Part 7
MY DEAR ABBOTT,-- ... President Taft's suggestion of a Commerce Court is a very sensible one. We suggested the institution of such a Court some years ago, so that the question of nullifying our order will be brought up before men who have special experience. ... The trouble with the Courts is that they know nothing about the question. Fundamentally it is not ... law but economics that we deal with. The fixing of a rate is a matter of politics. That is the reason why I have always held that the traffic manager is the most potent of our statesmen. So that we should have a Court that will pass really upon the one question of confiscation--the constitutionality of the rates fixed--and leave experienced men to deal with the economic questions. ...
I have long wanted to see you and have a talk about our work. At times it is rather disheartening. The problem is vast, and we pass few milestones. The one great accomplishment of the Commission, I think, in the last three years, has been the enforcement of the law as against rebating. We have a small force now that is used in this connection under my personal direction, and I think the greatest contribution that we have made, perhaps, to the railroads has been during the time of panic when they were kept from cutting rates directly or indirectly and throwing each other into the hands of receivers.
The great volume of our complaints comes from the territory west of the Mississippi River and practically all of the larger cities in the inter-mountain country have complaints pending before us attacking the reasonableness of the rates charged them, and it is to give consideration to these that the Commission, as a body, goes West the first of the month. ...
I have just returned from a trip to Europe, and I find that what I said two or three years ago about the United States being the most Conservative of the civilized countries is absolutely true.
By the way, at the Sorbonne at Paris they are exhibiting the chair in which President Roosevelt will sit when he comes to deliver his address and I am thinking that he will have quite as hearty a reception in Paris as in any of our cities.
Very truly yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO JOHN H. WIGMORE
Washington, December 3, 1909
MY DEAR DOCTOR,--... I think there is but little doubt that De Vries will receive the appointment, though of course everything here is in absolute chaos. ... The best symptom in my own case is that I have been called in twice to consult over proposed amendments to the law, and the President's [Taft's] reference thereto in his forthcoming message. He seems to think my judgment worth something--more than I do myself, in fact--for down in my heart, though I do not let anybody see it, I am really a modest creature.
Since my return from the West we have had one merry round of sickness in the house ... but all are on their feet once more and as gay as they can be with a more or less grumpy head of the household in the neighborhood, (assuming for the nonce that I am the head of the household).
The President is going to appoint Lurton. [Footnote: To the Supreme Bench.] He should have said so when he made up his mind to do it, which was immediately after Peckham's death. He would have saved himself an immense amount of trouble. Lurton seems to have been very hostile to the Interstate Commerce Commission, and is too old, but otherwise I hear nothing said against him. I really would like to see Bowers put on the bench very much. He has made a very favorable impression here, and is a clear lawyer, a very strong man, and in sympathy with Federal control that's real.
By the way, I had a talk the other day with Attorney General Wickersham regarding the treatment of criminals, and I believe you can secure through him the initiation of an enlightened policy in this matter. He told me that he was going to make some recommendations in his report, and perhaps the President may deal with the matter slightly in his message. Wickersham is a thoroughly modern proposition, and as he has charge of all the penitentiaries, and his recommendations, with relation to parole and such things, absolutely go with the President, I believe you could do more good in an hour's talk with him than you could effect in a year otherwise. If you could run down, during the holiday vacation, I would bring you two together for a talk on this matter, and you, also, might take up the very live question with the President of cutting off red-tape in the courts. Give my love to Mrs. Wigmore, and tell her, too, that we would be most delighted to see her here. Faithfully yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
On December 9,1909, President Taft reappointed Franklin K. Lane as a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission.
TO MRS. FRANKLIN K. LANE
En route to California, Monday, March [1910]
... I have spent a rather pleasant day reading, and looking at this great desert of New Mexico and Arizona. No one on board that I know or care to know, but the big sky and my books keep me busy. Do you remember that picture in the Corcoran Gallery with a wee line of land at the bottom and a great high reach of blue sky above, covering nine-tenths of the canvas? I have thought of it often to-day--"the high, irrepressible sky." It is moonlight and the rare air gives physical tone, so that I feel a bit more like myself, as was, than is ordinary. ...
I have thought of a lecture to-day and you must keep this letter as a reminder and make me do it one of these days: THE PROBLEMS OF RAILROAD REGULATION. THE TRAFFIC MANAGER AS A STATESMAN: THE UNEARNED INCREMENT OF OUR RAILROADS.
