LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
 m& 
 

THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS 
 
 A POPULAR DISCUSSION OF 
 
 THE RAILWAY PROBLEM IN THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 Bf WAY OF ANSWEK TO '"THE RAILWAYS AND THE REPUBLIC," 
 BY JAMES F. HUDSON, AND WITH AN EXAMINATION OF 
 
 THE INTERSTATE- COMMERCE LAW 
 
 BY 
 
 APPLETON MORGAN. 
 
 (Of the New York Bar.) 
 
 NEW YORK AND CHICAGO : 
 
 BELFORD, CLARKE & COMPANY, 
 
 1888. 
 
COPYRIGHT 1888. 
 
 KY 
 
 APPLETON MOKGAN. 
 
AN ALBUM OF STATESMANSHIP. 
 
 " We're going to lead the railroads a wild and lively dance, and 
 make it lurid for them in the Legislature this winter." (The 
 Editor of a Democratic Agricultural Paper in Iowa.) 
 
 "We don't propose to hear the railroad side of the question now. 
 We'll hang them first and try them afterwards." (A Reform 
 Member of a Senate Railroad Committee.) 
 
 "We will pass the anti-railroad legislation and hear the railroad 
 men afterwards. The condemned are always allowed to speak from 
 the scaffold." (Another Reform Senator of a Railroad Com- 
 mittee.) 
 
 "I wrote a radical mining bill, and submitted it to the coal- 
 miners themselves, and told them that if it \vasn't severe enough 
 against the mine-owners, to add to it anything Ihey wanted, and 
 I would advocate and secure its passage in the House." (A Reform 
 Member and Leader of the Lower House of a Legislature, and the 
 owner of a Reform Newspaper.) 
 
 "Let us make a secret compact of a pledged and sworn major- 
 ity, and vote this legislation through without debate, right or 
 wrong. If it hurts the railroads let them take care of themselves. 
 Our leader has said, ' Organized capital may be depended upon to 
 take care of itself.' " (The next Reform Leader in rank in the 
 Lower House of a Legislature.) 
 
 "Light! Who wants any light on this subject? lam not 
 open to conviction ? But I am ready to vote for this bill to-day 
 and hear the railroads to-morrow." (Another Reform Senator of 
 a Railroad Committee.) 
 
 " If the proposed legislation should bankrupt any of the rail- 
 roads in the State, I will call an extra session of the Legislature 
 to relieve them." (A Governor of a State lobbying before a 
 Senate Railroad Committee.) Iowa State Register, February 
 27, 1888. 
 
 193683 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE animosity towards the Railway Interest, shown in a volume, 
 "THE RAILWAYS AND THE REPUBLIC," by Mr. James F. Hudson, 
 has been so largely prevalent among our people ; so many honest 
 and worthy persons have conscientiously shared in it, that it 
 has seemed to me that a conscientious attempt to allay it would 
 not be looked upon either as surplusage or as mere assumption. 
 If I have, therefore, in the following pages, personified this ani- 
 mosity as " Mr. Hudson," it has been purely for my own conven- 
 ience, not in the least because I think his book either import- 
 ant or dangerous on the whole. In rejoining to Mr. Hudson's 
 book, not the least of the labor has been the reduction of his ram- 
 bling and riotous charges, statements and conclusions to some sort 
 of classification as to their subject-matter, and so to avoid the ne- 
 cessity of an equally ponderous volume of six hundred pages. 
 
 I have tried to point out that the viciousness of the Interstate 
 Commerce Law lay, not so much in the changes it might or could 
 affeot in the present railway conveniences of this people (indeed, 
 except that it has somewhat built up the Canadian Pacific Rail- 
 way at the expense of our own railroads, I am unaware that it has 
 affected any change whatever, anywhere, up to the present time), 
 as in the risk of putting upon our national statute books a law 
 under which wicked, artful or ignorant men might throw the trans- 
 portation business of this continent, and so the continent itself, 
 into chaos inside of twenty-four hours. 
 
 Portions of this work having previously appeared in The Pop- 
 ular Science Monthly, The Railway Review, The North Western 
 Railroader and Science, I am indebted to the proprietors of those 
 publications for permission to use them here. 
 
 A. M 
 
 XEW YORK, July 1<. 1888. 
 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. Is Combination Crime ? 
 
 II. The American Railroad 25 
 
 III. Of Railway " Domination " 31 
 
 IV. Of Land Grants 41 
 
 V. Pools,Construction Companies, Re bates, Fast Freight 
 
 Lines, etc 46 
 
 VI. " Long Haul " and " Short Haul " 50 
 
 VII. Of Stock " Watering " 59 
 
 VIII. Of Eminent Domain and what it Entails 6."> 
 
 IX. Conclusions from the Foregoing 71 
 
 X. The Interstate Commerce Act 75 
 
 XI. Apologies for the Law from its Promoter Senator 
 
 Cullom's Speech Constitutional Questions 92 
 
 XII. Railways and Trade Centres HI 
 
 XIII. The " Louisville and Nashville " Decision 
 
 XIV. A Year of Interstate Commerce Control 130 
 
 XV. The " Act of God " and the Railway Company 141 
 
 XVI. Can Railway Strikes be Prevented ? 164 
 
 XVII. Governmental Control of Railways, what it would 
 
 mean ^ 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 I. The Interstate Commerce Act 183 
 
 II. The " Louisville and Nashville " Decision 100 
 
OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IS COMBINATION CRIME ? 
 
 WHEN, once upon a time, announcement was made, in despotic 
 opulence oi mural decoration, that Mr. Barnum's and Mr. Fore- 
 paugh's circuses had pooled their attractions under a single tent, 
 the American small boy lodged no protest, nor did he invoke the 
 statutes of this republic against the dangers with which its insti- 
 tutions were threatened. But when whisky, or coal, or cotton- 
 seed oil, or prunes, or beeswax, propose to adhere in happy family 
 compact, the occasion is not allowed to pass without jeremiad on 
 the perils of this commonwealth and the departure of the liberties 
 of this people. 
 
