USA > Illinois > Bureau County > History of Bureau County, Illinois > Part 28
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After Craig took his seat upon the bench with the other new member elected at the same time, Munn & Scott's case was re-argued and with the aid of Judge Graig's vote the case was decided in favor of the people- Judges Breese, Sheldon, Craig and Scholfield making a majority opinion in favor of the act of the Legislature giving validity to Sections 3 and 4 of the Act of the General Assembly entitled an "Act to regulate public warehouses and to give effect to Article XIII of the New Constitution." The other three Judges, MeAllister, Scott and Walker, did not concur in this opinion.
This was a test case and struck directly at the mooted principle of vested rights, behind which the great railroad corporations were sheltering themselves in their extortionate charges and unjust discriminations against the struggling people.
The case of Munn & Scott was a test case in the new departure iu legislation and was carried by them and the corporations to the
Supreme Court of the United States and heard by that court, and the decision an- nounced by Breese, Sheldon, Craig and Schol- field was affirmed in a very able and elaborate opinion by a majority of the judges of that conrt. It was held, soon after, in the case of Jewel rs. Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Rail- road Company, by the Supreme Court of the United States, that railways were liable to be regulated in their charges by the Legislature, upon the same principle of law and reason that warehouses were subject to legislation. The Supreme Court of the United States in deciding the case of Jewel vs. Chicago, Bur- lington & Quincy Railroad Company, referred to the case of Munn & Scott and advanced the principle that railroads were liable to be regulated in their charges by the acts of the General Assembly upon the same principle that warehouses were subject to regulation. It cannot be denied that the railroad cases decided in this State in which it has been held that railroads may be regulated in their charges by law is founded, in part, upon the warehouse decisions of Munn & Scott.
Railroad companies have been chartered in part for the public good. They are giveu extraordinary powers that they may the bet- ter serve the public, and are therefore rightly held to legislative control. Judge Craig's election was not a mistake on the part of the people; it was the entering wedge. It should not be forgotten that the lawyers and Judges and railroads told the people they could not do this, exactly as the same men told the people they could not interfere with slavery. In one instance they quoted the Dartmouth College case, and in the other they quoted the Dred Scott case. Yet both these cases, as precedents, are consigned to the limbo of the waste-baskets, and thereby the wrongs of 4,000,000 slaves were in one case righted, and in the other case was, to
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some extent, not wholly, the righting of most grievous wrongs and oppression of 50,000,- 000 white men.
The average American thinks that because he can vote, parade and carry torches after a band; get drunk and yawp his patriotic yells, and monkey himself generally, that he is a free man-the freest of the free. The more intelligent monopolist knows better; he is ever ready to step forward and tickle the long ears of the groundlings with his foxy pretensions of loyalty and peculiar friend- ship to his voting victims, and he wheedles and buys his slaves in the open and secret market around the ballot boxes. It is this state of affairs that has prevented the great movement from completing itself, and is the prime cause of the evils that are now flowing out over the country, and producing much of the disturbances in the labor districts of our country.
In the mines, in the great mills, the fac- tories and iron mills of the country is a per- petual contest going on, and the monopolist is tightening his clutch upon the laborer. The charter companies water their stock by hundreds and thousands of millions of dol- lars, and then starve the labor and rob the public in order to collect dividends on this watered stock. These evils have now reached enormous proportions; strikes of workmen are of daily occurrence; blood is shed; the militia are frequently called out, and the voting laborer is daily and hourly tending to a more cruel and insufferable condition. Overproduction is cured by paying certain factories more than they can make by run- ning their machinery, to close their doors, and thus thousands of workmen are turned out to idle, starve or tramp. And still not satisfied in their enormous exactions, these rich cor- porations are crying out for more protection from the government-their exactions from
the toil and life-blood of the people to be, not only increased ad libitum, but enforced and exacted at the point of the government bayonets. Hundreds of factories are idle, while the owners are reaping rich profits from the very idleness that turns out the laborers to starve by the thousand. In the nature of things the laborer cannot hire a million of his fellow laborers to quit work any day, and pay them more for idling than they could make in work; but the great fac- tories and mills can, and then they can force their manufactured articles to high enough price to pay these idle mills and pay them- selves enormous fortunes. The laws of the land that not only permit but enable and encourage these national outrages, need the speedy attention of some such reform move- ment as was commenced in Bureau County, and that gave the incalculable benefits of its healthy correctives to the country at large. The success of that movement is a perpetual proof that the people need only move in the right direction in order to right their wrongs. It is better for the monopolies and great tax- eaters themselves, that the people move in time, and bring them with a grand round-to at the ballot box, than that they should lie supinely and await the fastening of the fet- ters that will some day only be loosened by chopping off heads.
