reasonable rates. In making rates, railroad traffic managers have been frequently charged with discriminating unjustly as between localities. Where a locality claims to be aggrieved by an unreasonable rate, or where other unjust discrimination is alleged, the government should provide an effective method of having the complaint heard and the rate set aside, if found unreasonable. And means should be provided for substituting a just rate without long and burdensome delay. There are now existing remedies against unreasonable rates, but they are costly and ineffectual. It is right that Congress should accede to the demand for an effective remedy.

A most important reason for the exercise of such government power over rates is found in the present method and principle of rate-making. Railroad officials, charging what the traffic will bear, have a wide discretion and exercise a power in many respects like that of taxation. They are not owners of a private monopoly, but are conducting a business charged with a public interest. When carriers and shippers dispute about rates for the service rendered by a business which has a public character, it is not right that one interested party should have power to make an arbitrary and absolute decision. With the tendency to consolidation of the railroads of the country under control of a small group of financiers, it becomes increasingly important that the ratemaking power should not be entirely unrestrained, but should be regulated in the public interest. We have seen that there are important reasons why a conservative policy would favor the fixing of rates by private managers in the first instance, but such managers should not be made dictators from whose decision the public has no adequate method of appeal. There should be some tribunal of appeal so constituted as both to safeguard the interests of the public and to conserve the property rights of the private owners.

Every plan of government interference with rates is open to one important objection. The power to set aside one rate found unreasonable and to establish a new rate is the power to alter all rates if all are found to be unreasonable. Furthermore, since rates are dependent one upon the other, the

alteration of a single rate might compel the change of hundreds of others. Because such possibilities attend the exercise by the government of the power of regulating rates, many persons are opposed to such a grant to any governmental authority, arguing that the power would be used to bring about a general reconstruction of the whole rate system of the country. It is believed, however, that it is possible to put into force a system of rate regulation which will afford a remedy for known and definite evils without opening the way for radical or revolutionary action. Present conditions

are such that radical action is to be feared rather as the result of a do-nothing policy than as the result of a conservative measure for the relief of complaining shippers and localities.

The writer has no new plan to add to the many which have been already offered. He has been much impressed with the merits of the plan for federal regulation proposed by Judge Noyes, of the Connecticut Court of Common Pleas, who is also president of the New London Northern Railroad Company.* Judge Noyes maintains that the question of the reasonableness of a rate is a judicial one and must, under our system of government, be determined by a court. He would therefore have a special court created in accordance with the constitutional provisions concerning the judiciary. This court would have power to enquire into the reasonableness of any specific rate against which complaint had been made. If the rate were found reasonable, the complaint would be dismissed; if found unreasonable, its further collection would be enjoined. Experience has shown that courts may be expected to use such power conservatively and with due regard to the protection of private property rights. But it is the opinion of Judge Noyes that the making of a new rate is not a judicial function and that the courts could not properly undertake that function. He therefore proposes that when a rate is found unreasonable "all the papers in the case, together with the evidence," shall "be certified to the Interstate Commerce Commission which" shall "be empowered, upon an inspection of the papers, to then make a max

*Walter C. Noyes, American Railroad Rates. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company.

imum rate to take the place of that found unreasonable by the court." This rate is to remain in force a prescribed time and to be subject to modification by the commission. No hearing before the commission will, under this plan, be necessary, and speedy action will be required.

This plan reverses most of those which have been proposed, since action by a court is to precede rather than to follow action by a commission. It seems to avoid constitutional and legal objections, to provide a more satisfactory body for the initial determination of the reasonableness of a rate, to be as expeditious as any other plan-especially if a special court be created to hear rate complaints, and to be fair to both shipper and railroads. There is, of late, a tendency among leading railroad managers to come to the support of some such conservative legislation as has been outlined. It is recognized that, "Defeating conservative measures merely incites radical action." The feeling in railroad circles is reflected in an article by Hugh Rankin, of the Railroad Gazette, in the annual financial review of the New York Times. He says: "Even the likelihood of national railroad legislation is admittedly causing less and less misgiving among the railroads themselves. It becomes steadily more evident that there will be legislation, and at the same timea conclusion which has really always been pretty clear-that no measure will be enacted which will mean confiscation of the property or prosperity of the railroads."

