some sort of information or suit against the railroad company to compel it to do right, that would accomplish the object you have in view, would it not?

Mr. HICKEY. I do not care whether it is done by a board or by the attorney-general. Mr. RICE. But the attorney-general will not take hold of the matter unless some one brings it to his attention.

Mr. HICKEY. Well, I take it that it is the attorney-general, or somebody acting for him, that will have to do it.

Mr. RICE. Of course it is the attorney-general who brings the suit after the facts are brought to his knowledge. He acts for the State.

Mr. HICKEY. Mr. Thompson says there is nothing to prevent me or anybody from enforcing the law against a railroad company; now you [addressing Mr. Thompson] know well enough, as an attorney, that a railroad company having a suit of that kind brought against it would summon the best counsel in the State, or in the country, regardless of expense, and not only would the company directly concerned as defendants do that, but all the other companies would aid them and share the expense. Mr. THOMPSON. I grant all that.

Mr. HICKEY. Then you would have arrayed against this one man the whole railroad capital of the United States, and the case would be carried from one court to another and delayed and dragged along, and in the mean time the plaintiff would be driven into bankruptcy.

Mr. THOMPSON. Do you know that if you go to Harrisburg to-day and make a complaint in writing, under oath, to the attorney-general, stating what you have stated here, and asking him to commence proceedings against the offending railroad company, he will do it before night-that it is his sworn duty to do it.

Mr. HICKEY. I do not know what he would do, but I do know that in this very house, over a year ago, I called the attention of Governor Hartranft to the very same state of affairs and asked him to suggest in his annual message some law to correct it, but instead of that he recommended a constabulary force.

Mr. THOMPSON. Don't you know that you and I as citizens of Pennsylvania have just as much to do with that question as Governor Hartranft? I take some interest in this point not only as a member of this committee but because you have arraigned the laws of our State. Now, if the laws already on the statute-book are disregarded by the railroad companies, and not enforced by people who are injured, how do you propose to remedy the difficulty by enacting more laws of the same character?

Mr. HICKEY. I have stated that I propose to make the State bear the expense instead of the citizen who is aggrieved; just as if you knock me down on the street the State prosecutes you at its own expense.

The CHAIRMAN. I understand the complaint to be that the railroad companies transport their own coal without charging any rate of transportation, and when the oper ator comes along and asks them to transport his coal, they ask a rate so high that it is prohibitory.

Mr. HICKEY. Yes. The law ought to fix the rate of toll. If the rate is left discretionary with the company there is no power on earth that can stop this discrimination. Mr. THOMPSON. beg your pardon. If the law does not fix the rate that a railroad company shall charge for passengers, can the company therefore charge you three cents a mile and me 30 cents a mile?

Mr. HICKEY. Yes; if there is no rate fixed they can charge any rate they please. Mr. THOMPSON. Can a railroad company, which is a common-carrier, charge you

one rate and me another when we both travel in the same car?

Mr. HICKEY. It can fix its rate at five cents a mile or ten cents a mile, and then it can give you a rebate so as to reduce the charge for you to three cents a mile. Mr. THOMPSON. You say that a railroad company can do that legally ↑

Mr. HICKEY. I say they can do it, and you cannot prevent it legally. There is no law to prevent them from doing it.

Mr. THOMPSON. Well, I say to you that the attorney-general can forfeit the charter of any railroad company which does that, and all the lawyers in Christendom cannot prevent it.

Mr. HICKEY. That is not the attorney-general's opinion in these very cases that have been referred to here.

Mr. THOMPSON. I beg pardon. But that is the ground on which those cases are brought.

Mr. HICKEY. No, it is on the ground of conspiracy.

Mr. THOMPSON. It is not a criminal proceeding?