 In a paper entitled "Modern Feudalism," in the "North Ameri- 
 can Review " for April, 1887, I understand Mr. James F. Hudson 
 to suggest that. any old-fashioned ideas as to the economy of large 
 producers over small ones, and supposed consequential security of 
 wages, greatest good of the greatest number, etc., which may stiil 
 obtain in the community, are survivals of the dark ages, and with- 
 out place in the enlightened civilization of this continent; and to 
 assert that any combination of corporations or large manufacturers 
 or producers for manufacture or production of a single staple, 
 which shall purchase the interest or business of smaller manufact- 
 urers or producers, is a menacing danger, not only to the con- 
 sumer, but to the State. Mr. Hudson has nothing to submit as 
 to any possible small competitor who might perhaps be willing or 
 even anxious to be crushed out " for a consideration " rather than 
 assume all the chances of himself crushing out the larger competi- 
 tor. Nor do I find him discussing the question as to what interest 
 
10 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 it is to the consumer whether the product he consumes be manu- 
 factured or quarried by a small concern or a large one. His prop- 
 ositions, however, are sufficiently startling to the old-fashioned 
 reader of what once was the science of political economy to war- 
 rant, I think, notice in these pages. 
 
 Mr. Hudson, to begin with, is of opinion that any incorporation, 
 combination, or "trust " organized for business purposes is a "cor- 
 ner " in the thing manufactured, and therefore against the written 
 law of the land as well as the public interest. He is wrong here 
 at the outset. Everybody who knows anything about the matter 
 knows that to " corner " a product is to raise its price, not to the 
 consumer, but to the operators against whom the "corner" is 
 engineered. However disastrous a "corner" may be to the 
 " shorts " who fight it : ultimately fatal to the schemers (who risk 
 public indignation if they succeed or the prospect of bankruptcy 
 if they fail in sustaining it), I have yet to learn of any permanent 
 injury to the consumer or to the great body of the people re- 
 sulting from the wickedest corner that ever was attempted. 
 Without attempting any palliation of or excuse for the gamblers 
 who stack staples instead of " chips " and shuffle values instead 
 of cards, it is yet, perhaps, proper to suggest that even trusts, 
 combinations, and incorporations for business purposes are of 
 some ultimate good to the community and benefit to the bread- 
 winner ; and to point out the actual fact that, so far from raising, 
 it is to the immediate interest of a combination of small busi- 
 ness interests into a large one to at once cheapen the prices of its 
 product to the very minimum margin of profit at which manufact- 
 ure can be carried on. Otherwise the crop of new combina- 
 tions to be bought out would be endless. For, surely, so long 
 as the product in which the combination deals can be manufact- 
 ured at a profit, just so long will there be manufacturers. Mr. 
 Hudson, no doubt, burns gas. But any consumer of illuminating 
 
 011 can tell him that he can buy from an agent of Mr. Hudson's 
 pet grievance, the Standard Oil Compan} r , cheaper * than he 
 
 * The Standard Oil Company has so reduced the cost of the process of 
 refining that the price of refined oil has been lowered from seventy to less 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 11 
 
 could before there was any such terrible " octopus," and when 
 every producer had his favorite jobber ; and if Mr. Hudson ever 
 sent a telegram from New York to Chicago before the days of the 
 Western Union Telegraph Company (which, naughty as it is, 
 only charges twenty-five cents for ten words to Chicago), at the 
 rate of about two dollars per ten words to Chicago, without grum- 
 bling at the positive incongruity of the price, he is a much more 
 reasonable man than some of his readers take him to be. And to 
 demonstrate that whatever the immediate causes the im- 
 mediate effect of combinations is apt to be to convenience rather 
 than to incommode the customer or client; let me allude, in 
 passing, to (what everybody knows) the fact that the single 
 powerful ownership of the telegraph lines of the United States 
 has resulted in the steady improvement of the service (the send- 
 ing of four messages at once upon a single wire arid in opposite 
 directions being not the greatest of these improvements) . Per- 
 haps Mr. Hudson thinks that these improvements would have 
 been more patriotically used if the inventors had employed them 
 to break down, instead of to aggrandize and strengthen, the t( mo- 
 nopoly." But unless Mr. Hudson dreams of a paradise where 
 inventors seek not to be paid, are not stimulated to activity by 
 hope of reward (if, that is, he writes for his contemporaries and 
 not for an ideal republic), he must be aware of the impossibility 
 of legislating away the inducements to human industry or the 
 instinct of men to prefer worldly prosperity and bank accounts 
 to poverty and dependence. Had these inventions been used to 
 break down existing companies, the result would haTe been fin ally 
 the same. They would have been purchased by the strongest 
 purse. But the inventor would first have been ruined. But Mr. 
 Hudson, for one, still writes. Such propositions as that there is 
 not a dollar of capital in the United States which does not repre- 
 sent somebody's labor and somebody's self-denial, or that every 
 
 than seven cents per gallon. The people who paid four dollars per 
 capita for light now pay less than forty cents per capita, which is equiva- 
 lent to a benefit to the people of this country (counting them at 60, 000,000) 
 of $216,000,000 per annum." Xew York Tribune," May 15, 1867. 
 
12 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 dollar which accrues in profit to-day to the railroads or other 
 great corporate interests of this country represents from two hun- 
 dred to three hundred dollars paid directly, and in cash, to the 
 wage-workers (the very men for whom Mr. Hudson assumes to 
 speak) such propositions, I say, do not deter him in the least, 
 nor do I anticipate that they ever will. If the corporations of 
 the United States (chartered by the people of the United States 
 for transportation, manufacturing, and other purposes), in en- 
 deavoring to keep abreast of the commerce and trade of the people 
 of the United States, have grown to such enormous proportions 
 as to attract the envy and enmity of those not holding their 
 securities, I respectfully submit that that is no reason why 
 those corporations should be punished, or their interests wrecked, 
 embarrassed, or confiscated, Mr. Hudson to the contrary notwith- 
 standing. 
 
 The fact the truth is, that (however it may be in other coun- 
 tries) the accumulation of wealth and centralization of commerce 
 in great combinations has never, in the United States, been a 
 source of oppression or of poverty to the non-capitalist or wage- 
 worker. The greatest oppressors of the poor, to the contrary, are 
 not always the largest corporations. It is quite as likely, for ex- 
 ample, to be a small Chatham Street haberdasher (who himself 
 struggles against the bottom prices of his next-door " puller-in "), 
 as a Broadway furnishing company, who pays a starved seam- 
 stress three cents apiece for making shirts, and holds a chattel 
 mortgage on her sewing-machine as security for the material upon 
 which she operates it. Mr. Hudson appears to infer that the 
 smaller the manufacturer, the better off the consumer and the 
 wage-worker ; that the smaller he is, the smaller his prices to the 
 one and the higher his wages to the other. I do not claim that 
 the larger the shirt-dealer, the higher the prices he pays to his 
 seamstresses. I do not claim that the soulless individual be- 
 comes soulful the moment he finds himself incorporated (the 
 epigram is the other way). But I do claim that the converse is 
 not the fact. I have not had Mr. Hudson's opportunities, per- 
 haps ; but, so far as the laws of human selfishness and greed go, 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 13 
 
 I happen to know that the larger the principal the more secure 
 the wages of the wage-worker, and the scale thereof at least not 
 necessarily or even probably l^weT. 
 
