THE MORNING OltEGONIAN, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1914.
K
allroads Appeal to A If Ore
to Protect line GeodPM Reprtatioini
omest Dealie
tate iroir Jr air
the
amd.
Proposed Water Front Amendment to th Constitution and Municipal Docks Bill Mean
Confiscation of Private Property Their Passage Will Hamper the Development of Com
merce and Business on All Our Navigable Waters and Frighten Capital Away From Oregon
VOTE
NO
VOTE
X
NO
TO THE VOTERS OF OREGON:
The railroads appeal to the sense of honesty and justice
in the people for fair consideration of these measures, which,
if adopted, fence off the upland owners from the navigable
waters of the state, and strike down private and corporate
ownership alike. Attempt is made to justify this confisca
tion by stating, "In the City of Portland and in most other
seaports of the state, the railroads own and control a large
portion of the waterfront property undeveloped."
The railroads own little waterfront the Dock Commission
of Portland wanted, for in securing its extsnsive waterfront
holdings the Commission selected frontage of private owner
ship, except a small strip secured from the Northern Pacific
Terminal Company, which they secured without condemna
tion and at a price that was satisfactory to the Commission.
The railroads appeal to you to resent the suggestion that
property held in railroad ownership is Jess secure under our
laws than 'property held by private citizens. If either the
private citizen or the railroad can be stripped of waterfront
property without compensation, what assurance is left that
they are secure in other property holdings'? . '
When in the year 1912 the Portland Dock Commission, of
which the author of these bills was and is a member, entered
into possession, on behalf of the city, of a piece of waterfront
between high and low water mark held by private ownership,
and drove piles upon it without compensating the owner, the
courts of our state stopped them, and our Supreme Court in
its exhaustive opinion on the case, rendered on June 24, 1913,
by Justice Bean and concurred in by the entire Court, ob
served: "To allow this property to be taken for public use without
just compensation would work a great injury and do violence
to the Constitution of Oregon." 133 Pac. pp. 72-83.
Yet the author of these bills, who was enjoined by our
courts in the case mentioned, urges you to work this "Great
injury and to do violence to the Constitution," by destroying
to the waterfront -owners the use of their property up to
"bank-full stage," and to place the control of the same in the
municipal and state authorities. '
Private citizens and railroads alike have been assessed for
this property many years,' and each year taxes have been
collected. Millions have been invested in this property by
private owners, as well as by the railroads, and to destroy its
use means financial ruin to many who have made their invest
ments upon the assurance of the laws and the court decisions
of the state. If the people of the state be misled as to these
bills and confiscate this property, how can the wrong done be
corrected; how can the distrust that will be caused in the
" minds of those whom we desire to interest in our state, in its
resources and in its development, as to. the security of prop
erty, be dispelled? '
EVERY BUSINESS ENTERPRISE EXCEPT PUBLIC
DOCKS HAS BEEN LOCKED OUT!
These bills not only confiscate, but prevent the use of the
frontage along the navigable waters of our state for business
or commerce by private enterprise. Before there can be ship
ping there must be production; wTe must produce and ship
more than we receive, or we will be unable to support public
- docks. The necessity for docks is admitted, but manufactur
ing establishments, flour mills, canneries, sawmills, log
booms, cultivated' land and prosperous people, working in a
spirit of co-operation, are even more important. The little
landings along our inland waters are as necessary and impor-
taut," in the functions they perform, as are municipal docks.
The proposed acts are respectively tagged by their author
with big type "PUBLIC DOCKS AM) WATER-FRONTAGE
AMENDMENT ' ' ' 1 MUNICIPAL WHARVES AND.
DOCKS BILL." The author has given no fair consideration
to any other facility, or enterprise than PUBLIC MUNICI
PAL DOCKS, and to carry out his plan, overlooked every
thing else, and has probably unintentionally prepared a bar
rier that will render impossible business involving access to
our navigable waters.
By these bills there will be no authority for the construc
tion of docks or wharves at a point more than five miles
beyond the limits of any incorporated city or town and within
incorporated cities or towns or within five miles from their
limits, no .docks or wharves can be built except by the munici
pality, except that within said limited areas upland owners
may secure a lease to use their own property (if they pay
sufficient rentals) from the proper corporate authorities in
cities or towns with the acquiescence of the State Land Board,
if the corporate authorities and State Land Board see fit to
grant such lease, but the term of the lease authorized is
limited in any event to twenty-five years, with a further pro
vision that it is subject to appropriation by the city or town
at the end of ten years from the date of the lease upon pay
ment by the city or town of the then physical value of the
improvements erected under the lease. But no allowance is
to be made for intangible elements of value or for loss of busi
ness or profits or other damage of like or different kind. The
dock, if constructed, is also subject to public regulation.