Mr. HICKEY. No, but it is a proceeding in equity. Now, as to going into court, the railroad companies have a plan of "black-listing" individuals, and it is utterly impos sible for a man who is "black-listed" to get work again. Now, you may ask, "Why don't you remedy this, the courts are open?" But you cannot do it. There is not an individual in the State who is able to fight one of these companies, and the State itself fails to protect the citizen in his rights. If I go out in the street and malign your character you can reach me and punish me under the law of libel or slander, but

if I am a coal operator or miner, and you are working for me, and I discharge you for any reason, and Mr. Smith is another employer, and I say to him that you, John Thompson or John Jones, were employed by me and discharged, and say to him not to give you any work, that you are a dangerous man, that ends it, and you do not get any more work so far as my influence goes, and you have no redress.

Mr. THOMPSON. Do you mean to say that the man discharged has no remedy in a case of that kind, whether the ground on which he is discharged is well founded or not?

Mr. HICKEY. He has not; for the simple reason that the men who are treated in that way are too poor to bring the employers to justice. And the same reason applies to the coal-operator. He is as poor compared with a railroad company as your workman is.

Mr. THOMPSON. Tell us, then, how you propose to change this state of affairs. Mr. HICKEY. By making the State bear the expense of vindicating the individual's rights.

The CHAIRMAN. Suppose you are in my employment, and you and I disagree, and I discharge you, and then turn around privately and say to Mr. Rice, "I have discharged this man," and Mr. Rice thereupon declines to employ you; that, I agree, is a hardship to you, but how can it be prevented?

Mr. HICKEY. The proper way would be to send you to State prison.

The CHAIRMAN. But how could you do it? All I say in the case is that I have discharged you. I do not slander you; I simply state to Mr. Rice the fact that I have discharged you. Then you go to Mr. Rice and ask for work and he tells you that he has no work for you. Now, what is the remedy?

Mr. HICKEY. Yes, he says he has no work, and immediately afterwards he hires a half dozen other men.

The CHAIRMAN. When the employer says, "I have discharged this man; don't give him work; he is a dangerous man," I grant that you have a remedy; but when he confines himself to the simple statement that he has discharged you, I do not see what remedy there is. As a rule, in such cases, whatever the employer says is said privately. Mr. O'HALLORAN. That is true, Mr. Hewitt.

Mr. THOMPSON. The case that the witness put was where the employer discharges his employé and writes a letter requesting others not to employ him, because he is a dangerous character. Now I say that in such a case, if the charge is not true, the laws of Pennsylvania will punish the man who makes it.

Mr. SMITH. Of course, but the trouble in all these cases is in the evidence. I guess you have not seen many papers of that kind lately.

Mr. HICKEY. You need not go outside of this room to find a number of men who have been treated in that way.

The CHAIRMAN. That I do not doubt, and I have no doubt now that, if a witness should come before this committee and make very damaging statements to the employers, he would be remembered as a man who had not accommodated himself to views of the employers. I think it very likely that that would happen, and I think it is a great hardship, but I don't see what the remedy is.

Now, as to this question of discrimination by the railroads, the radical difficulty seems to be that these great railway companies unite two functions, common-carriers and miners of coal, and that by uniting these two functions they are enabled to crush out all competition, because when a private coal-operator comes to them and offers his coal for transportation they give him rates which are prohibitory. This being so, is not the radical error in the fact that the laws of Pennsylvania have allowed common-carriers to be also competitors in private business, and so to crush out the competition of individuals? Assuming now that that is the radical difficulty, let me ask how can the Congress of the United States intervene to prevent a State from permitting a commoncarrier to engage in private business enterprises?

Mr. HICKEY. So far as the interference of Congress is concerned, I was thinking only of those railroads that are chartered, not by one State, but by two, three, or more States. I think the United States ought to have supervision over such roads. The CHAIRMAN. Let it be assumed that the United States can have a supervision to regulate rates; still, how could they in any way prevent a railroad company from mining coal in the State of Pennsylvania, or from going into the iron business and owning blast-furnaces all along their roads, and then breaking down individuals engaged in the same business, when those companies are creatures of the State of Pennsylvania alone, and confine their operations within the State?

