under it. No corporation can vote or take part in making laws. Some of you say: "Well, if they can not vote or make laws, they can have a powerful sight of it done." Possibly this is so, yet their legal rights are unchanged-they are the creatures of the government, authorized to act for the public good, and are subject to State control. The Constitution, as I have told you, expressly declares these roads "public highways," and now commands the Legislature to regulate the rates of traffic carried over them. So the principle of regulation has been settled by a Democratic Constitution in furtherance of Democratic doctrines. In this respect it is consistent with the common law. Nowhere does the Constitution require the regulation of private persons or their business in any way.

These corporations have rights that no business man, company or firm, as such, ever possessed or ever will have. When they want to run through a man's land or his house, garden, orchard, horse lot or flower yard, they can do it without his consent and over his protest. They can, regardless of his feelings, tear up the grave ground of his lifeless kin for corporate use. It is true the law requires them to pay "reasonable compensation" for the property appropriated, if the owner and the company agree on the amount. In the event they can not then the company applies to a court and has commissioners appointed who settle that question. The sum fixed is paid, and thus the property becomes condemned under the extraordinary "franchise," and the work of tearing down proceeds. All this is done by the government's consent under the Constitution and laws only when public necessities are to be subserved. Can any individual, firm or private business company do that? Make the experiment and you will say no. You have no right to walk through your neighbors field, yard or lot, or to take any of his property for any purpose without his consent. Having his consent, however, you can take all his land without paying a cent. This illustrates personal liberty-one of the privileges not surrendered when the people organized the government. Every citizen possesses the power of locomotion, or changing his situation, or removing or hiring out his person, or renting, selling or destroying his property, as his inclination may direct, without hindrance or restraint, except by due course of law. Such rights arise from and rest on personal liberty. A railroad corporation can only construct a road, operate a train, collect a charge, sell or rent its line, or tear up or remove its track with the State's consent as expressed through some law. To do such things are privileges or franchises that spring from and depend on the consent of those who enjoy personal liberty and compose the government.

The principle on which the railway company can take land without the owner's consent or exercise its other extraordinary powers is that private interest must yield to public demand. In private transactions the question of consent is all important. That element of contract is not

material when the railroad company wants the right of way or depot grounds. If you want a man's land or goods from a merchant the price must be agreed upon. No consent, no trade. If you want to ship an article over a railroad you pay the price charged or you can not ship. If the rates are exorbitant, as they now are, you must submit and endure them. Your consent or protest can not affect them. To make them reasonable and just to the shipper and to the railway is what I want, and all that any thoughtful citizen demands. If they are unreasonable every citizen ought to complain. No man will say they are reasonable in Texas; nor will that be the basis on which they are established so long as traffic managers or freight agents control them. They will always put them high enough to pay exorbitant expenses, to afford high salaries for a useless horde of idle officers and to meet interest on their úctitious indebtedness. The people, for the protection of their personal liberty and the promotion of their happiness, create the government. In turn the government creates county, city, town, school, railway, canal and other corporations for the public good, and stands pledged on democratic principles, in obedience to the will of those who create it, to check and prevent their oppressions and abuse, and to keep them in control. No city, town or school corporation can levy or collect a toll higher than authorized by the Constitution and laws. The government regulates them and limits their power in raising revenue or passing ordinances, laws or rules for the control of local affairs. It does so by general law to be executed by boards of aldermen, or trustees, who prescribe and enforce the details. Rates of taxation, fees of officers, hours of public work and other important matters are prescribed by those boards; and the charges of street cars, hackmen, draymen and others engaged in public carrying are fixed and regulated by them. No complaint is ever heard of this, nor is such exercise of power called "paternalistic" or "undemocratic," but when a like authority is proposed to be exercised over public highways, grim faces are made, scowling frowns appear, dire calamities are threatened and general destruction of the liberties of the people is predicted. An elementary principle of the law vests the control of the child in the parent. By his act it is given life, and he controls it until it gets too big or too old for him. To this law no objection is urged. An elementary principle also is that the government, which creates corporations, always has control of them within certain reasonable implied or expressed limitations. By its act they are given life, and the presumption is that they never grow too large or too old for it. This presumption, however, is threatened to be overthrown by the logic of events-the creatures are growing beyond the control of the creators. They have gone so long without control or regulation that they feel free and licensed to assert their independence of the government upon principles alone that underlie the liberties of independent freemen.

Indeed they go further and claim and exercise the right of regulating the public by prescribing the taxes or rates that shall be paid in the carrying trade. They have been doing this long enough, and it is time the public should regulate them awhile. The people furnish the traffic and the railways simply do the hauling, but now have the power to arbitrarily fix the rates and to enforce their payment. They are making a truck patch of Texas to supply the extravagant wants of their owners who reside abroad in flourishing cities. If the public complain their reply is a derisive snigger, a contemptuous smile, a defiant look, an ominous shake of the head, or as one of their most distinguished representatives stated it, "Let the people be damned."