 The fact is (whether Mr. Hudson will ever become aware of it 
 is another and less important consideration), that the very first 
 thing a successful manufacturing combination does, and must do, 
 is to put the price of its product down to a figure where it will 
 not pay for designing speculators to form new stock companies 
 for it to " crush " at a hundred or more cents on a dollar. For, 
 did it keep up its prices, either one of two things would inevitably 
 happen : either new factories would be started, or the inventive 
 genius of this people would invent a substitute for the product 
 they furnished, and so ruin the combination beyond resurrection. 
 
 So rapidly have prices lowered, indeed, in the past, and so con- 
 stantly are they still falling, that earnest economists have begun 
 to wonder what the end would be ; and even the labor agitators 
 have turned from the (to them) seemingly abstract question of 
 hours and wages, as between the employer and the employed, to 
 find in this the supposed greatest peril of the latter. It even 
 appears tljat one Powderly, a chief of one of the so-called " labor 
 movements," has made it the text of certain of his harangues. 
 And, with what Dickens would call perhaps " a fatal freshness," 
 Mr. Hudson himself (who has just left denying the right of in- 
 dustries to centralize themselves because the first thing they did 
 after centralization w^s to put up prices), on the next page, sa} r s, 
 "Mr. Powderly has inveighed against the sin of cheapness, and 
 given his assent to the principle of combination to raise prices, on 
 the assumption that such combinations involve an advance in 
 wages." (Though to what purpose Mr. Hudson has preserved 
 this excerpt his context fails to discover, since good faith to his 
 own argument, if not to his readers, should have led to its sup- 
 pression.) 
 
 But Mr. Hudson rattles on as follows: "It is an old truth 
 that commerce, founded on the basis of distributing the staples 
 of life at the least cost, is the highest practical benevolence ; 
 while devices to rule commerce by the suspension of competition, 
 
14 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 and to exact arbitrary profits from the masses, are the extreme 
 of selfishness and oppression. The universal nature of this truth 
 was perceived when the world emerged from the mediaeval sys- 
 tem of economics, but it seems in danger of being forgotten. 
 This is illustrated by the criticism of Mr. E. P. Alexander, the 
 most recent writer on the railway question, that those who hold 
 competition to be the only just measure of profits in any industry 
 are years behind the age in comprehension of the science of the 
 railway question." 
 
 Whatever there may be beyond platitude in the above is pure 
 invention. The element of "the least cost" as parcel of the 
 definition of " commerce " is certainly novel, and as interesting 
 as it is novel. And certainly, too, the remainder of the sentence 
 from the words " the universal nature of this truth " (which 
 truth ? Mr. Hudson has alluded to several) onward is an ex- 
 tremely remarkable statement to come from the pen of a writer 
 who assumes to deal with economical questions and matters of 
 social science. The allusion to Mr. Alexander is equally childish, 
 and without bearing upon the matter which we believe Mr. Hud- 
 son claims to be discussing ; unless, indeed, he thought it neces- 
 sary to show, in passing, how thoroughly he had failed to com- 
 prehend the question of American railway systems, to the discus- 
 sion of which Mr. Alexander has lately contributed a most 
 admirable monograph. When Mr. Alexander used the words 
 dragged from their context as above, he wa pointing out how 
 the question of modern industrial competition had long since 
 ceased to involve simple problems of competition in getting busi- 
 ness alone; how it at present includes also the element of the 
 cost versus the price of doing business at all that is to say, the 
 value of the opportunity to do business at all, as against the 
 actual outlay in cost necessary to do the business brought to 
 the party offering to do the business at all (which element, every- 
 body who knows anything of the matter at all knows to be 
 not only a very serious and a very practical one, but actually the 
 paramount one, under present conditions). (As others besides 
 Mr. Hudson may be ignorant of Mr. Alexander's meaning just 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 15 
 
 here, I may explain that, to the railway, the value of doing a 
 competing business, of keeping its trains running and so per- 
 petuating its charter, is naturally always a larger consideration 
 than the mere question of a profit is, in fact, the most vital 
 consideration that could be named. Or, should the question pre- 
 sent itself differently : a bankrupt railroad is worse than no rail- 
 road at all. It can run recklessly and cheaply, since unable to 
 respond in damages for lives or property injured or destroyed. 
 And yet, were competition the only rule by which railways were 
 operated among themselves, this very bankrupt road could force 
 every neighboring road to regulate itself by its own tortuous pro- 
 cedure. For, just as a chain is no stronger than its weakest link, 
 so the best railroad in the country can be no better than the 
 worst, if competition and nothing but competition is to be the 
 rule.) 
 
 But with all earthly matters Mr. Hudson will have nothing 
 but competition. He will not hear of such a thing as a combi- 
 nation. He proceeds : " But the very question at issue is whether 
 they (i. e.j these old ideas of competition) are not more in accord 
 with the essential principles of nineteenth-century democracy 
 than those who are turning commerce back to the era of prices 
 fixed by combinations and the suspension of competition." If 
 this is the very question at issue, it would seem as if Mr. Hudson 
 has so far been artfully misleading us. He certainly has not 
 alluded to it before. So far as careful perusal of his paper has 
 informed us, the question at issue seemed to be whether a small 
 manufacturer had a right to sell out his business to a bigger one ; 
 at what point a large manufacturer, who has used his capital in 
 buying out his smaller neighbors, must call a halt, and submit to 
 a redistribution all around ; and as to whether small manufact- 
 urers should be compelled to do business at a loss rather than 
 sell out to larger ones. However, let us patiently shift our 
 ground as often as necessary, if so be we can discover what it is 
 that our Mr. Hudson really does mean. If it is a fact that modern 
 civilization has really introduced new elements and other prin- 
 ciples besides the principle of competition -into commerce, then 
 
 
16 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 by all means let us abolish, let us destroy them (Mr. Hudson 
 knows how to destroy a principle), and get back at once to 
 what ? Not to feudal days, certainly j for that would be modern 
 feudalism, and that is what Mr. Hudson will none of. Perhaps 
 we had better, while we are about it, go back to the Deluge, to 
 Noah the navigator, who spent one hundred and twenty years in 
 building a ship whose quarter-deck he was himself to tread 
 (not having any competitors in the ark-building trade he felt safe 
 in allowing himself a reasonable time) to the patriarchal rather 
 than to the feudal system. 
 
