Reports of the Industrial Commission (Volume 4) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: in covering up discriminations. The way to prevent discriminations is to remove the possibility of gain by placing heavy fines upon the railroad companies themselves, which would then see to it that their employees complied with the law. It would require great provocation or influence to induce a railroad officer to testify against another railroad officer if it might result in sending him to jail, while he would feel no such reluctance if the penalty were a fine. (471.) Mr. Spencer, president of the Southern Bail way, on the" other hand, believes that the penalty of imprisonment for violations of the interstate commerce act should be retained. Fines of the amount of $5.000 could be paid repeatedly by many railways put of the profits of illegal business. It is not a hardship to imprison subordinates for knowingly violating the law under direction of their superiors, and, furthermore, the persons really responsible can usually be ascertained if sufficient effort is made. (274.) Mr. Reagan believes that the penalty of imprisonment as for felony should be imposed in cases of violation of the interstate-commerce act, and believes that it would be possible to enforce such a penalty, although he knows of no instances where it has yet been done under the Texas railway commission statute. (342,350.) IV. DISCRIMINATIONS BETWEEN PLACES?LONG AND SHORT HAUL. A. Existence and causes of place discriminations generally.?The members of the Interstate Commerce Commission who testified before the Industrial Commission agree in believing that inequalities in rates between different places, including especially discriminations in favor of terminal points having a longer haul, but also other differences, are exceedingly numerous, and constitute perhaps the most injurious feature of rail...