Railroad Regulation Quotes

We should like to see such legislation as would beggar the lot of them and confiscate their roads, lands, rolling stock and all that is theirs.... These men have set themselves apart—have divorced their interests from those of all other classes. They have deliberately antagonized civilization and affronted humanity. Their methods are so exceptional that they can be reached only by exceptional methods. They have presumed on our reluctance to apply them.

The time has come when the railroad corporations will either own the people or the people must own the railroads;

The railroads saw that they must either accept control by the State of control the State.

We urge the passage of a bill enforcing the principle that railroads are public highways, and requiring railroads to make connections with all roads whose tracks meet or cross their own, and to receive and transmit cars and trains offered over their roads at reasonable maximum rates, whether offered at such crossings, or at stations along their roads, and empowering the making of connections by municipal corporations for that purpose, and for the public use. We hold, declare and resolve, that this despotism, which defies our laws, plunders our shippers, impoverishes our people, and corrupts our government, shall be subdued and made to subserve the public interest at whatever cost.

Our great national highway [the railroads] could be restored to public use only by the interposition of the United States army.

Shall the railroads govern the country, or shall the people govern the railroads? Shall the interest of railroad kings be chieflyregarded, or shall the interest of the people be paramount?

A majority of Senators placed on the Committee on Interstate Commerce were men whose sympathies were with the railroads.

The bell of public opinion is today making the Morgan-Rockefeller-Vanderbilt class jump. Nor are the strongest of our corporations immune. The railroads have had to jump pretty lively, and certain gigantic industrial combinations are also being put through their paces.

I do not believe in government ownership of anything which can with propriety be left in private hands, and in particular I should most strenuously object to government ownership of railroads. In my judgment public ownership of railroads is highly undesirable and would probably in this country entail far-reaching disaster.

Many of the railroad evils were inherent in the situation; they were explained by the fact that both managers and public were dealing with a new agency whose laws they did not completely understand.

I ask every God-fearing citizen to save Boston from the banks and the railroads.

The issue is whether the trusts or the people shall rule …whether the Railroad [Louisville & Nashville Railroad] is the servant or the master of the people.

It satisfies the public clamor for a government supervision of the railroads at the same time that the supervision is almost entirely nominal.

The railroads once were a dominant power in American life, for good and for ill. There's something inevitably nostalgic about a train book today. Trains attract us, but part of that attraction is cultural memory.

If railway men are wise, they will not hinder it. Railroads are a public institution—an institution which must be regulated by law. You cannot run the railroads as you would run a private business. You must respond to the public demand.