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."
On the Democratic side all of the forces have united to destroy
Wilson, who is the strongest man in the West. The bosses are all
against him. They recently produced an application which he had
made for a pension, under the Carnegie Endowment Fund for
Teachers, which had been allowed to lie idle, unnoticed for a year
or so after its rejection, but owing to campaign emergencies was
produced, at this happy moment, to show that Wilson wanted a
pension. As a Philadelphia poet whom you never heard of says:--
"Ah, what a weary travel is our act,
Here, there, and back again, to win some prize,
Those who are wise their voyage do contract
To the safe space between each others' eyes."
This line is in keeping with my reputation as an early Victorian.
... Do write me some good long letters. You have a better literary
style than any man who ever wrote a letter to me, and I love you
for the prejudices that are yours. Give my love to your wife. As
always yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANES
TO THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Washington, December 10, 1911
MY DEAR COLONEL,--I have been thinking over what I said yesterday,
and I am going to presume upon my friendship and, I may say, my
affection for you to make a suggestion:
Even though the call comes from a united party and under
circumstances the most flattering, do not accept it unless you are
convinced of two things: (1) that you are needed from a national
standpoint and not merely from a party standpoint; (2) that you
are certain of election.
Sacrifice for one's country is splendid, but sacrifice for one's
party is foolish. You must feel assured before acceding to the
call, which I believe will certainly come, that it is more than
party-wide, and that it is sufficiently strong to overcome the
trend toward Democratic success. If I were asked I would say that
I think both of these conditions are present--that the desire to
have you again is much broader than any party, and so large that
it would insure your victory;--but no man is as wise a judge of
these things as the man himself whose fortunes are at stake.
Thanking you again for the pleasure of a luncheon, believe me, as
always, faithfully yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
Roosevelt in a letter marked PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL replied:--
... "That is a really kind and friendly letter from you, and I
appreciate it. Now I agree absolutely with you that I have no
business under any circumstances to accept any such call, even in
the greatly improbable event of its coming, unless I am convinced
that the need is National, a need of the people and not merely a
need of the Party. But as for considering my own chances in any
such event, my dear fellow, I simply would not know how to go
about it. I am always credited with far more political sagacity
than I really possess. I act purely on public grounds and then
this proves often to be good policy too. I assure you with all
possible sincerity that I have not thought and am not thinking of
the nomination, and that under no circumstances would I in the
remotest degree plan to bring about my nomination. I do not want
to be President again, I am not a candidate, I have not the
slightest idea of becoming a candidate, and I do not for one
moment believe that any such condition of affairs will arise that
would make it necessary to consider me accepting the nomination.
But as for the effect upon my own personal fortunes, I would not
know how to consider it, because I would not have the vaguest idea
what the effect would be, except that according to my own view it
could not but be bad and unpleasant for me personally. From the
personal standpoint I should view the nomination to the Presidency
as a real and serious misfortune. Nothing would persuade me to
take it, unless it appeared that the people really wished me to do
a given job, which I could not honorably shirk. ..."
TO SAMUEL G. BLYTHE
Washington, January 6, 1912
MY DEAR SAM,--... I, too, have been reading William James. His
VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE is the only philosophic work
that I was ever able to get all the way through. This thing gave
me real delight for a week.
Have just read Mr. John Bigelow's REMINISCENCES, or bits thereof,
and find that the aforesaid John is much like another John that we
know in this city, the fine friend of the Pan-American Bureau. He
seems to have been a dignified and solemn gentleman who carried on
correspondence with a great many men for a number of years,
without ... having indulged in a flash of humor in all his
respectable days. ...
Will you support me for Supreme Court Justice? I see that I am
mentioned. Between us, I am entirely ineligible, having a sense of
humor. As always yours,
LANE
TO SIDNEY E. MEZES PRESIDENT, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS
Washington, February 15,1912
MY DEAR SID,--Your weather has been no worse than ours, I want you
to understand; in fact, not so bad. I think the glacial period is
returning and the ice cap is moving down from the North Pole.
The Supreme Bench I could not get because I am a Democrat, and the
President could not afford to appoint another Democrat on the
Bench. I do not know when McKenna goes out, and I am not going to
be disturbed about it anyway. If I had not been unlucky enough to
be born in Canada I could be nominated for President this year.
Things are in a devil of a condition. We could have elected
Wilson, hands down, if it had not been for Hearst's malevolent
influence. He is at the bottom of all this deviltry. His aim is to
kill Wilson off and nominate Clark, and Clark is in the lead now,
I think. God knows whether he can beat Taft or not. It looks to me
as if Taft will be nominated. I have a feeling somehow that the
Roosevelt boom won't materialize.
My love to the Missis and to Mr. House. As always yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO JOHN H. WIGMORE
Washington, February 19, 1912
MY DEAR JOHN,--For two weeks there has been standing on my desk a
most elegantly bound set of your CASES ON TORTS sent to me by
Little, Brown & Co. at your request. You do not need to be told, I
know, how much I appreciate a thing that comes from you and how
poverty stricken I am when it comes to making adequate return. I
can prove that I have been working hard, but my work does not
crystallize into anything which is worth sending to a friend.