And another: THE NEED OF A WORLD BANK: INTERNATIONAL AND INDEPENDENT FINANCIAL AUTHORITY, which shall fix standards of value, based on no one metal or commodity, but on a great number of staples.
I have thought much of the farm. It will be so far away and so impracticable of use! But such an anchor to windward, for two most hand-to-mouth spendthrifts! ...
TO THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Washington, April 29, 1910
MY DEAR MR. ROOSEVELT,--Mr. Kellogg tells me that he expects to see you in Europe, and I avail myself of his offer to carry a word of welcome to you, inasmuch as I must leave for Europe the day after your arrival in New York, the President having appointed me as a delegate to the International Railway Congress at Berne.
The country is awaiting you anxiously--not out of mere curiosity to know what your attitude will be, but to lead it, to give it direction. The public opinion which you developed in favor of the "square deal" is stronger to-day than when you left, and your personal following is larger to-day than it ever has been. There is no feeling (or if there is any it is negligible) that the President [Taft] has been consciously disloyal to the policies which you inaugurated or to his public promises. He is patriotic, conscientious, and lovable. This was your own view as expressed to me, and this view has been confirmed by my personal experience with him. It is also, I believe, the judgment of the country at large. But the people do not feel that they control the government or that their interests will be safeguarded by a relationship that is purely diplomatic between the White House and Congress. In short we have a new consciousness of Democracy, largely resulting from your administration, and it is such that the character of government which satisfied the people of twenty years ago is found lacking to-day. Practically all the criticism to which this administration has been subjected arises out of the feeling of the people that their opinions and desires are not sufficiently consulted, and they are suspicious of everything and everybody that is not open and frank with them.
Outside of a few of the larger states the entire country is insurgent, and insurgency means revolt against taking orders. The prospect is that the next House will be Democratic, but the Democrats apparently lack a realization of the many new problems upon which the country is divided. Their success would not indicate the acceptance of any positive program of legislation; it would be a vote of lack of confidence in the Republican party because it has allowed apparent party interest to rise superior to public good. The prospect is that every measure which Congress will pass at this session will be wise and in line with your policies, but the people do not feel that THEY are passing the bills.
I have presumed to say this much, thinking that perhaps you would regard my opinion as entirely unbiased, and in the hope that I might throw some light upon what I regard as the fundamental trouble which has to be dealt with. Whether you choose to re-enter political life or not, men of all parties desire your leadership and will accept your advice as they will that of none other.
Pardon me for this typewriting, but I thought that you might prefer a letter in this form which you could read to one in my own hand which you could not read. Believe me, as always, faithfully yours.
FRANKLIN K. LANE
From Berlin, Lane received from Theodore Roosevelt, dated May 13, 1910, these lines,--
" ... I think your letter most interesting. As far as I can judge you have about sized up the situation right. With hearty good wishes, faithfully yours,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
TO JOHN H. WIGMORE
Washington, March 2, 1911
MY DEAR JOHN,--No other letter that I have received has done me as much good or given me as much pleasure, or has been as much of a stimulus, as has yours. The fact that you took the time to go through the REPORT so carefully is an evidence of a friendship that is beyond all price, and of which I feel most unworthy. I have had the figures checked over, resulting in some slight changes, and will send you a revised copy as soon as it is printed. The newspaper criticisms are generally very friendly, although the FINANCIAL CHRONICLE, the WALL STREET JOURNAL, and other railway organs are extremely bitter. The Western papers do not seem to have been very much elated over the decision. It has appeared to me from the beginning as if they had been "fixed" in advance and that their reports were always biased for the railroads, but the country at large will realize, I think, before long, that the decisions are sound, sensible, and in the public interest. Some of the least narrow of the railroad men also take this view. The best editorial I have seen is in the New York EVENING POST. Sincerely yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
P. S. I got this note from Roosevelt this morning, headed THE OUTLOOK:--
"Fine! I am really greatly obliged to you, and I shall read the REPORT with genuine interest. More power to your elbow! Faithfully yours."
"This report was known," Commissioner Harlan explains, "as the Western Advance Rate Case. It was one of the first of the great cases covering many commodities and applying over largely extended territories. In his opinion denying the rate advances proposed by the carriers, Commissioner Lane discussed the Commission's new powers of suspending the operation of increased rates pending investigation and the burden of proof in such cases. He marshalled a vast array of facts and figures and announced conclusions that were accepted as convincing by the public at large. He then pointed out that the laws enforced by the Commission sought dominion over private capital for no other purpose than to secure the public against injustice and thereby make capital itself more secure."