William Henry Baldwin, Jr.*

BY OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD,

Of the New York Evening Post

To some of the readers of THE SOUTH ATLANTIC QUarTERLY the assertion that the premature death of William Henry Baldwin, Jr., was a great loss to the South may seem an anomaly. For Mr. Baldwin was of sturdy New England Abolitionist stock who believed with a full heart that all men are born free and equal. Although for two years a resident of the South, while an employee of the Southern Railway, and therefore familiar by observation and experience with its peculiar problems, he none the less did not share the conventional Southern view as to the proper methods of dealing with them. Wherever his work took him, whether to Kansas, Montana or Alabama, he had the same habit of studying what was going on about him as of dipping deeply into the railway questions with which he had to do. His mind could not, however, be influenced merely by the fact that those who surrounded him held to a certain belief. He could truthfully say, "Reason has prevailed with me more than popular opinion.' Moreover, like most men who exert a wide moral influence, he had early charted certain fixed moral principles by which he steered the ship of his faith through such mental seas, whether calm or disturbed, as it was his lot to navigate during his all-too-brief life.

But if Mr. Baldwin did not make Southern beliefs his own, his residence in the South gave it that hold upon his interest

*To Mr. Villard's general estimate of Mr. Baldwin's character and work we add the following biographical facts: Mr. Baldwin was born in Boston February 5, 1863, was fitted for college at the well-known Roxbury Latin School, and graduated at Harvard in 1885. In February, 1886, he went to Omaha to accept a position with the Union Pacific Railway, remaining in the West until 1894, when he became third vice-president of the Southern Railway, with headquarters at Washington. Two years later he moved to New York, having accepted the presidency of the Long Island Railroad, which, before his death, became a part of the Pennsylvania System. Until his death, January 3, 1905, he was, besides being one of the most prominent railroad men of the country, a most useful citizen, as may be clearly seen from Mr. Villard's article.-THE EDITORS.

and affection which is the experience of all men of broad sympathies and of imagination who cross its borders. The desire to aid in the uplifting of the South, both educationally and otherwise, was perhaps the strongest influence in his life at its close. By this no one should conceive him a dogmatic philanthropist deeply prejudiced in some directions and working along certain lines with marked condescension—and a patronizing air. The chairman of the General Education Board was a simple-minded man, quite unconscious of himself and bent only on applying business methods to the edu cational and social problems that fascinated him. He was above all a believer in fair play and the square deal. Unfairness to black man or white man, either in the denying of opportunities or by the drawing of class distinctions, always stirred his indignation. Yet he could ever see both sides of a case and if he felt as he did-deep sympathy for the negroes, he also appreciated to the fullest extent just how terrible a task it is for any people of refinement and education to face life in a community overrun with ignorant, often brutish, beings, and yet remain just and truly Christian. This ability to feel the wrongs of both sides gave him the power he possessed of moving people and winning their respect and confidence. This is often done by a cowardly concealment of one's own beliefs, frequently misnamed diplomacy, but Mr. Baldwin's views were widely known and understood. If any people misinterpreted his utterances it was their fault, not Mr. Baldwin's.

For the pressing Southern evils of the day Mr. Baldwin's remedy was in most cases education. Eager in the fight against child-labor, North and South, he wished to attack it by a campaign of education and by the enactment of compulsory school laws. Himself a corporation officer-he was, at his death, president or trustee of more than forty companies or financial institutions-he early realized the fallacy of the theory that cheap and ignorant labor pays. To the poor whites he wanted to give better roads, better newspapers and better schools. To bring them in touch with the busy world, from which those of the back country semed almost as far apart as in the days of slavery, was one of his aims.