The fact is that I have never worked as hard in my life as I have
lately. I get to my office about nine, and without going out of my
room (for I take my lunch at my desk), stay until six, and work at
home every night until half past eleven, and then take a volume of
essays or poems to bed with me for half or three-quarters of an
hour, and so to sleep.
If the man in the White House had as much sense as I have, he
would name you for the Supreme Bench without asking, and "draft"
you, as Roosevelt says. By the way, I gave the suggestion of
"draft" in a talk I had with him a month or so ago.
The political situation is interesting, but altogether un-lovely.
... It looks as if Clark might be the nominee on the Democratic
side. Taft is gaining in strength, and somehow I cannot feel that
Roosevelt will ever be in it, although you know how I like him.
The situation seems a bit artificial.
Give my love to Mrs. John. As always yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO GEORGE W. LANE
Washington, February 23, 1912
MY DEAR GEORGE,-- ... Yesterday I delivered an address before the
University of Virginia on A Western View of Tradition--which when
it is printed I will send out to you--and in the afternoon was
taken up to Jefferson's home, Monticello. It is on a mountain, the
top of which he scraped off. It overlooks the whole surrounding
country, most of which at that time he owned. He planned the whole
house himself, even to the remotest details, the cornices and the
carvings on the mantels, the kind of lumber of which the floors
were to be made, the character of the timbers used, the carving of
the capitals on the columns, the folding ladder that was used to
wind up the clock over the doorway, the registers on the porch
that recorded the direction in which the wind was coming, as moved
by the weather-vane on the roof, the little elevator beside the
fireplace ... and a thousand other details.
... I would like nothing better if I had any kind of skill in
using my hands than to take a year off and build a house. It is a
real religion to create something, and you do not need a great
deal of money to make a very beautiful little place. You must have
one large room, and the house must be on some elevation, and you
must get water, water, and water. ... It is water that makes land
valuable in California or anywhere else. Affectionately yours,
F. K. L.
TO CARL SNYDER
Washington, March 6, 1912
MY DEAR CARL,--I have this minute for the first time seen the copy
of COLLIER'S, for February 24, 1912, and therefore for the first
time my eyes lighted upon your most delicious roast of the
Commerce Court. ...
I do not know what the outcome of this movement will be. The only
settled policy of government is inertia. The House of
Representatives Committee on Appropriations, I believe, proposes
to abolish the appropriation for the Court, which looks like a
cowardly way to get at the thing, but perhaps it is most
effective. However, I really doubt if they will have the nerve to
do this. It is a mighty critical year, I think, in our history. It
looks to me as if the reactionaries were going to get possession
of both parties, and that a third party will be needed and nobody
will have the nerve to start it. Roosevelt has got everything west
of the Mississippi excepting Utah and Wyoming, in my judgment.
That he will be able to get the nomination I am not so sure; but
he does not care a tinker's damn whether he gets it himself or
not. That is the worst of it because the people won't give
anything to a man that he does not want. ... Well, we are living
in mighty interesting times anyway.
As always yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
On February 22, 1912, Lane delivered the annual address at the
University of Virginia. He spoke on American Tradition, saying
that as Americans are physically, industrially, and socially the
"heirs of all the ages" our supreme tradition is a "hatred of
injustice." That one of the great experiments that a Democracy
should make is to find a more equitable distribution of wealth
"without destroying individual initiative or blasting individual
capacity and imagination." This address brought a letter from
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Justice of the Supreme Court.
TO FRANKLIN K. LANE
March 17, 1912
MY DEAR SIR,--Let me thank you at once for your Virginia address,
which I have just received and just read--read with the greatest
pleasure. I admire its eloquence, its imagination, its style. I
sympathize with its attitude and with most of its implications. I
gain heart from its tone of hope. I am old--by the calendar at
least--and at times am more melancholy, so that it does me good to
hear the note of courage. One implication may carry conclusions to
which I think I ought to note my disagreement,--the reference to
unequal distribution. I think the prevailing fallacy is to
confound ownership with consumption of products. Ownership is a
gate, not a stopping place. You tell me little when you tell me
that Rockefeller or the United States is the owner. What I want to
know is who consumes the annual product, and for many years I have
been saying and believing that to think straight one should look
at the stream of annual products and ask what change one would
make in that under any REGIME. The luxuries of the few are a drop
in the bucket--the crowd now has all there is. The difference
between private and public ownership, it seems to me, is mainly in
the natural selection of those most competent to foresee the
future and to direct labor into the most productive channels, and
the greater poignancy of the illusion of self-seeking under which
the private owner works. The real problem, under socialism as well
as under individualism, is to ascertain, under the external
economic and inevitable conditions, the equilibrium of social
desires. The real struggle is between the different groups of
producers of the several objects of social desire. The bogey
capital is simply the force of all the other groups against the
one that is selling its product, trying to get that product for
the least it can. Capital is society purchasing and consuming--
Labor is society producing. The laborers unfortunately are often
encouraged to think capital something up in the sky which they are
waiting for a Franklin to bring down into their jars. I think that
is a humbug and lament that I so rarely hear what seem to me the
commonplaces that I have uttered, expressed. Your fine address has
set me on my hobby and you have fallen a victim to the charm of
your own words. Very truly, yours,
O. W. HOLMES