TO WILLIAM R. WHEELER TRAFFIC BUREAU, MERCHANTS' EXCHANGE SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
Washington, June 27, 1911
DEAR SIR,--Adverting to yours of June 22, IN RE express rates, I beg to advise that nothing can be added to my previous letter unless it is the expression of my personal opinion that a rate should not be made for the carriage of 20,000 pound shipments by express.
We are receiving daily similar complaints to yours, respecting the nonadjustment of express rates, and if you will call at this office we shall be pleased to reveal the reason for our failure, hitherto, to grant the relief desired. It is extremely warm in Washington at the present time, but if anything could add to the disagreeableness of life in the city it is the unreasoning insistence on the part of the traffic bureaus of the country that express rates shall be fixed overnight.
I desire to say that I have given some year or two of more or less profane contemplation to this question, and have now engaged a large corps of men, under the direction of Mr. Frank Lyon as attorney for the Commission, to seek a way out of the inextricable maze of express company figures. Whether we will be able to find the light before the Infinite Hand that controls our destinies cuts short the cord, is a question to which no certain answer can be given. Would you kindly advise the importunate members of a most worthy institution, that express rates to San Francisco possess me as an obsessment. My prayer is at night interfered with by consideration of the question--"What should the 100 pound rate be by Wells Fargo & Co. from New York to San Francisco?" And at night often I am aroused from sleep, feeling confident in my dreams that the mystic figure of "a just and reasonable rate," under Section One, on 100-pound shipments to San Francisco, had been determined, and awaken with a joyous cry upon my lips, to discover that life has been made still more unhappy by the torture of the subconscious mind during sleep.
No doubt your shippers are being treated unfairly, both by the express companies and by the Interstate Commerce Commission. This is a cruel world. Congress itself adds to the torture, by almost daily referring to us some bill touching express rates or parcels post, or some such similar service, and while the thermometer stands at 117 degrees in the shade we are requested to advise as to whether express companies should not be abolished. It has only been by the exercise of a rare and unusual degree of self-control on my part, and by long periods of prayer, that I have refrained from advising Congress that I thought express companies should be abolished and designating the place to which they should be relegated.
As perhaps you may have heard, I shall visit the Pacific Coast in person during the next few weeks, and there I trust I may have the pleasure of meeting you and your noble Governing Committees, to whom I shall explain in person and in detail the difficulties attaching to the solution of this problem. ... Sincerely yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO LAWRENCE F. ABBOTT OUTLOOK
Washington, December 4, 1911
MY DEAR ABBOTT,-- ... We are making history fast these days, and at the bottom of it all lies the idea, in the minds of the American people, that they are going to use this machine they call the Government. For the centuries and centuries that have passed, government has been something imposed from above, to which the subject or citizen must submit. For the first century of our national life this idea has held good. Now, however, the people have grown in imagination, so that they appreciate the fact that the government is very little more than a cooperative institution in which there is nothing inherently sacred, excepting in so far as it is a crystallization of general sentiment and is a good working arrangement. And the feeling with relation to big business, when we get down to the bottom of it, is that if men have made these tremendous fortunes out of privileges granted by the whole people, we can correct this by a change in our laws. They do not object to men making any amount of money so long as the individual makes it, but if the Government makes it for him, that is another matter.
I have been meeting ... with some of the committees, in Congress and out, that are drafting bills regulating trusts, and I expect something by no means radical as a starter.
You ask as to leadership in both Houses. There is not much in the Lower House that can be relied upon to do constructive work, so far as I can discover. Our Democratic leaders all wear hobble skirts. But in the Senate there is some very good stuff.
I expect to be in New York in January, and then I hope to see you. Very truly yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
When he was running for Governor in 1902, Lane made prison reform one of the foremost issues of his campaign. Several years later when a movement was started petitioning the Governor to parole Abraham Ruef, who had served a part of his term in the penitentiary for bribery in San Francisco, Lane signed the petition. This brought a letter of remonstrance from his friend Charles McClatchy, editor and owner of the Sacramento Bee, who felt that such a movement was ill-timed and not in the interest of the public good.
