The Price of Iron Rails: Fighting the Corporate Lobby

A new and frantic effort is being made at Olympia to work the reform so as to allow the counties of the territory, or some of them, to issue bonds by way of subsidy to railroad companies. There is no attempt to disguise the fact that this is in the interest of the J.W. Hunt enterprises. A strong lobby has been on the ground since the failure of the previous effort, and no pains have been spared to bring the members round to a change of view. The objections to this measure in its modified form are precisely the same as those urged earlier in this session, and which caused its defeat in the first instance. Aside from the fact that the proposition involves special privileges to particular counties, and is therefore purely a matter of special legislation, such lent in itself to call for its prompt rejection. It should be defeated on the broad ground that it is wrong in principle and a most dangerous thing. It is no part of the business of county government to subsidize railroads, and it would be especially mischievous to permit, as is proposed, one generation to involve the next in a heavy debt upon a wrong principle for a doubtful benefit. The people who would be called upon to pay this debt thirty years or so from now would feel, and with justice, that an outrageous burden had been put upon them.