Show A INTOLERABLE S TONI 1olirteen sears after I enactment of the Interstate commerce law we find the Federal Government supporting at a salaried cost per year of J37500 a commission of five men to hear complaints com-plaints against the railroads which they are powerless to remedy to interpret inter-pret a law they t are powerless to enforce en-force and to write annual reports cal lug public attention to the helplessness of their position One of these reports has just been given out I tells a now familiar story The law of 1887 has been made practically a dead letter by t judicial emasculation and railway evasion Most of the C39 complaints of unlawful rates and practices of railroads filed with the commission last year were allowed to drop because the complainants complain-ants were unwilling to undertake the trouble of preparing and presenting their cases In regular trial before a commission which as the law now stands Is without power to provide an power adequate remedy and unable In any case to have Its order promptly enforced en-forced The common carriers are now in a full unregulated possession of the field as before the creation of the commerce commission Through consolidations which within a few months alone have brought oneeighth of the total mileage of the country Into control of the big systems they seek to overcome the anticombination features of the laws of the United States but without Wait ing for consolidation they practically fet these laws aside In a concerted change of freight classifications which effect a general and lane Increase in rates Under n system nominal pub lie control of rates the unregulated ratemaking power of the roads is asserted as-serted with n success rarely equaled before the system was applied and the hundreds of complainant shippers are forced to swallow their grievances ii the knowledge that the power created by the Government to afford redress Is lOVles9 I This l is an intolerable situation It will have to be remedied or it will 1 rise to a movement for a more or less direct public operation of the roads which will sweep through the country I with an Irresistible force Springfield CorceSprlngOeld II i Republican |