TO CHARLES K. MCCLATCHY SACRAMENTO BEE
Washington, December 12, 1911
MY DEAR CHARLES,--I have your letter regarding the paroling of Abraham Ruef, and, far from taking offense at what you say, I know that it expresses the opinion of probably the great body of our people, but I have long thought that we dealt with criminals in a manner which tended to keep them as criminals and altogether opposed to the interests of society. I am not sentimental on this proposition, but I think I am sensible. We are dealing with men convicted of crime more harshly and more unreasonably than we deal with dogs. Our fundamental mistake is that we utterly ignore the fact that there is such a thing as psychology. We are treating prisoners with the methods of five hundred years ago, before anything was known about the nature of the human mind. ... There are, of course, certain kinds of men who should for society's sake be kept in prison as long as they live, just as there are kinds of insane people that should be kept in insane asylums until they die. ...
I think if you will get the thought into your mind that our present penal system is Silurian and unscientific--the same to-day as it was 10,000 years ago--you will see my stand-point. Our penitentiaries develop criminals, they make criminals out of men who are not criminals to begin with--boys, for instance. They debase and degrade men. The state by its system of punishment reaches into the heart of a man and plucks out his very soul. I am speaking of men who are when they enter responsive to good impulses. ...
I thoroughly appreciate the spirit in which you have written me, and I hope that you will get my point of view. I have known Abe Ruef for over twenty-five years. He was a perfectly straight young man and anxious to help in San Francisco. I do not know the influences that turned him into the direction that he took, but I am absolutely certain that that man has suffered mental tortures greater than any that he would have ever suffered if he had gone to a physical hell of fire. He may appear brave, but he is in fact, I will warrant you, a heart-broken man, because he has failed of realizing his own decent ideals. ... He never was my friend, politically, socially, or otherwise, but my judgment is that society will be better off if he is allowed the limited freedom that a parole gives and given an opportunity to live up to his own ideal of Abe Ruef.
Regards to Val, your wife, and family. As always, faithfully yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO CHARLES K. MCCLATCHY SACRAMENTO BEE
[Washington, January, 1912]
MY DEAR CHARLES,--I have your note regarding Ruef. ... It seems to me you have made one good point against me, and only one,--that there are poor men in jail who ought to be paroled at the end of a year. Very well, why not parole them? If they are men who have been reached by public opinion and are subject to it, I see no reason why they should be kept in jail. Every case must be dealt with by itself and to each case should be given the same kind of treatment that I give to Ruef. You will be advocating this thing yourself one of these days, calling it Christian and civilized and denouncing those who do not agree with you as being barbarians. It may be that Ruef fooled me when he was just out of college, but I was a member of the Municipal Reform League which John H. Wigmore, now Dean of the Northwestern University Law School, Ruef and myself started. It did not last very long, but I think that Ruef was as zealous as any of us for good government.
With many wishes for the New Year, believe me always, my dear Charles, yours faithfully,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO JOHN CRAWFORD BURNS LONDON, ENGLAND
December 13, 1911
MY DEAR BURNS,--I have felt grievously hurt, at hearing from Pfeiffer several times, that you had written him, and nary a word to me. The idea that I should write to you when you had nothing in the world to do but write me, never entered my head. I want you to understand distinctly the position which you now occupy in the minds of your friends. You are a gentleman of leisure, traveling in Europe with an invalid wife, necessarily bored, and anxious to meet with anything that will give you an interesting life. Under the circumstances, you may relieve your mind at any time, of any intellectual bile, by correspondence. ... If you wish something serious to do, I will formally direct you to make a report upon Railway Rates and Railway Service in Europe. This will give you some diversion in between your attacks of religion and architecture.
Pfeiffer, I presume, has returned from the Far West, but so far I have not heard from him. The last letter I got was from the Yosemite. He seems to have been enchanted with that country. He says there is nothing in Europe to compare with it. It is splendid to see a fellow of his age, and with all of his learning, keep up his enthusiasm. It seems to me that he is more appreciative and buoyant than he was twenty years ago, and he is really very sane. His sympathies, unlike yours, are with the present and not with the dead past.
You will be interested in knowing that Mr. T. Roosevelt is likely to be the next Republican nominee for President. Within the last six weeks it has become quite manifest that Taft cannot be elected. ... And so you see, the whirligig of time has made another turn. Big Business in New York is looking to Roosevelt as a statesman who is practical. The West regards him as the champion of the plain people. He is keeping silent, but no doubt like the negro lady he is quite willing to be "fo'ced."