the same line of road going in the same direction and from the same point of departure. To illustrate: From the city of Chicago to New York, from the point of departure, Chicago, the through rate being to New York say 10 cents a hundred pounds of grain, all shipments from Chicago to any point on that line could not exceed 10 cents a hundred pounds from Chicago to the point of destination. leaving Chicago and taking up freight 10 miles or 50 miles or 500 miles away from Chicago on the line to New York, under the provisions of the bill as it stands the transportation company would have a right to charge as much, twice as much, or thrice as much from this midway point to New York as from Chicago to New York. But By adopting the amendment and striking out this language, my un derstanding is that it will mean, no matter whether you make your shipment from Chicago to some point in the direction of New York or to New York, you shall not charge more in the aggregate for the short haul than for the long haul; that if you make your shipment from any point between Chicago and New York to New York you shall not charge more for that shorter distance than you charge for the transportation over the whole line of road. I think that explanation shows precisely what the amendment means and the effect it is intended to have; and believing that effect to be just and desirable, I shall vote for the amendment as proposed by the Senator from West Virginia. Mr. CAMDEN. In addition to what has been said by the Senator from Tennessee I wish to call the attention of the Senate to the fact that the provision which relates to the long and the short haul limits it to the same original point of departure, which would leave the section to affect only shipments from the same points and would not affect shipments from any intermediate points. In other words, from a given point at a long distance, at a given rate to the seaboard or to the market, all shipments from that point must be at the same rate; but the limitation in the bill, "from the same original point of departure," does not affect the thousand other places which may be nearer to the market than the original point of departure. This particular limitation in the fourth section, "from the same original point of departure," is a limitation which affects most largely the shipping interests of the whole country. That provision would control nine-tenths of all the shipments to which the section could apply. That was the basis chiefly upon which I addressed the Senate a few days since in urging an amendment to strike out all the limitations and all the exceptions contained in the section. I have concluded to first submit an amendment to strike out the words and from the same original point of departure" as covering the main point I desired to reach by the previous amendment. I have given considerable thought to this subject, and I am firmly convinced in my own mind that this provision is not only of the greatest importance to the whole country of any provision which could be inserted in a bill to regulate interstate commerce, but I am, moreover, fully satisfied that the amendment would be in the interest of the railroads, for the reason that it would produce a uniformity in transportation and in the charges of railroads, which would enable a railroad to make such general tariff rates as to produce from the earnings of the road an amount to cover the fixed charges and the amount necessary for the road to make. Mr. PLATT. I do not think I shall want to vote for a short-haul clause which does not have the words in which are proposed to be stricken out. Last year I voted against a proposition to insert a shorthaul clause in a similar bill for the reason that I thought we might leave that whole subject to the commission to deal with it under the power which is given to them to prevent discrimination, and for the additional reason that I thought it might be a very dangerous experiment to try in an interstate-commerce bill, where so much of the freight consists in getting the produce of the far West to the seaboard. But subsequent reflection has convinced me that there ought to be a short-haul provision in the bill. However, I think that the clause "and from the same original point of departure" ought to be retained in the bill. To strike it out assumes that there are no points which by reason of the concentration of business at those points can do the freighting business for any less than at other less important points. It assumes, too, that you must charge the same rate over all the branches of the railroad which it affects without reference to the cost of construction or the amount of business which is to be upon those branches. I think it is essential to keep this clause in the bill for the purpose of allowing cheap freights from the West to the East, and that under the present system of railroads to strike it out and oblige a railroad to charge from every point a thousand miles distant upon its various branches to New York as little as it would charge from the great distributing center a thousand miles away from New York would result in very great difficulty about transportation in this country. Let me illustrate by a diagram. Here is a road which is a main line and there are two branches [indicating]. One branch really forms a part of the great main line. One end of the Y I call A, the other B, and the point of destination to the seaboard C. The great bulk of the shipments on that road owned by the railroad company, of its two branches, go from A to C; but B is equally distant from C that A is. The road can afford to do its business for less, carrying great quantities of grain or other produce to market from A to C, than it can from its terminus at B, for, as I suppose, in this illustration the branch which runs up there [indicating] has cost a great deal more to build and the business on it is a great deal less. It runs through a sparsely populated country, and yet if this clause is taken out of the section it can charge no more from the great point of distribution, where the bulk of the business goes, than it is allowed to charge from the termini of the road, which is in a sparsely settled community and where there is very little business and over a road which it has cost no less to build. I think that simple illustration shows the difficulty of applying any rigid iron-bound rule per mile to this question. Mr. CAMDEN. The Senator from Connecticut has presented an extreme case for illustration, one which perhaps does not exist in this country; and even in that case I beg to say that the Senator is mistaken in the supposition he makes. He and my friend from Georgia [Mr. BROWN] both construe the amendment into a provision that the rate shall be so much per mile. That is not the object nor the meaning of the amendment. A railroad may charge as much for 500 miles as it does for a thousand miles, and because a railroad may have two branches, as illustrated by the Senator from Connecticut, it does not limit the rate per car from the two points but simply limits the charges by providing that the charge for the longer haul shall not be greater than the charge for the shorter haul. Mr. HARRIS. If the Senator will allow me to call his attention to a fact, I will state that the bill in explicit terms confines the provision to the same line of road and going in the same direction. The Senator from Connecticut held up two different lines of road belonging to the same company but they can not be called the same line of road. Mr. CAMDEN. I am very much obliged to the Senator from Tennessee for making that explanation. I was going to make it, but the Senator has made it better than I could have done myself. The principle in the bill does