can doubt who has heard the evidence or carefully examined the subject.

But the mining and carrying of anthracite by the same gigantic corporations not only wrongs the consumers every where by exacting a monopoly price; not only wrongs the miner by depriving him of good treatment and steady employment at fair wages; not only wrongs the stock-holders of the mining and carrying company itself, particularly in the case of the Reading Company, by preventing dividends on stock, as well as by involving the company in reckless speculation and bank. ruptcy, but also produces gross political abuses. While the economic abuses herein recited do not apply with equal force to some of the combined mining and carrying companies as they do to the Reading, inasmuch as they pay dividends to their stock-holders, while the Reading has not paid a dividend for twelve years, yet the political abuses apply equally to all; for they all plunder the public, they all stint and oppress the miner, and they all combine to dominate the State government in every department in the interest of corporations against the people.

There is, as before mentioned, a superabundance of labor throughout the anthracite regions. Tramps are to be seen on every hand; vagabond squads of Italians, Poles, and Huns, many of whom can not speak English, throng the mines to compete with Americans for work; hence the wages of miners tend downward all the time, while the price of anthracite moves upward, or at least remains at the monopoly figure which the seven joint carrying and mining companies have been exacting for it, of late years. The question will force itself, Why are the mines overrun by these ignorant pauper foreigners? How do they get there and by whose agency? Competition for employment is so fierce that wages in many occupations are but little above the starvation point, and when the superintendent of the Reading mines was asked by your committee upon what influence he relied to fetch the men back to work he replied, "Their necessities."

Nearly all this multitude of unemployed or poorly paid laborers arevoters, and vast numbers of them must be cheaply purchasable or easily intimidated. The Reading Company alone has over 20,000 miners and about 15,000 railway employés in its service. Will these employés dare defy its behests at the ballot-box? The Pennsylvania Railroad and other carrying and mining companies have their swarms of employés also, too many of whom are but little better than political as well as industrial slaves.

In proof of this the railroad corporations by their irresistible influence first induced the State legislature to authorize common carriers to become miners also. In entering upon such a policy the corporations had to employ tens of thousands of laborers, most of whom live in the lowest scale of existence. It was the rule with these corporations to hire laborers from the poorest classes at scant wages; and it is readily seen that brute force must have been required to terrify them into subjection whenever they should be moved to strike or refuse to submit like angels to lockouts, which they sometimes did in the effort to obtain something above "starvation wages."

It naturally followed that these corporations again went to the legislature to obtain a police power, which they and not the State should control, to be able to hold the miners and laborers in subjection. Accordingly every railroad in 1865, and every colliery, iron furnace, or rolling-mill in 1866, was granted by statute liberty to employ as many policemen as it saw fit, from among such persons as would obey its behests, and they were clothed with "all the authority of policemen in

the city of Philadelphia "-were paid such wages and armed with such weapons as the corporations determined-usually army revolvers, sometimes Winchester rifles, or both-and they were commissioned by the governor. His discretion was and is now the only limit upon the number of such policemen to be appointed; and it is believed that the gov ernor has seldom if ever refused to commission the number and particular persons asked for. They report to nobody but the heads of the corporations employing them, from whom they get their orders, and which they execute generally with a mailed hand. It struck some of your committee as a curious condition of affairs, while walking the streets of Hazelton and Shenandoah, two mining towns of several thousand inhabitants, that there were to be seen three different sets of policemen-one wearing a metallic shield engraved, "Borough Police," a second "Railway Police," and a third "Coal and Iron Police;" the two latter many times more numerous than the former.

The authority of the railway policemen extends over all the premises of the railroad throughout every county where the road runs and in the clerk's office of which his commission has been recorded. So, too, the authority of the coal and iron police is equally extensive, but with this difference that the railway policemen are independent of any orders save those of the railroad company; and it is doubtful even if the gov ernor, who may commission or refuse to commission a railway policeman, may afterwards give him an order or cancel his commission, although under the statute of 1866 he can revoke the commission of a coal and iron policeman.

Mr. Austin Corbin, president of the Reading Railroad Company, while under examination before your committee in February, 1888, admitted that his railroad had then in employ "probably 300" of these domineering policemen, and from reliable information the number of coal and iron policemen alone in commission last October was 412. These aggressive policemen tend to overawe not only the local civil police, but the people themselves. All these police are likewise made detectives by statute, and while exercising the latter office they are not required to wear their badge or metallic shield, which serves more or less to destroy all confidence in social intercourse among the population of the mining regions, who are harried on every side by spies and informers, which latter instantly may become clubbing policemen. The only riot that occurred during the great and prolonged strikes which your committee was appointed to investigate was needlessly provoked at Shenandoah, as the testimony clearly shows, by the railroad and coal and iron police. And the chief of that police during this riot added as many ruffians as he pleased to club the people at $2 a day, and hired them himself without applying to the governor for that purpose. In a boastful manner he admitted this to your committee on the witness stand, and appeared to feel that he had more authority than the executive at Harrisburg.