 But, having decided where to go, how are we to turn back 
 commerce ? What is commerce ? Webster says that what we 
 mean by that term is " the interchange or mutual change of goods, 
 wares, productions, or property of any kind between nations, by 
 purchase and sale, trade, traffic." Very powerful indeed, one 
 would imagine, must be the forces or agencies which shall turn 
 back such tendencies as these the operations of the laws of 
 human necessity which culminate in the rule of supply and 
 demand as working upon the entire human race. According to 
 Mr. Hudson, however, these tendencies, laws, and rules do not 
 amount to so very much. It is an easy enough matter to handle 
 them. We have only to legislate railway companies out of exist- 
 ence, and then enact statutes forbidding two of the same trade 
 to combine. Then things will run smoothly. The State will 
 hold the trackage of the late railroad companies as a highway ; 
 and every dealer, manufacturer, agriculturist, miner, will carry 
 his product to and fro, and there you are ! No more modern 
 feudalism ; nothing but peace, plenty, and communism ! 
 
 Faulconridge would only frighten boys with bugs, but a moral 
 drawn from the middle ages, by reason of its mere remoteness, 
 appears always to be a powerful antic with which to worry the 
 non-capitalist imagination. Any combination of like interests 
 for business purposes the copartnership formed by three butter- 
 dealers or six coal-miners to continue the business of selling but- 
 ter or mining coal; the corporation, or "trust," or combination 
 formed by amalgamation of any existing companies is a palpa- 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 17 
 
 ble return to the days of feudalism. Thus, the present system of 
 combinations becomes " modern feudalism." Your combinations 
 are so large that they build up a favored and aristocratic class, like 
 the old crown vassals. And again, these industrial combinations 
 are hand and glove with the railways, and so form a network of 
 capital in the meshes of which the poor man is strangled. Now, 
 the simple facts upon which Mr. Hudson assumes to found this 
 hue and cry are these, viz. : The normal tendency of trade to trade- 
 centers, where it can be most conveniently handled, has its in- 
 evitable corollary in the tendency, within the trade center, 
 to centralization of the different branches of trade. In the 
 middle ages the principle operated to build up such imperial 
 centers as Nuremberg, Antwerp, and London, and the corollary to 
 organize, within those centers, the great trade-guilds. In later 
 years the Atlantic Ocean, the Hudson River, and Long Island 
 Sound combined to make New York city an emporium for the 
 deposit and distribution of the products and industries of two con- 
 tinents, while the merely innocent convenience of traders within 
 that city (not any aristocratic or would-be feudal motives on their 
 part) operated to root and group the leather interest into one 
 quarter, cotton goods into another, oils, and provisions, and iron- 
 mongery into still others. And if two or more traders in an 
 identical staple, finding themselves neighbors or united in a com- 
 munity of interest, saw fit to bind themselves into a single firm 
 or trading company, it was no matter of conspiracy against the 
 public weal, but the merest consideration of personal convenience 
 and facility. When the railroads came, they found themselves 
 obliged by the very charters which created them to haul for 
 anybody who chose to employ them, and to do the most extensive 
 hauling for those who had the largest bulk of hauling for them to 
 do. They were not authorized by their acts of incorporation to 
 first demand certificates of good moral character, or affidavits 
 that the would-be customer was not a combination of individuals 
 or stockholders in a trust or a private corporation. And yet, 
 superfluous as this statement is, it is actually out of such familiar 
 truisms as these (it is difficult to treat the simpleness of the situa- 
 
18 THE PEOPLE AND THE R AIL WAYS. 
 
 tion without tautolog}^) that Mr. Hudson raises figment after fig- 
 ment and chimera after chimera to disturb and alarm the non-pro- 
 ducing and manufacturing classes of this already imperiled com- 
 munity ! And the purport of these figments and the portent of 
 these chimeras is always that any use of capital in hulk is crime 
 against this people and this republic; and that the incorporation 
 for business purposes " stands in " with some railway company or 
 all railway companies, because incorporations and especially 
 railway incorporations hate the bread-winner and the wage- 
 worker, and desire that he be crushed and swept from the face of 
 the earth ; in other words, are feudal, mediaeval, and unpatriotic. 
 That is the whole text and comment of Mr. Hudson's elocution. 
 Even feudalism itself was not a curse. It was a proper and con- 
 venient institution for its day and date ; considering the popular 
 ignorance and helplessness, anything else would have been a less 
 tolerable tyranny. It was the growth of circumstances, rather 
 than as Mr. Hudson thinks the forcing of an arbitrary situation 
 by the strong and aristocratic upon the plebeian and the weak : 
 so, to begin with, granting Mr. Hudson's favored and capitalist 
 class, and granting that they "force" any condition of things 
 upon the non-capitalist class, the analogy of this state of things 
 to the institution of feudalism is false and misleading. But 
 feudalism was more than a situation. It was the only form in 
 which the society of the unlettered and formative civilization 
 could be held together at all the only one which could, on the 
 one hand, curb the despotism of thrones, while on the other 
 conserving the safety and tranquillity of the people. It was the 
 mother of parliamentary government and of civil liberty, to which 
 in the fullness of time it yielded and disappeared. 
 