In the Hocking Valley (Ohio) mines are to-day 10,000 workmen thrown out of em- ployment, and their families are on the road- sides unhoused and verging upon starvation. This is one small section of our country, and so far as these 10,000 men and their families are concerned, there is no government on earth that is exercising a more crushing tyranny than are these poor men suffering at the hands of the Hocking Valley Railroad and the mine owners and combined capital of the charter companies. The farmers of ,
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Illinois would to-day have been in probably as wretched a state of serfdom and suffer- ing as are these poor miners in Ohio, had they not boldly took the evil by the horns and stopped it in its career of general de- struction-not only the farmers of Illinois, indeed, but the farmers, laborers and all in- dustrial classes in the country. It is in the view of the anti-monopoly movement in this county that we are justified in saying that, considered in all its bearings, it was one of the greatest movements that has yet come from the people.
This anti-monopoly movement originated in Illinois-not only in Illinois, but in Bureau County-and from here it has extended over our whole country. It was a remarkable struggle between right and wrong-most ex- traordinary indeed, when we consider the circumstances surrounding it. Never in the history of our country has the issue been so clearly and sharply made, where it was the people, the masses, on one side and the lawyers, legislators and the combined wealth of monopolies on the other side. The mass, the common people cannot be organized, while the moneyed power is a close corpora- tion-an army equipped with all the sinews of war, ably generaled, every man in position, alert, vigilant, untiring and unscrupulous. The great movement rewrote the law of the land, and emancipated 50,000,000 people.
We do not pretend to say that Mr. Bryant alone wrought ont all theso results; that he alone did the work from which have come these grand consequences. We do not even insin- uate anything of the kind, because he had able lieutenants, strong and willing hands to aid him when once the work was fairly com- menced. We simply assert he was the prime instigator, who, when the harvests were ripe, called up the slumbering laborers and led them to the field. We could name a score of
men in Burean County who are richly en- titled to immortal honor for the efficient, prompt and wise aid in the field-work and in the councils of the leaders of this movement. Among this class of men, where there are so many that are especially worthy, it might seem invidious to mention some and omit others where the great numbers preclude the possibility of a full list. But at the risk of censure in this line, we will say that to the Hon. L. D. Whiting, who was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1870, is due the fullest credit for his efficient aid. He was literally the father of the XIIIth Arti- cle of the Constitution, wherein he had to meet nearly every leading lawyer in the convention and out of it. He was in the Senate when the Legislature considered the subject of passing laws to give force and effect to the XIIIth Article. And here the destiny of the movement rested on his shoulders, and it was his energy aud ability that brought the eventual triumph.