Mr. HICKEY. In this State the remedy, of course, lies with the State legislature, and not with Congress, but you will bear in mind that I included in my suggestion both the State and national governments.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes; but now I point out this other difficulty-in the case of roads running into or through two States. You hold that in such cases the United States can interfere, though they cannot interfere with those railroads which are wholly within the limits of a single State. Upon your plan, therefore, there would be two

governments-one Federal and the other State-exercising jurisdiction over roads doing the same class of business, and you would have one ruining the other.

Mr. HICKEY. Well, the state of affairs you describe is this, that we have a creature of the State greater than its creator.

The CHAIRMAN. But you have courts in Pennsylvania, as Mr. Thompson has pointed ont, to rectify these evils. It is not the business of the United States Government to interfere in the concerns of a State, to compel the State courts to do their duty. The jurisdiction of the United States is limited by the Constitution, and does not apply to the case of compelling States to do justice between citizens.

Mr. HICKEY. You find a state of affairs existing here which you admit is all wrong, and then you say, Citizens of Pennsylvania, it is true that I am a member of Congress; I took an oath as a Congressman to do thus and so

The CHAIRMAN. To obey the Constitution.

Mr. HICKEY. Yes, to obey the Constitution; and the Constitution gives Congress the power to legislate for the general good, and to see that every citizen is protected in his rights; and yet you, as a member of Congress, say that you admit the existence of these evils, but Congress is powerless to remedy them.

The CHAIRMAN. But you have not stated the Constitution correctly. It provides a tribunal to adjudicate upon disputes between citizens of different States, not between citizens of the same State. There is no such power as you claim given to the United States Government. On the contrary, it is reserved to the States separately. Therefore we are powerless to intervene. There is a bill pending providing for a governmental supervision over the land-grant railways, but so far Congress have not gone beyond that. How far they will go in that direction I, of course, cannot tell. Mr. HICKEY. Well, there is another grievance. When I spoke of the “diamond” car I spoke of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western mines, and those controlled by that company. Now, the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, which is also a coalmining company, have their coal mined by the ton, but it is a different ton from what you understand to be a ton in New York. You buy coal there at the rate of 2,240 pounds to the ton, but the miner in Pennsylvania who is employed by the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company has to mine 2,800 pounds to the ton. For every 2,800 pounds of coal that he mines the company pays him for mining one ton.

The CHAIRMAN. That is a mere matter of private contract?

Mr. HICKEY. It is a mere matter of robbery. You may call it what you please, but the fact is that the miner has to add on these six hundred pounds to every ton that he mines.

The CHAIRMAN. What difference would it make if the company kept the ton at 2,240 pounds and reduced the pay per ton?

Mr. HICKEY. Well, the pay of the companies is all alike.

The CHAIRMAN. But why do people continue to work for a company which requires them to mine 2,800 pounds to the ton for the same pay that another company gives for mining 2,240 pounds? In my part of the country people would not submit to it for an hour.

Mr. HICKEY. They would if they were starving.

The CHAIRMAN. No; I don't think they would. I don't think a proposition of that kind could be carried out there at all; two men working side by side, the work the same in its character and the price nominally the same, and one required to do onequarter more work than the other for the same money.

Mr. HICKEY. Well, I don't know what you have found in your experience, but I do know that three years ago the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company reckoned 2,240 pounds to the ton, and that, without any notice or ceremony, the miners were informed that on and after a given day they would have to turn out 2,800 pounds to the ton. The CHAIRMAN. Suppose that instead of that the notice had been in this form: "Hereafter, instead of paying a dollar a ton, this company will pay but 80 cents," would there be any difference?

Mr. HICKEY. The difference is this. The great public outside don't know anything about the facts. They pay so much a ton for coal, and they understand that a ton in the mines means the same as a ton in the market. Such a rule reduces the wages too for mining coal, and the general public don't know anything about it.

The CHAIRMAN. I don't see what interest the general public have in that question. Mr. HICKEY. They have a great interest. The newspapers announce that coal costs the company so much per ton to mine, but the fact is that it is a ton and a quarter that costs the price which they say a ton costs.

The CHAIRMAN. But you have just testified here that the companies regulate the price of coal in the market, and do not send any more to market than they can sell at their own price.