 To give a meaning to Mr. Hudson's vision of an analogy be- 
 tween modern industrial centralization and feudalism, let us as- 
 sume, however, that he means (he does not say so) the mediaeval 
 trade-guilds. Now, these trade-guilds, perhaps, were an accom- 
 paniment of certainly they were contemporary with the insti- 
 tution of feudalism. Moreover, they were broken. up and wiped 
 away by the very institution which Mr. Hudson can not find 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 19 
 
 words enough to stigmatize as the root of every modern evil viz., 
 the growth of private capital and the combinations of capitalists. 
 The mediaeval guild was a thing apart, and its type and character 
 have disappeared forever ; and yet, peaceful and judicious as those 
 guilds were, even the anarchist and labor unionist of to-day may 
 dignify his district delegation by comparing it to the guilds of 
 the middle ages, with more show of reason than can Mr. Hudson 
 compare them to our modern corporations. The modern trades- 
 union is an organization whose object is to monopolize or at least 
 to secure the right to labor for wages for its own members ; to 
 prevent by force, if necessary and convenient (and it latterly has 
 been supposed to be both necessary and convenient), the labor of 
 anybody not one of its members ; and to boycott any employer 
 who claims the right to employ the labor of anybody and every- 
 body not its members. The ancient guild was composed of the 
 masters of a certain trade ; of men who had, by mastering its 
 practical art, become entitled to that designation men who prac- 
 ticed it for a livelihood. It had also the industrial and educa- 
 tional function of perpetuating itself by the training of its ap- 
 prentices to become, in their turn, masters. In the days of feuda- 
 lism, when the great crown tenants held their territory from the 
 crown by fee of service in its wars (a service they levied on the 
 people to perform in time of war, grinding a profit to themselves 
 by way of reprisal from this same people in time of peace), these 
 guilds preserved the useful arts which ameliorate our own happier 
 times. Each guild met and discussed the state of its particular 
 trade; devised means of improving it (their discussions taking 
 the place now filled by the industrial newspaper, the trade-journal, 
 and the price-current). It passed laws also ; but these laws were 
 for the guidance of its own members, not by any means to be sup- 
 plied outside of it in an attempt by force of arms to make em- 
 ployment for its own members at the expense of the vested rights 
 and liberties of the rest of mankind. So honorable were they in 
 thought, deed, and word, that the wealthiest London merchant 
 to-day is not above marching in procession in their memory be- 
 hind their banners on Lord-Mayor's-day, arrayed, as Chaucer says 
 thev were in his : 
 
20 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 "... in one livery 
 Of a great and solemn Fraternitie." 
 
 To compare them to the unhappy organizations of which labor- 
 ing-men to-day are the coerced victims wherein the ignorance of 
 the honest wage-worker is used to deplete his small earnings for 
 the support of vile " master-workmen " and "walking delegates " 
 who toil not, neither spin and the artificer in brass or iron of 
 mediaeval times (who kept his apprentices in his own household 
 as a part of his family, to succeed him as a master of his trade 
 and as a member of his guild) with the modern " knight of labor," 
 who will not that any should toil for bread who has not first paid 
 a tax to his " lodge," or " headquarters," or camp is to insult the 
 guild of the middle ages and its master. But, for all that, the 
 guild and the trades-union are nearer in theory and in practice 
 than the guild and the modern business corporation as chartered 
 in any known quarter of the civilized world to-day. One thing, 
 however, there was in those middle ages, of which, happily for 
 Mr. Hudson and his kind, no analogy has survived namely, 
 statutes against heresy and seditious utterances, and capital pun- 
 ishments, such as disemboweling, the axe, fagot, etc., for the 
 stirrer-up of discord and unreasonable public discontent. So 
 much for feudalism and the guilds. 
 
 Mr. Hudson's next sentence is a long one, and it reads hero- 
 ically : " It is the almost universal plea, in mitigation for this in- 
 fraction of economic law, that the capital engaged in coinbina- 
 tion can not earn fair profits if competition is allowed free play. 
 But what constitutes the just measure of reward for capital ? 
 What are the fair profits for capital seeking investment in bonds, 
 mortgages, or loans on commercial paper ? The rate of interest 
 that is fixed by free competition. What is the just measure of 
 returns on capital invested in houses, stores, farms, small manu- 
 factures, or a thousand other forms of ordinary enterprise ? Free 
 competition. What, indeed, is the force which fixes the rate of 
 wages, despite efforts of labor organizations to, oppose combina- 
 tion to the action of that force, and notwithstanding the violence 
 provoked where these organizations are brought into conflict with 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAIL \VA YS. 21 
 
 the great combinations of capital ? The competition of labor for 
 wages. But the result of combination is to establish, for a favored 
 class of capital, by means of the control of the highways of com- 
 merce, an exemption from the force which fixes the just reward 
 of all other human effort, so that excessive profits can be exacted 
 from the masses, to be counted by the tens of millions annually ; 
 and if the ideal of railway pooling could be attained, this policy 
 would impose upon the nation a burden of fictitious capital three 
 times the amount of the national debt I " 
 
 The term "free competition " in the above, as we have shown, 
 means " forced competition " (at least it means that if the remain- 
 der of Mr. Hudson's paper means anything). A and B must com- 
 pete, whether they will or no : the moment they combine and be- 
 come A & B, or A, B & Co., or The A and B Manufacturing 
 Company, they are a public calamity and a standing threat to 
 our free institutions ! The reader will notice also that labor 
 organizations are law-abiding, peaceful, and highly creditable or- 
 ganizations, unless unhappily "brought into conflict with the great 
 combinations of capital/ 7 in which case, of course, the broken 
 heads and boycotts are the fault of the great combinations. 
 (Query: What "great combination of capital " was at fault in 
 the case of the poor widow whose bakery business was broken up 
 in New York recently because she kept a journeyman baker who 
 did not happen to be a member of a particular boycotters' union 
 which was "competing for labor" in the vicinity of her bake- 
 shop ?) A few other simple negations are necessary in disposing 
 of the above sentence namely : There is no such thing as " the 
 rate of interest " that is "fixed by free competition." The rates 
 of interest are fixed by the laws of demand and supply in the 
 mercantile world, and by statute so far as courts and legal pro- 
 ceedings are concerned. Labor does not, even when wicked 
 capital combines, compete for wages. It appears to be oftener the 
 rule, nowadays, that wages compete for labor ; and finally, the com- 
 bination or centralizing of capital is not an infraction of economic 
 law at all ; nor are any one of the above statements we have been 
 at the pains to contradict ever offered as a " plea " or as " pleas " 
 