Before the close of the late Rebellion, or at least immediately thereafter, Mr. Bryant began to call the attention of the people to the monstrous claims being put forth by cer- tain charter companies. Through the papers he sounded notes of warning to the farmers of northern Illinois, against the exactions of railroads. In the early part of 1870 a meet- ing of the farmers assembled in Blooming- ton. Mr. Bryant attended this meeting and offered a series of resolutions through Hon. L. D. Whiting, in which for the first time in a public body was laid down the doctrine that the people had not bestowed upon charter companies "vested rights," that were above the power of the Government. He ably sus- tained his resolutions in a speech that was published and created a profound impression upon the country. Fortunately, in this meet- ing there was a delegate to the Constitutional
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Convention, then nearly ready to assemble at Springfield-Hon. Lewis W. Ross, of Ful- ton County, who listened to the resolutions -and their advocacy by their author and largely through this circumstance and also another address delivered in Springfield by Mr. Bryant, during the session of the Con- vention, there was inserted in the Constitu- tion " Article XIII," to which reference is made in the decision of the Munn & Scott case above referred to. The address of Mr. Bryant in Springfield on the subject of cor. porations was published in the Industrial Age, and was widely read, and we are told that the printed address having fallen into the hands of Amasa Walker, who carefully read it and endorsed the positions there assumed, and thus the movement received the weight of this eminent financier and political econ- omist. As a result of this movement of the people, in which they had to fight the com- bined power of wealth, the bench and the bar of the land, as well as the politicians, the first tangible advantage or victory was the incorporation of the "thirteenth Article " of our State Constitution. The motion to insert this article was bitterly opposed at every step by a powerful lobby, as well as by the attor- neys of the railroads, who were not only mem- bers of the Convention, but were there in strong array and were everywhere proclaim- ing that the measure would bankrupt the rich corporations and ruin the country. The newspapers of the country took up the hue and cry against what they called the "social ists," the "destructives," and no taunt was spared, no vituperation was too strong for these "enemies of social order." But the movement went on like a rolling snow-ball; the people became thoroughly aroused, they listened to the "agitators," they started new papers to advocate the people's cause, they or- ganized to some extent and began to nomi-
nate their own candidates, and after a long and fierce war of words the celebrated "thir- teenth Article" of our Constitution was adopt- ed by the convention. The overwhelming vote on the Constitution could not be mis . read, and it was natural that the succeeding Legislature would enact laws to enforce its provisions.
The following is Article XIII:
SECTION 1. All elevators or storehouses where grain or other property is stored for a compensa- tion, whether the property stored be kept separate or not, are declared to be public warehouses.
SEC. 2. The owner, leasee or manager of each and every public warehouse situated in any town or city of not less than one hundred thousand inhabitants, shall make weekly statements under oath, before some officer to be designated by law, and keep the same posted in some conspicuous place in the office of such warehouse, and shall also file a copy for public examination in such place as shall be designated by law, which statement shall set forth the amount and grade of each and every kind of grain in such warehouse, together with such other property as may he stored therein, and what ware- house receipts have been issued, and are, at the time of making such statement, outstanding therefor, and shall, on the copy posted in the warehouse, note daily such changes as may be made in the quality and grade of grain in such warehouse; and the dif- ferent grades of grain shipped iu separate lots, shall not be mixed with inferior or superior grades with- out the consent of the owner or consignec thereof.
SEC. 3. The owners of property stored in any warehouse, or holder of a receipt for the same, shall always be at liberty to examine such property stored and all the books and records of the warehouse in regard to such property.
SEC. 4. All railroad companies and other com- mon carriers on railroads shall weigh or measure grain at points where it is shipped, and receipt for the full amount, and shall be responsible for the delivery of such amount to the owner or consignee thereof at the place of destination.
SEC. 5. All railroad companies receiving and transporting grain in bulk or otherwise. shall deliver the same to any consignee thereof, or any elevator or public warehouse to which it may be consigned, provided such consignee or the elevator or public warehouse can be reached by any track owned, leased or used, or which can be used by
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such railroad companies, and all railroad companies shall permit connections to be made with their track, so that any such consignee, and auy public warehouse, coal bank or coal-yard may be reached by the cars on said railroad.
