The extent to which the railroads participate in politics is and has always been very greatly overestimated. Politicians and the press have very often found it seemingly to their interest to mislead the people on this subject, and the defeated candidate in convention and at the polls has many times jumped to the conclusion that he was beaten by the railroads, when as a matter of fact the railroads had no object or participation in his defeat. As in every other state, so in Nebraska, large numbers of men seeking public office have sought to gain favor with the people by charging all their misfortunes to oppression by railroads and other corporations, and some years back a great party, which for sev eral years swept the state, was created and built up on the theory that the interests of the railroads and the people were divergent and conflicting, and that the former were engaged in robbing the latter of the legitimate fruits of their toil. Demagogues in all parties encouraged this idea, and the state was overrun with candidates for office, and politicians demanding the most stringent and unjust legislation against nearly all forms of corporate enterprise. Up to this time railroad participation in state politics has been more in the nature of rivalry between the Union Pacific and the Burlington roads in their efforts to settle up the territory north and south of the Platte, through which their respective lines run. But the aggressive action of the new party caused the rival roads to make common cause against threatened adverse legislation. A legislature was elected, a majority of which was pledged to radical rate regulation, and a bill known as the Newberry bill was introduced. Neither the introducer of the bill nor a single member of that legislature pretended to know anything about the numerous factors that enter into the adjustment of railroad freight rates, and as a matter of course were unable to say whether the then prevailing rates were unreasonable or not. The question had been made a political issue, and they were bound by party pledges to reduce rates anyhow. There was not a man in the body who had ever spent a single day in the service of any railroad

company, making rate sheets. And from the very nature of things they could not have known whether or not railroad rates were too high or too low. This fact was emphasized when, some days after the bill was introduced, it was discovered that the bill actually raised nearly every rate in the schedule. When this fact became known, the bill was withdrawn and another introduced, making an average rate so low as to have finally been declared by the United States Supreme Court to be unconstitutional because the reductions were so great as to make them confiscatory. However, the agitation for a reduction of rates was continued by the politicians, although the people themselves were making little if any complaint. I do not think that so much misinformation was ever furnished to the people of this state on any other subject by the politicians who hoped to secure office for themselves or friends, by arousing and taking advantage of prejudice against the corporations. One incident in illustration: one of the founders of the new party, a former farmer but at that time publishing a newspaper, made complaint before the board of transportation, charging the railroads with extortion amounting to robbery on grain rates to Chicago. After a radical speech to the board on these lines, in which he stated that he represented the farmers of this state, I asked him if he thought the farmers of Nebraska would be satisfied with a rate which would carry their wheat to the Chicago market at three cents per ton per mile. He replied, "yes, if the railroads would make that sort of a rate, I would not be here to complain." When I showed him that there was at that time no rate in the state higher than a cent and a quarter per ton per mile, he admitted that he knew nothing at all of the details of the rate question, and was relying on the oft-repeated charge that rates were too high.

The prejudices engendered in the public mind were taken advantage of by individuals, usually not members of either branch of the legislature, to procure the introduction and passage by the house or senate of all sorts of bills attacking corporate interests, with no other motive than that of per

sonal gain by traffic in their real or assumed influence with the members. The business has grown from year to year, until it has almost assumed the dignity of a profession, and many members of the legislature have afterward become aware of the fact that they had unwittingly lent themselves to the consummation of the schemes of the professional holdup. During more than one session of the legislature regular syndicates have been formed for the introduction of what have by long familiarity become known to the general public as hold-up bills. These bills have not always attacked corporations. Bills to reduce fees of sheriffs, county clerks, clerks of the courts, and other county officers, so-called purc food bills, attacking a single article of manufacture, bills for the regulation of various kinds of business have been introduced with the purpose and expectation of causing the parties threatened to hurry to the state house and raise a fund to be disbursed for the defeat of such legislation. During the last session of the legislature bills were introduced to regulate freight rates, to regulate the length of freight trains, prescribing the number of brakemen to a train, to compel the railroads to equip their engines with certain kinds of ashpans, to equip Pullman cars with fireproof safes, and numerous other bills of like character. Believing that the rates attacked were just and reasonable, and that the details of the management and operation of the road could better be left to the men who by years of service in the employ of the roads had become familiar with the subject, the railroad companies of course opposed such legislation. There has scarcely been a bill of this character affecting the railroads, introduced in the last ten years, that some man assuming to have great influence with the members has not sought out a representative of one or more of the railroad companies and offered for a consideration to prevent its passage. It is due to the members of the legislature, however, to say that in most instances these offers have come from the outside, from men who have sought to use the members of the legislature for purposes of personal gain, although I have known of regular syndicates