22 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 for such an infraction. As to what the " competition of labor for 
 wages" is at the present date, we may illustrate by a single ex- 
 ample. Last summer the workmen in a sugar-refinery in Brooklyn 
 struck for an advance in wages. The proprietor called them to- 
 gether, showed them his books, explained to them his expenses, 
 and demonstrated to them that if he paid them the wages de- 
 manded, his sugar would cost him more than the market price at 
 which imported sugars were that moment selling in New York 
 city, and that therefore, he not only could not compete with the 
 imported sugar, but must close his refinery. The " walking del- 
 egate," however, had his orders : the strike could not be " off." The 
 rates must be paid ; and so the refinery was closed. But, in this 
 Mr. Hudson perceives nothing but justice. Having declined to 
 see that the laws of supply and demand have anything to do with 
 prices, why should they stand in the way of a capitalist paying 
 what wages his " competing workmen " demand ? The owner 
 of the Brooklyn refinery was one of the " favored class of capital," 
 who, "by means of the control of the highways of commerce" 
 (the refinery in question stands on the dock, and ocean-going 
 vessels load and discharge at its hatches), " establish an exemp- 
 tion from the force which fixes the reward of human effort." But 
 in this case some force (whether that of the " walking delegate " 
 or of the laws of commerce, or of the New York market) closed 
 his refinery, nevertheless. The workmen who refused to keep 
 their contracts of employment with the sugar-refiner nay (for 
 such the facts were), threatened to break his machinery and burn 
 and pillage his establishment and who, by force and arms, kept 
 other workmen from taking their places, were in reality honest, 
 well-meaning, law-abiding citizens ! But they had unhappily, 
 been "brought into conflict with great combinations of capital," 
 and Mr. Hudson's arguments are not answerable for the result. 
 You and I have a perfect right to use our means to manufacture 
 sugar or to mine for coal, or to add to the prosperity and wealth 
 of our community by adding to our own by employing it in any 
 industry we may elect for. But we must be careful not to stand 
 in the highway where "the competition of labor for wages " may 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 23 
 
 be perchance brought into our vicinity. For that competition 
 might happen to run up against us, and so be brought into con- 
 flict with us, and thereby " violence " might be "provoked." And 
 then, if our business is ruined and our property destroyed, Mr. 
 Hudson is not responsible we had fair warning ! Mr. Hudson 
 can fill his pages with any doctrines it pleases him to invent, and 
 find publishers for them ; but he will not pay us for our smoking 
 factories and broken machinery. That is our affair, not Mr. 
 Hudson's. 
 
 Mr. Huxley somewhere speaks of gentlemen who put their 
 statements " into italics as the Queen puts her soldiers into bear- 
 skin caps, to make them look formidable." Mr. Hudson puts 
 his statements into figures for the same paramount purpose. His 
 picture of the bloated capitalists, by combinations extracting 
 from the masses a sum three times as large as the national debt, 
 is appalling, to be sure. And were this not sufficiently appalling, 
 he adds to it the following dazzling array : " Let us suppose, for 
 the sake of the argument, that the abolition of competition will 
 return a certain proportion of the enhanced profits to the work- 
 ingman in the shape of increased wages. If the anthracite-coal 
 pool raises the price of coal fifty cents per ton, and gives the 
 miners ten cents of the advance, a gain of $3,000,000 is secured 
 in the annual wages of the miners ; but a burden of $15,000,000 
 is imposed on the labor that consumes the coal. If the coke 
 syndicate raises its price fifty cents per ton, and gives its work- 
 ingman ten cents advance, the advantage to labor at the coke- 
 ovens is $400,000 in a year ; but a loss of many times the amount 
 is inflicted on labor in the various forms in which that product 
 finally reaches the consumer. If the same operation were repeat- 
 ed by combinations controlling every industry and every staple of 
 consumption, what would be the result ? An addition would be 
 made to the cost of life, of which one fifth would be given back to 
 labor in the form of increased wages, and four fifths would be 
 drawn from labor to swell the profits of capital. Change the pro- 
 portion to whatever form you like, the fact remains that all these 
 combinations are organized to increase the profits of the capital 
 
24 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 engaged in them ; and the increase must either be drawn from 
 the pockets of consumers or extracted from the wages of laborers." 
 (Page 286.) 
 
 Monstrous! The idea of a combination being organized to 
 increase its profits ! What an example to the youth of America ! 
 What utter demoralization would ensue did it become the habit 
 of our citizens generally to go into trade to increase their profits ! 
 Let every statesman, every economist, every preacher in the land, 
 impress upon this generation rather the duty of every man to go 
 into trade for the good of somebody else, and to continue therein 
 to lessen, not to increase, his worldly store ! Let him run his 
 business, his warehouse, his factory, his steamships and raftlf>ads 
 at a loss, and, the moment he finds his transactions profitable, let 
 him wind up, lest he should "swell the profit of capital " ; and if 
 he will not, let the law, or Mr. Hudson, see to it. The statements 
 that an assumed increase in the price of coal imposes a burden of 
 $15,000,000, or of any other sum " upon the labor that consumes 
 the coal " or " on labor in the various forms in which that 
 product finally reaches the consumers," may have a meaning 
 in Mr. Hudson's ears. But indeed they do not convey any 
 elsewhere. 
 
 So long as the tendency of the products of the earth is to find 
 a market, just so long will it be the tendency within that market 
 for the handling of different classes of products to centralize, 
 until corn and grain are handled in one locality, pork and packed 
 provisions in another, fruits in another, hides and pelts and 
 leather in another. Here is natural law, and here is Mr. Hudson, 
 too, demonstrating the imminent danger to the United States 
 from the normal operation of this natural law. There is, of course, 
 but one remedy for all this (though Mr. Hudson, indeed, fails to 
 point it out), namely, a strong centralized, paternal government 
 like that of the late Brigham Young, who walked in and out 
 among his people, encouraging them in their efforts to amass 
 fortunes ; and then, when the fortunes were amassed, receiving 
 heavenly visions instructing the " sealing " of those fortunes to 
 himself ! There would be no Trust possible in such a government 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 2o 
 
 as that, anyhow! Such a governmental paternity, to be suro, 
 might answer Mr. Hudson's purposes in confiscating the accre- 
 tions of private capital. But it is difficult to see how otherwise 
 than under just such a particular state we could enjoy the reforms 
 he seeks. 
 
 Whenever it shall appear, or come to pass, that the interests of 
 consumers (that is, of the people) are imperiled by the methods 
 which the ramifications of modern civilization impose upon com- 
 merce and the operations of trade, it may come within the con- 
 stitutional jurisdiction of Congress to inquire into and abridge 
 those methods. But until such time shall come is it not, or ought 
 it not to be, a question whether gentlemen who assume to deal 
 with economic questions do not owe some duty to their country 
 not the old Greek idea of patriotism, perhaps, but still a duty 
 and whether that duty might not properly consist in declining to 
 supply specious and sophistical propositions to become fire-brands 
 in the grasp of poverty and of ignorance ? 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 THE AMERICAN RAILROAD. 
 