SEC. 6. It shall be the duty of the General Assembly to pass all necessary laws to prevent the issue of false and fraudulent warehouse receipts, aud to give full effect to this Article of the Constitution, which shall be liberally construed so as to protect producers and shippers. And the enumeration of the remedies herein named shall not be construed to deny to the General Assembly the power to prescribe by law such other and further remedies as may be found expedient, or to deprive any per- son of existing common law remedies.
SEC. 7. The General Assembly shall pass laws for the inspection of grain, for the protection of producers, shippers and receivers of grain and pro- duce.
The Legislature passed laws giving force and effect to this Article of the Constitution, and then came the claim from the monopo- lists that the law was a barren nullity, and hence arose the case of Munn & Scott as a test case that was taken to the Supreme Court. The rich companies now sounded their notes of alarm all over the country. As an ovi- dence of the wide-spread interest the move- ment in Bureau County had by this time created, and as a complete proof also that the anti-monoply movement had its inception and guidance in this county, we need only state the fact that the New York Tribune sent its correspondents to Princeton to interview the leaders and ascertain what they really meant by the bold movement. That paper had be- come alarmed at the reiterated assertions of the monopolists that it was the red revolution- ist, and boded the destruction of the capital and great property interests of the country. These representatives of the New York pa- persXcalled upon Mr. Bryant and frankly asked him if such were the purposes of the movement. They soon learned that nothing could be more false than the cry of the mo-
nopolists; that the movement was in the inter- ests of all, especially the farmers, and through the farmers the permanent and true interests of the railroads and all other public corpora- tions.
Our excuse, were any needed, for this ex- tended notice of this important event, is the fact that it is the first time, so far as we can learn, that the facts have been given the world of this most vital movement of the people- their greatest victory since the formation of the Republic-and that its lessons should be known to every voter in the land, and for the further reason that one of the greatest truths in our political history may not be wholly ob- scured and misrepresented, as it has been in a recent publication by D. W. Lusk, of Springfield, Ill., entitled the " Political His- tory of Illinois," in which is what purports to be the account of the anti-monopoly move- ment, that is a tissue of misrepresentations from the first to the last. There is hardly a single sentence in the account that is not only in error, but a total perversion of the truth. As a specimen of the recklessness or carelessness of the facts, this historian says the movement commenced in Washington City; that had it not been checked by the sober second thought of the people it would have destroyed the capital of the coun- try; that it was only evil in all its effects and aims; that it gradually extended west and invaded Illinois, and did succeed in even elect- ing a member of our Supreme Court, etc., etc. If Mr. Lusk is in the pay of the country's common foe, then we are constrained to say, his book is a weak invention of the enemy ; the history of even unimportant events cannot thus be either perverted or obscured, much less this great movement whose effects will go on and grow while our free institutions last. We refer to this error in the "Politi- cal History of Illinois" not to accuse the
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author of a willful perversion of the by far most important chapter in the history of the State, but to correct it, and as an evidence of how widespread is the ignorance of the peo- ple generally of the most important facts of their history-of events that have not only occurred recently, but in their very midst.
As a fitting conclusion to this chapter we quote a few sentences from an address by J. H. Bryant, delivered at the third annual meeting in Springfield of the Illinois State Farmers' Association, January 28, 1875, as follows:
It is now more than forty years since, when a young man, I came to this State, and with these hands reared my cabin amid a waste of uncultivated lands, with only one human habitation in sight. During all these years I have watched with joyous satisfaction each step of progress and every discovery in the arts and sciences tending to the elevation and improvement and happi- ness of our people. I have witnessed with feelings akin to enthusiasm the rapid increase of our population, carrying with it the civil and religious institutions belonging to our age, and converting deserts and waste places into orchards, gardens and fruitful fields. There is not a fruit tree or shade tree in the county where I live that has not been planted since I first set foot upon its soil, and not a dwelling-house or other structure that was not built since that day. I have seen our population increase from about 150,000 to 3,000,000. But now it seems to me that dark clouds are gathering about our pathway, not only involving our pecuniary in- terests, but involving our personal rights. And we have a bitter contest before us-a struggle with an enemy that never sleeps. And this struggle with the monopolies that claim our God-given rights will not be a short one, unless-which God forbid-the people are the first to yield. So long as we have among us keen-sighted, selfish grasping men, so long unceasing watchfulness alone will preserve our free institutions from encroachments and finally from subversion. "Eternal vigilance is the price of lib- erty !"
