Report of the Committee of South Kingstown (Rhode Island) 1854: Supplement. 1854 - Railroad Monopolies and Reform

Details:
double sided black and white engraving
condition: professionally conserved good condition, fine repairs at original folds, some staining to paper
Description:
The Committee that authored this report was appointed by the South Kingstown, Rhode Island Town meeting and met on November 18, 1854 to discuss abusive business practices of the Stonington Railroad towards South Kingstown resident and Rhode Island State Representative, Rowland G. Hazard, Esq. (1801-1888) 1/who was ejected from the train on the orders of the President of the Stonington Railroad on the evening of November 3, 1854 with the charge he had not paid for a ticket. The broader purpose of the Committee's work was to report on whether the reason for Mr. Hazard being ejected from the train was in response to Mr. Hazard's earlier state legislative role in Rhode Island to regulate Rhode Island Railroads, in particular the Stonington Railroad and to pass legislation to protect Rhode Island citizens from intimidation and the Rhode Island legislature from interference by the railroad monopolies who were abusing their charters and operating as unchecked monopolies. He also had a reputation as an abolitionist.2/

This Town Meeting committee report is a broadside on the state of American railroad corporate power in the Northeast as of 1854 and those seeking to call out and regulate such threats to democratic institutions, the courts and citizens. This report comes ten years into the development of American local railroads and before the ascendancy of the transcontinental railroads whose power was national. Mr. Rowland G. Hazard was also known as an abolitionist and therefore animus against him on that train Friday night, November 3, 1854 by the Stonington Railroad president may have had several bases, as railroad business customers included Rhode Island mills and other commercial interests that benefited from slavery.

The Report's authors attached an Appendix to the 1854 Supplement addressed to their state Senators and Representatives for protection from abusive business practices by the Rhode Island chartered railroads, and for legal remedies for individual citizens. In particular, their request identifies use by the railroads of free tickets to influence legislation, press coverage and judicial proceedings and asks that the practice be outlawed. The evidence assembled in their Report, all of which was submitted to the state legislature provides a profile of monopoly business practices that is a precise fit for today's digital infrastructure monopolies.

The broadside record includes four elements: Mr. Hazard's statement of facts from that evening, witness statements corroborating his account, newspaper articles about railroad monopoly abuses in New York and Massachusetts, and Mr. Hazard's own remarks to the state Legislature advocating scrutiny of the Stonington Railroad, enforcement of its charter with fines - and additional regulatory reform of railroad monopolies to protect the integrity of state legislation, judicial remedies for citizens and equal enforcement of the law among citizens and corporations.

This broadside could be mistaken for a contemporary critique of the ability of American monopolies to write their own tickets. Mr. Hazard notes that he lacks faith in the availability of judicial remedies for his personal injury. Specifically he observes that redress in the courts will be thwarted by the railroad companies' phalanx of lawyers. He states that the juries are packed with railroad jurors, bribed with money or free tickets or intimidated such that as a monopoly the Railroad uses its influence causing "citizens to eschew all their obligations as citizens." His perspective is informed by his research about other state railroad corporations in the Northeast and their "rapid and apparently resistless encroachments of Railroad power" on government and the courts. A citizen's right to equal protection under the law is one of Hazard's repeated themes. He equates and demonstrates how monopoly power applied by American railroads quashes this democratic principle.

Hazard characterizes the railroads as a self-designated privileged class that operates above the law. Hazard compares what has been business as usual in adjoining states to what is also being suffered in Rhode Island. We learn that in New York at least $1 million dollars of free tickets "flooded the legislature" days before consideration of bills pertaining to the "terrible Hudson River and Harlem monopolies". Colorful language explains that the effect of these free tickets was to sideline the proposed legislation so that these bills "slept the sleep that knows no waking." Another quote from the New York Tribune states that all told "about 350 season tickets free on all trains were disbursed - a greater number at one dash than were offered to the Press of New York since railroads were invented."

The text of Hazards arguments against monopoly power echo Hazard's arguments against slavery as he equates the terrible impact on citizens of a government and judiciary controlled by monopoly power and thus the arbitrary will of others without legal protection with the very essence of slavery. Hazard's passionate advocacy for regulation of the Stonington Railroad has deeper roots than issues with its charter or tariffs given his earlier abolitionist activities.

This 1854 broadside is original source material from a Rhode Island Town Meeting addressing how railroad monopolies were undermining democratic institutions and acting above the law. The language is colorful and eerily contemporary. One phrase in particular summed up the dance between monopoly powers and legislatures attempting to draft effective laws to balance the interests of the specific industry, government and the public. Hazard observes that in Rhode Island, when presented with regulatory compliance or reform the railroad executives in essence reply "We are rich enough to buy you all, but too poor to pay what we owe you." One hundred and sixty-five years later this is still a valuable insight.

Notes
1. Hazard served in the Rhode Island legislature in 1851, 1854 and 1880 as a state Representative and as a state Senator in the 1860's. He was a leading Rhode Island Republican.

2. Roland G. Hazard was a mill owner in Rhode Island. His credits for abolitionist work begin with his actions in Louisiana, where he lived for business reasons from the early 1830's to 1842. He worked in New Orleans to free African Americans arrested on the grounds that they were escaped slaves.