Combined as they are now, the State government is growing insignificant compared to their power. Their advocates in the lobby, around and in the Legislature, deny the right of it under the Constitution as it is now formed to adopt a commission. The Legislature, yielding to the force of such arguments, submits an amendment to the people asking that the constitutional obstruction be removed. Their leaders, now, to defeat that amendment, contend that the Legislature has full authority under the Constitution to adopt the commission. So it goes. When they want brains to advance thought, mature plans and cunningly act to thwart legislation their commands only are necessary. When they demand an amendment to the fundamental law defeated at the polls, they have only to express their wish, and talent, on fleet wings, flies into service. When they need money to foot their bills in the indulgence of high luxuries, the employment of influence, the payment of extravagant salaries or for corrupt uses to defeat the will of the people, they simply raise the rate on the traffic of the country and make the people pay it. As one of their leaders but a few months ago remarked to me, "We are tax collectors. When we need money to pay damages, debts, expenses or salaries, we simply raise the tax and make the people pay it." This is simply so and the candid ones of them admit it when not engaged in public debate. Their demands called for an extra sum not long ago and they put up their schedule of rates 10 per cent and collected it. In this way, without notice to business men, who had outstanding contracts to be filled within 5 per cent margin, they imposed on our commerce a tax that raised about $2,500,000-more than enough to defray all the State's expenses for a whole year. Had this extra tax been laid on the traffic of our country by an act of the Legislature open revolt by the people would have been the result. No plea could have atoned for the outrage nor excused those who took part in it. As it was, only a few merchants had the "audacity" to complain, but I think they have quit business since. Others have learned a lesson and will hereafter keep their mouths shut. "Equal rights to all, special privileges to none," is one of the mottoes on our banners that I have always read

with pride and enthusiasm. But it is an insult to that cardinal Democratic principle to contend that it is in force today between the railways and the public. Special privileges are given the carriers, and they go unrestrained in the exercise of their wonderful power. Equal rights are accorded to the shippers to complain to their confidential friends in whispering tones of the wrongs done them. Then, for their advocates to compare railway companies to private firms, or to individual citizens, or to contend that it is "undemocratic" to control and regulate them, exhibits that degree of boldness relieved of all but unalloyed impudence.

Consider their brief existence in this country, the wonderful power they possess, the great leverage upon the destinies of the people they hold within their grasp, the means of combining talent with capital they control, their rapid strides to the complete environment of the whole government, State and Federal, and in the light of the false doctrines their leaders are so industriously inculcating into the minds of the people, patriots must view the future of our country with alarm.

They talk of the encroachment of the Federal power upon States' rights. My fellow-citizens, this very encroachment and danger at which now the people of this country revolt, and which the advocates of railways pretend to abhor, was superinduced by the influence of uncontrolled and licensed corporations.

They are growing in strength so as to threaten not only the legislative and executive departments with their overshadowing powers, but they are reaching out and threatening to grasp and throttle the judicial tribunals of our country.

Until their political influence became felt in America the independent autonomy of the States was never imperiled by the Federal judiciary. Since they have banded the country from one end to the other they hold within their clutches more than one State, have the power to conduct appointments and even control the elections of high officials, and have by their intrigues and peculiar methods gone further than any other institution known to government toward bending the Constitution of the United States to subserve their will. Special among the objects of their hatred is the independence of the States of which the Federal government is com、 posed. You know as well as I do that they avoid our State courts and ignore the people who support them. Where it is possible they make every effectual and deadly strike at the powers of the States to control their affairs. They crouch behind the interstate commerce clause of the Federal Constitution, invoke the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, deter our constabulary with Federal laws and turn up their noses at the mere suggestion of State authority. Yet we have among us those who pretend to believe that these public highways are "private institutions" that should not be controlled or interfered with by the State. They call the

regulation of railway traffic intermeddling with "private affairs." Yet, those so-called "private institutions," in the exercise of public functions, are fast gaining entire control of commerce, throttling private enterprises and defying the laws. No citizen, business firm or collection of people under the form of our government, which they have created, can possess the privileges of such corporations without obtaining charters and joining them. Realizing the prerogatives, immunities, exemptions, growing wealth and independence they are beginning to enjoy by their licensed oppression and defiance of justice, a large class of men are fast casting their lot with them. Within a few years, unless something is done, most of the wealth and talent of our country will be on one side, while arrayed upon the other will be the great mass of people, composing the bone and sinew of this government. The picture is not overdrawn. We are fast drifting into that situation. When that day comes it will strain the patriotism of the remainder of the people who are left upon one side, and the ability, talents and capital of those who are on the other, to keep down the mob, to restrain the commune or to suppress the anarchist. The commune threatens us, but it is the legitimate child and offspring of the cormorant

The issue so sharply drawn in the present campaign is, shall corporate power or the State control? The fight is on and the issue is unmistakably presented. Its disguise by either side would be reprehensible.

Take a retrospective view, consider our situation in the light of it, and it will not be difficult to understand what most threatens our independence in the future. History teaches us that steam railways are the growth of this century; that the first one successfully operated for carrying pas sengers was in England in 1825, just sixty-five years ago—within the memory of men now living; that the first railroad ever granted a charter in America was in Maryland in 1827, and its road was at first worked by horses; that the first locomotive used to draw a train in the United States was in 1829-sixty-one years ago; that in 1830 there were only 23 miles of railroad in America in operation; in 1840, 2800; in 1850, 9000; in 1860, 30,600; in 1870, 52,800; in 1880, 85,000; and that now there are in the United States 160,000 miles in operation. In round figures the liabilities of these roads, according to their own admissions, amount to $9,600,000,000-$100,000,000 more than the whole active circulating medium of the whole civilized world; while that of all the States and Territories of the Federal Union aggregate $260,000,000. Their annual gross earnings are $950,000.000; the gross receipts of all the Territories and States aggregate $150,000,000. Their annual expenses amount to $654.000,000; that of the States and Territories foot up $112,000,000. Bring home the comparison. The total indebtedness of the 8000 miles of railroad in Texas is $263,000,000, while that of the State is $4,238.000. Their earnings last year aggregated $28,000,000 while the receipts of the State were $4,900,000.