Part 13 (2/2)

”I am of the opinion,” said General Webb in discussing this point, ”that when the Chief justice spoke of the maximum rate in the Edson case he was governed by mental impressions received previous to 1879, when the maximum rate was indeed the rule in California.”

All this was a very pretty theory. To the common-sense mind ”conform to the rates fixed” might mean conform to them; the normal man might be unable to dig out of the Const.i.tution any prohibition of absolute rates.

But the confusion caused by the raising of the question got the Stetson bill very much in the air.

During all the discussion, however, the Wright bill was not considered at all. n.o.body was thinking of the Wright bill - that is to say, n.o.body outside of those scheming for its pa.s.sage. Like a mongrel duck's egg under a respectable hen, it was left to incubate undisturbed, to surprise everybody at the hatching.

Finding themselves unable to clear away the doubt which raising the question of the const.i.tutionality of the absolute rate had created, the anti-machine Senators and the attorneys of the s.h.i.+ppers finally, after the Wright bill had been forced into prominence, put the case something like this:

”If the Courts decide that the maximum rate only is const.i.tutional, then the Wright bill, which provides for the maximum rate, will be const.i.tutional, and the greater part of the Stetson bill will also be const.i.tutional.

”But if the Courts decide that an absolute rate is the only rate justified under the Const.i.tution, then the Wright bill will be unconst.i.tutional and all the Stetson bill const.i.tutional.”

This somewhat loose argument unquestionably kept certain Senators who recognized the impracticability of the maximum rate, but feared for the const.i.tutionality of the absolute rate, in line for the Stetson bill.

With the situation thus confused, all was in readiness to bring the Wright bill before the public. This was done on February 17th. Up to that date the writer honestly believes that not two minutes had been devoted to public discussion of this measure, although the Stetson bill had been discussed paragraph by paragraph, line by line, every word weighed carefully.

The ceremony of giving the Wright bill prominence took place behind the closed doors of an executive session of the Senate Committee on Corporations. These executive sessions, by the way, are seldom held when the best interests of the public are to be conserved. The proceedings were evidently pre-arranged. Senator Wright opened by moving that the policy of the Committee should be that the Railroad Regulation measure to receive favorable consideration from the Committee must provide for the maximum rate.

The vote was as prompt as it was decisive. Senator Wright's motion carried by a vote of 7 to 3. The vote was as follows:

For the maximum rate - Bates, Welch, Wright, McCartney, Bills, Finn, Kennedy.

Against the maximum rate - Walker, Roseberry, Miller.

Burnett, the eleventh member of the Committee, was absent.

Gradually it dawned upon Walker, Miller and Roseberry that this meant the favorable recommendation of the Wright bill. The next moment that fact was hammered into them by the Committee deciding by the same vote, 7 to 3, to recommend that the Stetson bill do not pa.s.s; and that the Wright bill do pa.s.s.

The machine had won the opening skirmish in the railroad regulation controversy. Incidentally it had come out in the open squarely for the Wright bill. From that moment the machine Senators labored openly for the pa.s.sage of the measure. However, the machine was not yet out of the woods with its Railroad Regulation bill. The Senate Judiciary Committee had still to pa.s.s upon it, and the majority of the Judiciary Committee was anti-machine.

Wright followed the same course in the Judiciary Committee as he had taken in the Committee on Corporations, namely, moved that it be the sense of the Committee that the Railroad Regulation bill to be favorably considered by the Committee should provide for the maximum rate.

Wright's motion was, however, lost by a vote of 8 to 10. The Committee not only rejected the maximum rate, but endorsed the absolute rate, thus reversing the Committee on Corporations. The vote by which this was done was as follows:

Against the maximum rate, against the Wright bill and for the Stetson bill - Campbell, Cutten, Miller, Stetson, Thompson, Caminetti, Boynton, Roseberry, Curtin and Cartwright - 10.

For the maximum rate, for the Wright bill and against the Stetson bill - Anthony, Martinelli, McCartney, Wright, Willis, Wolfe, Burnett and Estudillo - 8.

Absent - Savage - 1.

Thus the Stetson bill after two months of machine effort against it, went to the floor of the Senate from the Judiciary Committee with the recommendation that it ”do pa.s.s.” Of the forty Senators, nineteen were lawyers, and every one of the nineteen was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Thus the majority of the lawyers of the Senate, in spite of the confusion which the machine claquers had created, were willing to take their chances on the const.i.tutionality of the Stetson bill.

But in fairness it must be admitted that members of the Judiciary Committee who voted for the absolute rate provision of the Stetson bill were still in the befuddled condition in which Peter F. Dunne's sophistry had left them. Senator Miller, for example, in explaining his vote for the absolute rate, said:

”I take this stand, not that I am convinced that the Supreme Court will decide the absolute rate to be const.i.tutional; I fear that it may not.

But the maximum rate is little better than no rate at all. I wish the absolute rate provided in this bill, that the Supreme Court may be given opportunity to pa.s.s upon it.”

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