I have said that railroads are conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity, and I believe this is true; so true that the contrary is the exception and not the rule. Where was there ever a railroad built in our State that there has not been wrong, cheating and deception interwoven in its every fiber? If all
the villainies practiced by railroad managers, all the dark and hidden ways resorted to to extort money from the people, and even to rob their brother stockholders, were laid hare and exposed to view and fully or even partially understood, the publie would stand aghast at the sight. It has been said that railroad companies have got all the money and all the brains on their side, and that they can- not be opposed with any chance of success. It is true that they have vast amounts of capital in their hands and can wield it very effectively. But the people collectively have vastly more beside the political power of the State, if they have virtue and wisdom enough to use it. And as for brains, rail- road men have no more than many others. They are usually what are called sharp men, which means that they are subtle, cunning and grasping. This is, or would be, if their acts were known to the pub- lic, their general character-I mean the leading, controlling spirits. Look at them! Vanderbilt, Fisk, Jay Gould and others. These are your model railroad men who have adopted Rob Roy's
" Simple plan, That they shall take who have the power, And they shall keep who can."
But you say all are not such. Perhaps not, but I think if the acts of all were laid bare to your in- spection, you would find few exceptions, save in de- gree andopportunity. * * The money which gives them position and respectability is wrung from your hard earnings. And yet you are maligned, traduced. slandered, ridiculed and blackguarded and carica- tured; called all manner of opprobrious names; charged with the intention to commit all manner of grave crimes against society; and all this goes to the public through the columns of the public prints of the large towns and cities, whose support comes largely from the patronage of the abused classes, reminding me of the story of the wounded eagle that saw its own feather guiding the arrow that pierced its heart *
* * * They have under the pretense of rights granted them by our Legislature, usurped a portion of our sovereignty. They defy our authority, and rob us universally and systematically under the sacred name of law; every year entrenching themselves more strongly in power, until they shall have finally raised upon the ruins of public liberty a moneyed oligarchy more oppressive than the monarchies of the Old World.
VESTED RIGHTS.
Now a word under the doctrine of vested rights which is held in such reverence by the most of the
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legal profession. An English poet of the last century says:
"Such dupes are men to custom, and so prone To reverence what is ancient, and can plesd A course of long observance for its use,
To even vested rights, those worst of ills, Because delivered down from sire to son, Are kept and guarded as a sacred thing."
It is under this doctrine railroad corporations shield themselves in committing their extortions androbberies. It is a doctrine which grew up under despotic governments and is said in its inception to have been in the interests of liberty shielding the com- mon people under certain chartered rights, granted by the king, from the oppressions of the great barons who claimed their allegiance and service. But it has no business in free America. In this country it is a grant against liberty and not in its favor. It is not, as of old, an act enfranchising the few, but enslav- ing the many. "The same process, which, when the people were debased, elevated them to their proper level, now, when the people are elevated and oc- cupy the lofty place of equal political rights, debases them to a comparative servitude."
Away with it then, since it does not belong to the jurisprudence of a free people, and can not co- exist with liberty and equal rights. Let it be buried with the dead past, where it belongs. I hear peo- ple say we must go slow; we must be careful not to wrong the railroad companies; let us be just and fair, even liberal. We must
"Be meek and gentle with these butchers."
But if they have all the money and all the brains, as some claim, and the right to do as they please, as they claim, one would think they might take care of themselves, which all experience proves that thus far they have been able to do.
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