Mr. HICKEY. Well, but at the same time this misleads public opinion.

Mr. THOMPSON. In other words, you think it is a deceptive or dishonest way of stating facts to the public.

Mr. HICKEY. That is the idea.

Mr. THOMPSON. How would you remedy that? Suppose I choose to tell you a story by innuendo, how can you regulate that by law?

Mr. HICKEY. That is the question to be considered.

The CHAIRMAN. In the old charcoal days a ton of blooms was always 2,464 pounds, whereas a ton of pig-iron was always 2,240 pounds. But was anybody deceived by that difference? Not at all. When I bought a ton of the one I knew I was to get 2,464 pounds, and when I bought a ton of the other I knew that it was only 2,240 pounds. That has been one of the customs of the iron trade for a hundred years.

Mr. HICKEY. But this which we complain of is only a custom that this particular company has established a short time ago. I mention the matter because, in all probability, you will be waited upon by Messrs. Sloan & Dickson and others who are large owners of coal mines, and they probably-Mr. Dickson in particular-will represent that they pay so much per ton for mining coal; and unless you put the question directly to him the chances are that he will not say anything about this 2,800 pounds business.

Mr. THOMPSON. Do other companies pay for 2,240 pounds as a ton?

Mr. HICKEY. That is the only company around there that pays by the ton.
The CHAIRMAN. The others pay by the car-load, do they not?

Mr. HICKEY. Some of them. The Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, for the most part, pays by the ton; the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Company pays, for the most part, by the car-load.

Mr. THOMPSON. When you gave the figures $1.31 and $1.52 per car, how much did that car that you had in mind contain?

Mr. HICKEY. The company expects that every "diamond" car shall have a ton and a half of clean coal run through the breaker.

Allow me to make another recommendation, which, if acted upon, would greatly benefit this locality, although the measure would be general. A large number of our people here wish to settle on the land, but they are unable to do so. I refer now to industrious men who are able and willing to work, but who cannot get anything to do, aside from the question of pay altogether. Now, if this committee is anxious to benefit the people of this particular locality, and of the country generally, let them go to Washington and say to the Congress of the United States, "We must extend some aid to these poor people to enable them to get upon the land and go to work.”

The CHAIRMAN. That proposition has been laid before the committee by several witnesses in great detail, and more than that, your own Representative, Mr. Wright, has introduced a bill with the same object, and made a very elaborate and careful speech in advocacy of it.

Mr. HICKEY. I know that. I merely mention it to bring it to your attention.

VIEWS OF MR. JAMES O'HALLORAN.

JAMES O'HALLORAN, a practical miner, of fourteen years' experience, appeared before the committee and was examined as follows:

The CHAIRMAN. You are what is called a "miner," not a "helper,” I understand? Mr. O'HALLORAN. I am a practical miner.

The CHAIRMAN. Can you state whether there are any grievances sustained by the mining population of these regions which, in your judgment, could be corrected by Federal legislation?

Mr. O'HALLORAN. I can state the grievances, but I don't know whether Federal legislation can reach them or not.

The CHAIRMAN. Be good enough to state the grievances, and leave us to judge whether they can be reached by Federal legislation.

Mr. O'HALLORAN. From the close of the war, in 1865, until 1868 there was a continual reduction of wages in this anthracite coal region, while the necessaries of life continned at high prices; and in 1869 the men formed a basis, providing that when coal was selling at a certain price in New York their labor for mining and loading the coal here should be worth so much, and when it went below that price it was not profitable for either employer or employé to work at the business. That basis also provided that if coal advanced above this price (which was $5 or $6 per ton at tide-water), the men should get an advance in their pay. The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western, and the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, and the Pennsylvania Railroad Company never had a basis; they mined by the car, and in 1870 they flooded the market with coal, and the consequence was that they had to reduce, or did reduce, the wages of their miners 33 per cent. I was then at work under Pardee & Co. before they consolidated with the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company. We agreed to suspend on the 10th day of January, in order that the market should be cleared of the surplus stock, and that we might maintain the regular prices and be able to get a living-nothing The companies then combined against the miners, and said that they would

more.