From the cautions and anxious manner in which some of the witnesses testified, and from the bated breath in which they privately disclosed their wrongs, and from the subdued appearance of the population generally, there was a forcible reminder to an intelligent man of the status of affairs in Russia or of other despotisms.

Everybody recognizes that there must be an abundance of policemen in and about the mines, furnaces, and rolling-mills where there are ig norant, vicious, and turbulent elements to be held in control; but your committee condemns the principle and policy of a police power under any other than civil authority. There ought to be a concentration of

civil power; for as it is now there is a want of responsibility. There is a jealousy among these so-called keepers of the peace; crimes are frequent and go unpunished; as evidence of its inefficiency notwithstanding the great number, and different kinds of policemen, perhaps more crimes go unpunished in the mining localities than in any other part of the State. What is everybody's business is nobody's, and a division of authority sometimes leads to a conflict of authority as well as to a neg lect of its exercise or to an improper exercise.

Instead of three heads of authority, there should be but one-the local civil authority. Nothing makes power so honest and efficient as sole responsibility, and all civil police should be responsible directly to the mayor of the town or the sheriff of the county or his deputy. The entire mining country is interlaced by railroads and telegraphs, and the whole police in every town and county could readily be concentrated wherever needed upon short notice, as the different detachments of police in a large city can speedily be rallied at any point by a chief of police, and this could be done in the mining regions by the sheriff or his deputy just as effectually as by the heads of the corporations themselves. Again, if the civil authorities controlled the appointment and handling of the police, proper persons, and not bullies, would be selected, who would conscientiously enforce peace in the community far more than will the irresponsible policemen who best fulfill the wishes of their masters when executing the oppressions of pecuniarily interested corporations. In leaving this branch of the subject it may be remarked that the "railway" and "coal and iron" policemen of Pennsylvania are as odious to the better class of citizens in the mining regions as if they were known as Pinkerton detectives.

So much extortion was practiced upon the public by the unholy alliance among the joint carrying, mining and manufacturing industries, and so many wrongs were inflicted on the miners and upon employés by the corporations through the railway and coal and iron police, who habitually usurped in many cases the functions of the regular local civil police, that the people of Pennsylvania arose in their might, called a convention, and framed a new constitution in 1873, in order, mostly: (1) To curb the unbridled power of corporations; (2) to prevent corrup tion at elections; and (3) to prohibit special legislation, the two former abuses having been produced, possibly, mainly by the extortions, oppressions, and corruption of the joint business of carrying, mining, and manufacturing. Its most important new provisions, compared with the preceding constitution, were articles 16 and 17, which declared railroads and canals to be public highways, and required railroad and canal companies to transport without delay or discrimination of any kind. The consolidation of competing lines was forbidden. Common carriers were prohibited from engaging directly or indirectly in the mining or manufacturing of articles for transportation over their works, or from acquiring ownership in land, except for carrying purposes. The power of the legislature to alter, revoke, or annul charters of railway companies was also provided for, and that no corporation should have granted to it hereafter any further privileges except on condition that it accepted all the provisions of the new constitution. The general assembly of the State was required to enforce these provisions by appropriate legislation, which "appropriate legislation" has unhappily never been had, although it has been vigorously attempted by a few members at nearly every session of the legislature. It is true that the State act of 15th May, 1874, was passed professedly to make provision for the enforcement of these articles; but on this

point the Hon. Charles R. Buckalew, now a distinguished member of this House, and formerly United States Senator, in his admirable commentary on the new constitution of Pennsylvania, page 270, says:

This object it does not accomplish. The promise of its title is falsified by the body of the act. In fact, upon an examination of that act in all its provisions and of the history of its enactment by the legislature, the conclusion must be that it was not framed in good faith to the constitution or intended to enforce any substantia reform in corporate management.

Because, as he says on page 267

The act is imperfect, for it provides no penalty for its violation, nor other means for its enforcement.

A more pretentious act providing penalties was passed by the legisla ture June 4, 1883, but those "penalties" were to be inflicted for offenses defined in the act and not for offenses described in the seventeenth article of the constitution. And so many conditions, qualifications, and limitations were added to the crimes defined by the act that nobody ever has been convicted under it, or ever can be, or ever was intended to be convicted.

The political parties in the State, at times, have vied with each other in convention platform promises to enact this "appropriate legislation," but the friends of the constitution have never been able to command a majority in the legislature against the friends of the corporations. And the most that ever has been accomplished in that direction was the passage of a shirking joint resolution at the session of 1878 to encourage such legislation by Congress, in the following words:

Resolved, That our Senators in Congress be instructed and our Representatives be requested to vote for the passage of an act to provide for equity in the rates of freight upon certain property carried totally or partially by railroad in commerce with foreign nations or among the several States and Territories, and to prevent violent and injurious fluctuation and unjust discrimination in such commerce, and for other purposes. Approved March 5, 1878.-J. F. Hartrantt.