 BUT Mr. Hudson does not content his fluent pen with diatribes 
 as to combinations in general. He has uttered and printed a 
 volume of six hundred pages, entitled " The Railways and the 
 Republic" in which, with some literary knack, he has run 
 together all the newspaper and magazine stories doubtless many 
 of them only too true he has ever heard of clever and unscrupu- 
 lous deals in Wall Street, and " jobs " in State legislatures, break- 
 ing the whole mass into chapters with such headings as "The 
 Problem of Railway Domination," " Ten Years of Discrimina- 
 tion," " The History of a Commercial Crime," "Public Obligations 
 and Corporate Practices," " The Discussion of Remedies," etc., etc., 
 which, however interesting subject titles as they are do not 
 usher the reader to anything except the same class of stories, 
 
26 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 lumped in precisely the same inconnection (even the last chapter 
 named, so far from a " Discussion of Remedies," being of the same 
 scrappy and hearsay character.) 
 
 But, were Mr. Hudson's book only hearsay, it would hardly be 
 worth warning anybody against it. Most unfortunately for its 
 readers, the hearsay (for there is not an item or statement in the 
 whole six hundred pages as to which Mr. Hudson has, or claims 
 to have, the slightest personal knowledge or special access) is 
 sometimes concatenated into a remark or a reflection that, to a 
 casual perusal, might carry a sort of semblance of coherence. 
 Here, for example, is one of these concatenations : (Page 279). 
 
 " When too much grain, too much meat, too much iron, too 
 much cloth, and too much coal is produced in the country, the 
 fact that labor suffers from the lack of grain, meat, cloth and coal, 
 proves that there are barriers to trade between the producers. 
 The most prominent and most universal of these barriers are 
 the railway pools. The combinations which are formed with the 
 purpose of raising the cost of exchanging the grain of the West 
 for the goods of the East above the level that would be reached by 
 the workings of competition ; which restrict the production of 
 fuel and sustain artificial prices to consumers, when thousands are 
 freezing; which build up monopolies in the agents of light and 
 heat ; and which are everywhere imposing restrictions upon trade 
 which create the paradox of general want in the presence of uni- 
 versal abundance, are offering the greatest provocation to violent 
 and dangerous attacks upon the railway interest. Whether the 
 papular feeling is provoked to express itself in adverse and ex- 
 treme legislation, or whether the work of combination is perpetu- 
 ated and extended until monopolies like the petroleum and coal 
 pools become universal, and an exasperated and maddened prole- 
 tariat tears the whole system down in general ruin, the evils of 
 that policy will, if continued, eventually bring a revulsion beside 
 which its questionable pecuniary gains will be as a mole-hill on 
 the side of Himalaya. Not only in the interest of public justice 
 and free competition should the railways abandon their present 
 work of suspending competition and building up monopolies ; but 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 27 
 
 the instinct of self-preservation should lead them to restore the 
 free and unrestricted working of the legitimate influences of trade. 
 The abandonment, or continuance, of the pooling policy, as 
 sketched in the preceding pages, may involve the safety or ruin of 
 the entire railway interest of the continent." Now, rhetorically 
 speaking, this reminds of nothing quite so forcibly as the once 
 famous " Item " which Mr. Mark Twain tells us his esteemed 
 friend, Mr. John William Skae, once stopped the press of The 
 Calif ornian to insert ; and which ran as follows : 
 
 "Last evening, about six o'clock, as Mr. William Schuyler, an 
 old and respectable citizen of South Park, was leaving his resi- 
 dence to go down town as has been his usual custom for many 
 years with the exception only of a short interval in the spring of 
 1850, during which he was confined to his bed by injuries receiv- 
 ed by attempting to stop a runaway horse by thoughtlessly plac- 
 ing himself directly in its wake and throwing up his hands and 
 shouting, which if he had done so even a single moment sooner 
 must inevitably have frightened the animal still more instead of 
 checking its speed, although disastrous enough to himself as it 
 was and rendered still more melancholy and distressing by reason 
 of the presence of his wife's mother, who was there and saw the 
 sad occurrence, notwithstanding it is at least likely, though not 
 necessarily so, that she should be reconnoitering in another 
 direction when incidents occur, not being vivacious and on the 
 lookout, as a general thing, but even the reverse as her own 
 mother is said to have stated, who is no more, but died in the full 
 hope of a glorious resurrection, upwards of three years ago, aged 
 eighty-six, being a Christian woman and without guile, as it were, 
 or property in consequence of the fire of 1849, which destroyed 
 every blasted thing she had in the world. But such is life. Let 
 us all take warning by this solemn occurrence and let us endeavor 
 so to conduct ourselves that when we come to die we can do it. 
 Let us place our hands upon our heart and say with earnestness 
 and sincerity that from this day forth we will beware of the intox- 
 icating bowl." 
 
 Mr. Skae's item to be sure was only mortuary and, towards its 
 conclusion, didactic. But Mr. Hudson's is assertive and peremp- 
 tory. He begins by asserting that there is too much iron, too 
 much coal and too much cloth produced in this country. Before the 
 
28 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 reader has pause to breathe his next assertion comes, viz : " Labor/' 
 is suffering for the want of certain other staples, and this double 
 stunner of politico-economical information is clinched with the 
 rapidly successive statements that the two together " prove' 7 
 that there are barriers to trade somewhere ; that these barriers 
 are the railway -''pools ; " that these are formed, etc., etc. ; that, 
 etc., etc. ; that etc., etc. ; that if this sort of thing goes on, that 
 etc., etc., and finally winds up with a threat that unless all that 
 has gone before is not speedily stopped the whole railway sys- 
 tem of he country will go to smash. 
 