not allow them to go to work at all unless they accepted 10 per cent. reduction in that section of the country, and 33 per cent. here; the individual operators who were willing to pay us the price that we left off at (and we did not ask any more than that to resume), were not able to give us work because of the tariff which the railroad companies charged them for carrying the coal. For instance, Mr. Gowen, of the Reading road, charged $8 for carrying a ton of coal from Pottsville to Philadelphia, about ninety-three miles. We took action against the companies, and brought them to Harrisburg before the judiciary committee of the senate, in 1871. I think Mr. William A. Wallace was the chairman of the committee.

Mr. THOMPSON. Was that the committee of which Mr. Ruttan, of Beaver County, was a member?

Mr. O'HALLORAN. Yes, and the Hon. Harry White was also of the committee. It was a party from Danville who took the action, and the investigation lasted for about three weeks. The different companies were represented before the committee and the question was asked whether Mr. Gowen had a right to charge six dollars for carrying a ton of coal from Pottsville to Philadelphia, 93 miles, when his charter stipulated that he was to carry merchandise at one and a half cents per ton per mile. The answer of the company was that although the charter provided that he was to transport merchandise at that rate, it did not provide that he was to furnish the cars, and he said: "If these parties will put their own cars on the road, we will transport their coal for a cent and a half per ton per mile; but if they want their merchandise transported in our cars, we will charge them a cent and a half per ton per mile for the use of the road and the moving power, and then we will charge them whatever we please for the use of the car."

Mr. THOMPSON. Was that view sustained?

Mr. O'HALLORAN. That view was sustained. He defied the legislature of Pennsylvania.

Mr. THOMPSON. That was because he had a charter.

Mr. O'HALLORAN. He had a charter. He said he was simply a common carrier, supplying the road and the moving power, but not compelled to supply the cars.

Mr. THOMPSON. Do you mean to say that that is the argument that Mr. Gowen made before that committee?

Mr. O'HALLORAN. That is the argument on record.

Mr. THOMPSON. That as a common carrier he was not obliged to supply anything but the road-bed and the moving power?

Mr. O'HALLORAN. Yes; that was the argument, and it stands recorded so, I believe. Mr. THOMPSON. Do you mean the committee which met for a considerable time at the Continental Hotel?

Mr. O'HALLORAN. No, sir. They met in the senate chamber at Harrisburg; the committee on the judiciary.

The CHAIRMAN. The result was that the right of the company to charge six dollars was sustained, suppose?

Mr. O'HALLORAN. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, if the charters of these companies allow them to impose rates which are prohibitory, what remedy have you to suggest?

Mr. O'HALLORAN. I have none; I am giving you the facts. Better minds than mine can probably suggest the remedy.

The CHAIRMAN. How does that power residing in the corporations affect the interests of the coal miners and the laborers?

Mr. O'HALLORAN. It is running this country into an aristocracy which will be as destructive as it ever was in the old countries. It is producing a centralization of power.

The CHAIRMAN. You mean, I suppose, an aristocracy of corporations instead of an aristocracy of individuals?

Mr. O'HALLORAN. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. And your idea is, that by some process or other this ought to be stopped?

Mr. O'HALLORAN. It ought to be stopped. If the State of Pennsylvania gives a company a right to run a railroad through my farm, and to take down my house if it stands in the way (paying me a fair compensation), I think that the State, when it does that, ought to guard the rights of the citizen against oppression by that company. The CHAIRMAN. Well, the State seems to have attempted that in this case, and the rate established appears to have been no more than a fair one, because the Reading Company has been in a good deal of financial trouble, I believe."

Mr. O'HALLORAN. Yes. A coal operator there was put on the stand to testify in our behalf, and was asked whether, if the Reading Company had carried his coal at the former rates, he could have afforded to pay his men the wages they asked and at the same time have made a fair, living profit on his capital invested; and he testified on his oath that he could have done so, and that he was perfectly satisfied with what he could have made out of his capital under such circumstances.