But while the legislature of Pennsylvania will enact no statute to discipline corporations, it seems too ready to pass laws for them.

On the 24 and 6th of June, respectively, in 1887, two separate statutes were passed as follows:

AN ACT to protect the rights of share-holders in property and stocks of corporations. SEC. 1. Be it enacted, etc., That no real or personal property, the title to which is or may be held by or in the name of any corporation of this State, anthorized by its charter or general laws to hold the same, shall be escheated to the Commonwealth, nor shall, in any judicial proceeding, any inference of any relation of trust or agency arise by reason of the character or residence of the stockholders holding the whole or part of the capital stock of such corporation, nor because the beneficial ownership of said property, in whole or in part, is, or has been, in any person or persons, corporation or corporations, prohibited from holding the same.

SEC. 2. That said lands and property shall again become liable to escheat to this Commonwealth, as already provided by law, if said corporation shall continue to hold said lands and property exceeding five years after the passage of this act, and an information, in the nature of a quo warranto or other proper proceeding, shall be filed or brought by this Commonwealth to escheat the sime: Provided, That no railroad, canal, or other transportation company of this State, nor any corporation in whose name the title to other lands or property is held, shall plead or have the benefit of this get unless it shall have previously filed with the secretary of the Commonwealth a certificate, in writing, signed by the president and secretary and attested by the corporate seal of the corporation, stating that at a regular meeting of said board of directors a resolution, in pursuance to the consent of the stockholders, was adopted, accepting all the provisions of the seventeenth article of the constitution of the State, and that all the powers and privileges and the limitations and restrictions therein shall be deemed and taken for all purposes to apply to such corporation. No such certificate shall be made by the officers aforesaid without the consent of the stock

holders of the corporation at a general or special meeting first had and obtained: Provided further, That no railroad, canal, or other transportation company shall plead or have the benefit of this act unless it shall have previously filed with the secretary of state its acceptance of all the provisions of article 17 of the constitution of this State, in manner and form as provided by law. (Approved, June 2, 1887.—James A. Beaver.)

AN ACT to enable the citizens of the United States and corporations chartered under the laws of this Commonwealth and authorized to hold real estate, to hold and convey title which had been held by aliens and corporations not authorized by law to hold the same.

SEC. 1. Be it enacted, etc., That where any conveyances of real estate in this Com monwealth have been made by any alien, or any foreign corporation, or corporations of another State, or of this State, to any citizen of the United States, or to any corporation chartered under the laws of this Commonwealth and authorized to hold real estate, before any inquisition shall have been taken against the real estate so held to escheat the same, such citizens or corporations, grantee as aforesaid, shall hold and may convey such title and estate indefeasibly as to any right of escheat in this Commonwealth by reason of such real estate having been held by an alien or corporation not authorized to hold the same by the laws of this Commonwealth. (Approved, the 6th day of June, A. D. 1887.-James A. Beaver.)

Both these acts are worthy of the proverbial astuteness of the Philadelphia lawyer.

It will be seen that the act of June 2 does two things: (1) That the immense area of lands unlawfully held by the railroads engaged in carrying and mining coal shall never be escheated to the State, provided that the benefit of the act shall not apply to a corporation until it shall have filed with the secretary of the commonwealth a very ceremonious resolution, stating that the stockholders accept all the provisions of Article XVII of the constitution; (2) that said lands shall not be escheated, but shall only become "liable" to escheat if held longer than five years from the passage of the act, when proceedings shall be brought by the State to escheat the land, but such proceedings may be defeated by the corporation simply pleading that it has accepted by formal resolution all the provisions of the seventeenth article of the constitution.

If the analysis given is not the correct one, what is the correct one? Under the provisions of the above act, which seems to have been framed more to conceal than to express its real meaning, what consideration does the State get for waiving perpetually her right to escheat these lands? It is true the act purports to make them liable to escheat after five years if the corporations shall longer continue to hold them, but any judicial proceedings brought to escheat them can be instantly defeated by the corporation pleading that it has accepted all the provisions of Article XVII of the constitution; a gratuitous condition, inasmuch as the court of last resort in the State has repeatedly decided that the offending railways now illegally holding baronies of land, and engaged in the joint business of mining and carrying coal, and otherwise violating the new constitution, are generally subject to the provisions of that instrument.

Another covert provision which seems to lurk in the above act is to enable foreign stockholders or purchasers of said lands now illegally in the possession of the offending railroads to acquire a valid title either for their own benefit or in trust for the railroads.

That the above interpretation is the correct one, and that the general assembly so understood it is obvious, from the fact that four days afterward it passed the second act quoted, which, both in the preamble and the body of the act, unequivocally and boldly permits any citizen of the United States or alien to purchase, hold, or convey title to these escheatable lands without any limitation as to time, and that such title shall be superior over any right of the State to escheat them.

What an outcome of the strong party pledges to execute the consti