being formed almost entirely of members of the two houses, and I recollect one instance in which a demand was made on an auxiliary railroad corporation for $8,000, and two annual passes, the two latter to be given to an employee of the senate and his partner, who drew a certain bill and had it introduced. A representative of the corporation attacked hurried out from Chicago, and before seeing any member of the syndicate asked me what I would advise his doing. I advised public exposure of all the men implicated. He did not see fit to follow my advice, and I was afterwards informed by a representative of the company that $2,000 had been paid to defeat the measure. As I stated before, this was not a railroad bill, and the railroads had nothing to do with it. The foregoing is but one of several like incidents which have come within my knowledge. It has been charged by those ignorant of the facts that large sums of money are paid by the railroads to defeat legislation. So far as this charge applies to any period of which I have knowledge, which covers at least the last six sessions of the legislature, not one single dollar has ever been given to a member of the legislature, to anybody for him, or to any member of any syndicate, for this or any other purpose of like character.

It has always been my policy, which policy has been approved by the management of the Burlington road, which I have had the honor to represent, to furnish to the members of the legislature all possible information that they may require in legislating upon any subject touching the interests of the railroads, relying upon the fact that a majority of the legislators are honest men and intend when fully informed to do justice to the railroads as well as to any other legitimate interest. The last legislature, like its predecessors, for at least five sessions, contained within its membership practical representatives of most of the chief industries and professions existing or practiced in the state. Among its numbers were managers of farms, stock ranches, stores, mills, factories, banks, while lawyers, physicians, teachers, mechanics, and insurance men helped to make up the body. Yet of its entire

membership of 133, not one man connected with the management of any portion of the 5,884 miles of railroad in Nebraska, entering all but six of the counties of the state, built at a cost of many millions of dollars, paying in 1900 taxes to the amount of $1,109,474, giving employment to 14,858 men, to whom are paid yearly salaries aggregating more than 8,000,000 of dollars, has had a voice in the deliberations upon the floor of either house, or a vote upon any measure upon which it has been called to act. This fact is referred to simply to direct your attention to the further fact that it is only by appearing by representatives before the legislative committees that the roads can make known to the legislature the views of their management upon proposed legislation affect- . ing their interests.

The friends to whom I have confided the details of some of the schemes that outside lobbyists have undertaken to make money out of, have said, "Why don't you expose thein?" My answer has invariably been that I had never taken any pains to conceal any knowledge I possessed on the subject, or to shield or excuse any man connected with the nefarious business. At the last session of the legislature one of the miscellaneous corporations did accuse a couple of outside lobbyists of procuring the introduction of several bills of this character, and instead of meeting the approval of the legislature as they had expected they would, the story was at once started that the corporation itself had stood behind the introduction of the bills, and had made the exposure in bad faith, for the purpose of bringing into bad repute any bill affecting that corporation.

A railroad manager entrusted with the care of the great properties represented by the railroad systems in this state would be culpable indeed should he not do all in his power in a legitimate way to protect his stockholders against the onslaught upon their property made for mere political purposes, or in furtherance of the money-making schemes of private individuals. At a republican state convention some years ago the then attorney general of the state stood in the