mount upon the workers, nor has there been at any time a corresponding increase in wages. But the truth is that while the workers constitute the great majority of the population nobody has considered them in all this legislation, nor, as I shall show a little later, has it been possible for the workers to secure the slightest real attention to their desires, even when what they want is a matter of plain and simple justice and of the utmost importance to the welfare of the nation.

But to come back to the failure of regulation, and to look at it merely from the point of view of the classes it was intended to benefit, take railroad regulation, for instance. We began that in 1886, and for the last twelve years every Congress has regularly testified to the failure of the railroad laws by passing a new set designed to correct the weakness of the laws in existence, and each new law has been found on trial to be as flabby and inefficient as the old.

A very good example of this kind of legislative tom-foolery may be found in the long drawn out efforts to stop the species of railroad swindling that consists in the giving of rebates to favored shippers. Every one of our railroad regulative measures has aimed to stop rebating and on its passage each of these laws

has been hailed as at last the sure and effective remedy. The Elkins law of 1903 was certain to stop rebates, the Roosevelt law of 1906 made them utterly impossible and the Taft law of 1910 abolished the last chance that any railroad, however dishonest, could ever slip by with a rebate to anybody. The result being that today there is probably in bulk as much rebating as there ever was, the only change being that it is more cleverly concealed and that whereas in former days small shippers had some chance at these favors, to-day they are confined exclusively to the big establishments, which thereby secure still another advantage over smaller competitors.

Many good souls but easily deceived will probably be shocked at my statement that there is in bulk as much rebating as ever and some may think it merely an extravagance. I purpose in this article to make no assertion without the authority therefor, and in this instance the deduction I have drawn is based upon an authority no less than the Interstate Commerce Commission. In a decision handed down January 27, 1914, the Commission unreservedly denounced the practice of rebating as widespread, unlawful and operating to the disadvantage of smaller manufacturing concerns

throughout the United States. These rebates, the Commission found, were often disguised as elimination of demurrage on “industrial lines " owned by the manufacturing plants and claiming to be common carriers, the admission of such industrial lines to the benefits of the so-called "per diem arrangements," and in other ingenious ways; but they were none the less rebates and unlawful. The decision then proceeded to give an astounding list of the rebates it had discovered, and of course where it succeeded in digging up one instance there are probably one hundred that it did not unearth. Some of the largest railroad companies and most important manufacturing enterprises in the country, conducted by eminent gentlemen whose devotion to law and order is vociferous whenever there is a strike, were proved by the Commission to be habitual violators of the statutes against rebating.

Thus the National Tube Company, one of the subsidiaries of the United States Steel Corporation, the decision says, " has forced the line carriers to concede divisions to it out of their rates, which during 1911 are shown to have been $425,000. This exceeded the entire operating expense of the plant railway for that year."

A long list of industrial companies, among them the Republic, Pittsburgh, Bethlehem, and Cambria steel companies; the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company, and the Wheeling Steel and Iron Company, are named as having received such preferences and discriminations.

The Commission found that during the fiscal year 1912 the Pennsylvania Railroad had paid $1,019,910, the New York Central $660,057, and the Baltimore and Ohio $530,317 in allowances to industrial railways. Five industrial lines received more than $1,000,000 in per diem reclaims.

"In many cases," says this memorable decision, "the cash revenues received by these plant railways out of the rates of the line carriers are sufficient to lift from the industries the entire cost of their operation." It says that in many instances the plant railway also is able "to declare large dividends on its stock held by the industry." The Baltimore and Sparrows Point Railroad Company, the plant railroad of the Maryland Steel Company, paid annual dividends on such stock during the last eleven years that "aggregated more than 423 per cent., and have ranged from 20 to 55 per cent. a year."

Fifteen million dollars a year, according to this decision, is a conservative estimate of the rebates thus concealed years after all these laws have made all forms of rebating absolutely illegal and prohibited them under heavy penalties. And all these investigations of the Commission, it must be borne in mind, take no account of the enormous rebates that are concealed in other ways.

The decision further points out that allowances paid to and free services performed for large industrial plants relieve them of a heavy expense they would otherwise have to bear as part of their manufacturing costs; on the Pennsylvania lines east of Pittsburgh alone there are 233 such plants where the railroad performs services free.

66

Such allowances, the decision says, are an example of the special concessions and rebates in service that shippers with a large traffic are able to wring from the carriers in consideration of being permitted to handle the traffic or share with other lines in its carriage."

Or to take another handy and ever present illustration, observe the prodigious efforts of the government to deal with the mighty trust problem and what a hash it has admittedly made of the job.