Under such conditions, no manufacturing establishment,
flour.mill, cannery, sawmill, log boom, dock or other landing
will.be constructed, for the reason that no business man will
make the necessary large investment for an establishment
that requires both upland and waterfront, under circum
stances where his wharf, an absolutely essential part of his
equipment, can be taken from him at the end of ten years by
mefely paying him the expense of the construction of the
piling and decking of a dock.
. MONOPOLY UNTRUE AND IMPOSSIBLE
Advocates of these bills try to poison the public mind with
the statement that by owning their docks the railroads con
trol and monopolize shipping. The railroads could not do
this if they would. It is unlawful for the railroads to have
any interest in any carrier by water, with which the Tailroad
does or may compete for traffic, without the consent of the
Interstate Commerce Commission, after a finding by the Com
; mission that the' service by water is of advantage to the con
venience and commerce of the people and will not prevent
or reduce competition by water on the route involved, and
the act further provides that the Commission has authority to
establish physical connection between tha line of the rail
carrier and the dock of the water carrier and to fix the terms
upon which the connecting tracks shall be operated. -
v With this power available to the Dock Commission and to
the state, and with their further pover to condemn all docks
and waterfront and take them from lis upon payment of the
sum found by a jury to be their fair value, the Commission
should be content, without depriving us and the people of the
state of the beneficial use of our properties."
Shore owners have had the right since 1862 to build
wharves, and this right has been exercised to the extent that
the commerce and business of the state justified such con
struction, but the author of these bills contends that because
all the upland owners have not built wharves along the
waterfront, that the right to do so should be taken away from
allof them.
We submit that the people of the state, recognizing the
necessity for making the use of the navigable waters of the
state available, did not contemplate in the enactment of the
old law that a great waste of money and property must be
made for miles of expensive and. useless docks, but did recog
nize that the right should be a continuing one, available as
business' development and commerce justified expenditure
for wharf construction. If it has been necessary in the past
for the business, of the state to have access to its navigable
waters, there is certainly a greater necessity now because of
the increasing volume of our business and commerce.
This state and every other state in our Union has an emi
nent domain statute authorizing railroads- and other public
service corporations to condemn, upon first paying full value
therefor, land and property for rights of way and other facili
ties necessary for the conduct of their business of serving the
public, and has a statute authorizing railroads to acquire the
right to occupy any canyon,' pass or defile in the state with
another railroad, to the end that the development of the state
by transportation facilities may be' possible.
Will it be contended that because the state was not cov
ered with a network of railroads in pioneer days, when the
business and traffic did not justify such construction, that
the state should now tie its own hands and repeal eminent
domain laws and prevent the construction of more transporta
tion lines required by the commerce and development of the
state? Such action would be no more unreasonable, and as
little justified, as is the action proposed by these waterfront
bills in taking away from the citizens of the state their right
of access to their navigable waters.
PRESIDENT WILSON'S APPEAL FOR FAIR DEAL
ING WITH RAILROADS
Under date of September 10th, 1914, President Woodrow
Wilson addressed a letter to Mr. Frank Trumbull, Chairman
of the Committee of Railroad Executives, wherein he said:
"You ask me to call the attention of the country
to the imperative need that railway credits be sus
tained and the railroads helped in every possible
I way, whether by private co-operative effort or by
the action, wherever feasible, of Governmental
agencies, and I am glad to do so, because I think the
need very real. . . . This is the time for all to
stand together in united effort to comprehend every
interest and sustain and serve it in every legitimate
way."
We commend the sentiments of the President to the con
sideration of the author of these bills, and submit that he
might well emulate the Chief Executive by co-operating with
the citizens and corporations of the state that are honestly
conducting legitimate business, rather than confiscate their
property and discredit the state throughout the commercial
world. '
Oregon
Washington Railroad & Wav. Co.,
By J. D. Farrell, President , t
Wells-Fargo Bldg., Sixth and Oak Sts., Portland, Oregon
Spokane, P
Portland Railway, Light & Power Co.,
By Franklin T. Griffith, President
Electric Bldg., Broadway and Alder Sts, Portland, Oregon
ortland & Seattle Railway Co.,
By L. C. Gilman, President
PittocBldg., Tenth and Washington Sts., Portland, Oregon
Southern Pacific Co.,
By D. W. Campbell, Asst. Genl Mgr.
Sixth and Oak Sts.; Wells-Fargo Bldg., Portland, Oregon