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reached, the obvious course is to create a body which can investigate, with expert assistance, as summarily as possible, and which shall have adequate power to make appropriate orders. Such a body has been created in this State through the Public-Service Commissions Law recently enacted.

Provision is made for inquiry into matters. of freight rates and passenger fares, and for the fixing of such rates as shall be found just and reasonable. If a passenger rate of two cents a mile is just and reasonable, it can be fixed. If it is not just and reasonable, it should not be fixed.

It will be said that this requires time and investigation. But it will not require any longer time or any more protracted investigation than are necessary to reach a right result. The interests of the country are so great and our individual interests are so closely interwoven that it is to the highest degree dangerous to give encouragement to the spirit of impatience with the orderly processes of inquiry.

It may also be said that many other States. have adopted similar legislation. If the principle of that legislation be sound we could readily follow the precedent; but if it be

unsound there is the greater reason why it should not be followed. The State of New York has provided machinery to settle these questions justly to all with as much despatch as possible. It is to the interest of all that this machinery should be made as perfect and efficient as possible. It is to the interest of none that it should be discarded because of preference for arbitrary legislative action.

If this bill were to become a law it would most probably lead in many cases-on account of pretended or real necessity-to economies in service and to readjustment of rates now lower, to the annoyance and injury of considerable numbers of the travelling public for which the gain to others would not necessarily compensate. Again, the validity of such a statute would almost certainly be contested in protracted litigation, the result of which, to say the least, would be in doubt. At a critical time, when the interests of all demand that reason and judgment should control in dealing with such matters, we should have abandoned our true line of action and facilitated still wider departures.

I therefore disapprove this bill.

(Signed) CHARLES E. HUGHES.

III.

Occasional Addresses.

"If in administration we make the standard efficiency and not partisan advantage, if in executing the laws we deal impartially, if in making the laws there is fair and intelligent action with reference to each exigency, we shall disarm reckless and selfish agitators and take from the enemies of our peace their vantage ground of attack. It is my intention to employ my constitutional powers to this end."From Governor Hughes's Inaugural Address, January I 1907.

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