not apply to the illustration made by the Senator from Connecticut. I will say further that the fourth section, in limiting it to "the same original point of departure," does not mean anything. It does not mean legislation at all upon the long and short haul question. Take a car leaving from any of our large centers of competition in the West. This clause limits the charge to the same class of shippers from that point to the same market or to intermediate points in the same direction. It limits it so that the charge for the short haul shall not exceed that for the long haul. A railroad may start out from the original point of competition and strike into a country where for 200 miles there are no competitive points. In that 200 miles of road the products of that country may be charged any amount that the railroad may choose to charge or that the freight will bear; and the fourth section will not apply to it. In other words, the distant points shall have the benefit of the competition, but it is denied to all other sections of the country. It certainly appears to me that striking out the words "and from the same original point of departure" preserves the whole effect and virtue of the bill, if there is anything in it. Mr. PLATT. I understand it is objected now that my illustration does not apply, because the provision of the section is "over the same line, in the same direction." I think the bill is open to a construction which would make my illustration applicable. If the word "line means only the road between two points, and not the road owned by the company, then perhaps the illustration does not apply; but if it means the line, the road, the system which the company is operating, then it does apply. Upon the theory that my illustration does not apply, I will take the instance again from Chicago to New York. The great bulk of the grain shipment from the West to the East leaves Chicago for the seaboard. The road has facilities for transacting that business. It can do business a great deal more cheaply where large quantities of a given kind of freight are moved than from points where but very little of that character of freight is moved. We will suppose that the rate from Chicago to New York is exceedingly low, but the railroad is able to take the freight on account of the immense amount of business which is done, which can be done at a lower rate than where the business is very limited. Strike these words out of the bill and then take a station 10 miles this side of Chicago, if there be such a station, where grain does not concentrate, where there are no great facilities for receiving and distributing it, but where there is a farming community. A man brings a single car-load of grain to the little station where the trains stop occasionally, and asks to have it transported to New York. When you strike out these words it is equivalent to saying that the road must take that one car-load of grain under those circumstances from that little flag-station, if you please, and carry it to New York just as cheaply as it carries the great bulk of the grain which is transported from Chicago. In other words— Mr. HARRIS. I should be glad to propound two questions, if the Senator will allow me. Mr. PLATT. Allow me to finish the sentence. Mr. PLATT. In other words, it ignores the fact that business can be done at a center where there is a great amount of business to be handled and where there are the best facilities for handling it cheaper than it can be done at a place where there is very little business done and no facilities for handling it. Now, I will hear the Senator from Ten nessee. Mr. HARRIS. Under the provisions of the bill as it stands, taking the illustration from Chicago to New York, every shipment made from Chicago, whether to New York or any intermediate point on the line of road, is subject to this provision, and the shorter haul can not be forced to pay more than the aggregate amount paid on the longer; but if you take up a shipment midway between Chicago and New York, at a way station, of one or fifty car-loads of freight, that shipment is not in any wise subject to the provisions of the bill. Mr. PLATT. It certainly is. Mr. HARRIS. May not the transportation company, so far as this bill is concerned, charge twice as much for the shipment from the 500mile station as it charges from Chicago, the thousand miles, to New York? Mr. PLATT. If it is a fair charge it may; but the Senator has said that it could charge twice or three times as much, and the charge is still open to the provision in the bill that there must be no extortionate charges. It leaves open the whole question whether the higher charge from the little way station just this side of Chicago is a fair charge or not. If it is an unfair charge, an extortionate charge, then it is regulated by the other provisions of the bill. Mr. HARRIS. May I ask the Senator if the short haul provision contained in section 4 applies to or regulates any shipment from Chicago to New York except those that start from the point of Chicago? Mr. PLATT. It certainly does not, but it regulates Mr. HARRIS. Then, if it be just and reasonable and right to regulate by law the short haul leaving Chicago in the direction of New York all along the line at the various points to which shipments may go from Chicago, is there not just as much reason and justice in allowing the way station to ship from its point to New York under the same provisions and with the same limitations and with the same protections of law that the shipments can go from Chicago to the way stations or through? If there be a difference, I confess that I not able to see it. Mr. PLATT. If you admit that justice requires an approach to the same rate per mile for freight, then the Senator from Tennessee is right; but if you admit that it may be fair and just and equitable under the circumstances of business to charge a higher rate to New York from a station 10 miles this side of Chicago under the circumstances which I have supposed, then he is entirely wrong. The question is whether there may be a discrimination on account of the amount of business to be transacted at different places and the facility of transacting it. That is all there is to it. Mr. HARRIS. The Senator certainly does not intend to be understood as asserting that the striking out of this language will reduce the matter to the same rate per mile. All that it will effect is this: If you ship from the half-way station between Chicago and New York you can not charge more in the aggregate for that half distance than you are charging for the whole. It would be twice as much per mile if you charged the same aggregate amount for the freight from the 500-mile point that you charge from Chicago over the entire length of line being a thousand miles. Mr. PLATT. It strikes me the Senator begs the question a little when he removes the station from 10 miles this side of Chicago to 500 miles, because, if the station is 10 miles this side of Chicago, and he insists that a car-load of freight shall go from that little, inconsequential station to New York at the same price that the thousand or two thousand or ten thousand car-loads a day go from Chicago, then he is reducing the rate practically to the same rate per mile from the station 10 miles this side of Chicago. Mr. WILSON, of Iowa. whether he does not think that it would be an improvement to amend the bill by inserting, in line 6 of section 4, after the word "departure," the words "or to the same point of destination;" so that the section would then read: I desire to ask the Senator from Connecticut That it shall be unlawful for any common carrier to charge or receive any greater compensation in the aggregate for the transportation of passengers or |