 But we do not propose examining Mr. Hudson's book rhetori- 
 cally. Unfortunately, however comic its ensemble, the result of 
 such loose writing just now, in the present state of affairs, is not 
 comic. This sort of thing is perilling vested rights ; is prevent- 
 ing the adjustment of commercial and social inequalities ; is bring- 
 ing absolute wrong and suffering upon innocent investors and 
 property holders. The outrageous and unmitigated falsehood 
 that a railway " pool " is really a ''corner/' in transportation 
 (which will be discussed further on in these pages) is really the 
 least harmful thing in the paragraph above quoted. The facts that 
 a " pool " is operated to reduce tariffs, and must in the nature 
 of things have that result ; that there is no practical exchange or 
 barter of coal for iron, or cloth for meat and the like, are not, 
 unhappily, easily demonstrated to the "proletariat." The real 
 vital danger to the masses of the community from such declama- 
 tory slop-work as the above, is that it is quotable for what it 
 sounds to be, and not for what it is ; that once it gets itself into 
 print it can be used for harm ; the book which contains it read 
 from before the eyes of a class to whom books are things of awe 
 and respect, and that it can be made a text for heaven knows 
 what comment, what harangue and with heaven knows (and 
 this people lately have come to suspect) what danger to the public 
 peace and safety. 
 
 The American railroad, as an institution, is not immaculate. 
 Its general offices are no more insured against entrance of de- 
 signing and wickedly-minded men than is the pulpit, the Sunday 
 
OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 29 
 
 school, or the strawberry-festival. Granted, however, that, like 
 most human concerns, the American railroad needs reformation, 
 the very considerable question arises, Where shall we look for 
 the reformer ? It has not yet come, perhaps, to be a principle in 
 economics that the safest and most expert administrator of a 
 specialty is the one who has had the least practical experience 
 thereof. But there nevertheless appears to be, if not an exact 
 enunciation of such a principle, a by no means unusual tendency 
 to such a practice. To take a familiar example : a great trans- 
 atlantic steamship, en route from shore to shore, or a limited 
 express train, with its costly freightage of packed Pullman, ex- 
 press, and baggage carriages, easily represents millions in money 
 value, besides its human freightage. The captain, the conductor, 
 the engineers, and crew are picked men, raised to their several 
 responsibilities through every lower grade of drill and exper- 
 ience, adapted each to his part by long usuetude : who have been 
 intrusted with all this precious burden by those who must answer 
 with their fortunes, their liberty even, for the waste of its loss. 
 Let the great steamship founder, the " limited " crash through a 
 trestle living or dead, these men will be found at their posts. 
 But there will never fail of gifted gentlemen, eminent conversa- 
 tionalists, ready writers to the newspapers, (who happened to be 
 in their downy beds while these men were perishing, but) who, 
 nevertheless, will tell us exactly what this company and their 
 picked employes should have done, and ho'w the catastrophe 
 might have been avoided. One cannot read very far into Mr. 
 Hudson's "The Railways and the Republic" without coming 
 across this same tendency to counsel and criticise in matters 
 special and expert, as to which the self-elected critic and counsel- 
 lor is specifically and universally ignorant and incompetent. 
 
 The problem of railway management and operation has grown 
 so intricate, so vast, so complicated anti enormous, that it is a 
 maxim that no one man, whatever his habitude, knows " how to 
 run a railroad." The executive officer, the auditor, superin- 
 tendent or actuary of twenty-five years' service, instead of having 
 kept abreast of his employment, finds that his service has out- 
 
30 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 grown him, not in fact alone, but in proportion j and that he can 
 deal with remote details only when concreted by his subordinates 
 into results which in turn are his details. He is himself only the 
 pendulum of the clock-work, the governor of the engine ; without 
 his co-operatives and assistants he is powerless, although at the 
 outset of his quarter century he may have been equal to every 
 item of his department. Take a single trunk line connecting 
 the city of New York with that Western focus to which, like 
 Home, all roads lead Chicago. Every one of its army of eighty 
 thousand employes knows his duty : his duty, often duplicated, 
 perhaps, yot not duplicated, since every item of circumstance 
 must daily and hourly vary it. From the president to the track- 
 walker, no single individual could justify his employment for an 
 instant, did he not, besides his routine, know precisely the single 
 and only proper thing to do to save life and property in any con- 
 tingency, foreseen or unforeseen ; and, moreover, how in the per- 
 formance not to swerve one atom below or above his exact pre- 
 rogative. And if in operation, the reciprocal duties of these 
 eighty thousand must be exactly and incessantly performed in 
 order that every passenger and every pound of freight shall reach 
 its debarkation in safety what single mind can grasp the rela- 
 tion of numberless such trunk-lines to the great public who trust 
 their lives, persons, and property to them all ? Add to this situ- 
 ation that this public, having largely invested their fortunes in 
 these very transporting lines, are dependent for its incomes from 
 their prosperity. Does not the great ramification strike us as 
 one rather too enormous for any single recipe to meet, or to be 
 guided by any one infallible and inexorable rule of constant and 
 rigid procedure ? 
 
 There is not a single criticism of railway management or out- 
 break of popular anti-railway feeling which has not its own per- 
 fectly well-known periodicity. As a rule, they lapse with time 
 and disappear without exposition. But that all these criticisms 
 and complaints should be carefully clipped, hoarded, pasted to- 
 gether, and sent out as a monograph signed by one name, is an 
 occurrence so exceptional that its occasion might seem to warrant 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 31 
 
 a replication to the array, once for all. Especially when the 
 volume impresses us at every paragraph as having been compiled 
 by a gentleman who not only has never been engaged in the 
 management of railways, operatively or financially, but has never 
 discovered, in all the immense delicacy of mechanism which 
 moves 8,778,581,061 of people one mile, and billions of dollars' 
 worth of treasure in every direction across and along a continent 
 in a single year, and supports a property representing $7,676,- 
 399,054 of securities^ a single point for his admiration or even 
 for his approval. 
 
 Archimedes had the world for a load and natural science for a 
 lever; but even Archimedes was obliged to sigh for a place where- 
 on to plant his fulcrum. It appears to me that, in this laborious 
 work of five hundred closely printed octavo pages, what Mr. Hud 
 son lacks most of all is a standpoint. He has a load, he has a 
 grievance for a lever, but, since ho can not himself float in space, 
 he makes no impression on what he claims to be the burden to be 
 moved. Mr. Hudson's want of standpoint is prominent at his very 
 outset in his very title-page. He calls his "book "The Railways 
 and the Republic," thus antagonizing his two terms. But the 
 grouping is vicious, to begin with; since railroads, whether re- 
 garded as legal entities or as companies of individuals, are as much 
 part and parcel of the republic as is Mr. Hudson himself. Start- 
 ing upon this false major premise, Mr. Hudson proceeds in the 
 first of his eleven chapters to give us the indictment, the remain- 
 ing teii to be the counts of the particulars. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE title given to this indictment, " The Problem of Railway 
 Domination," is again illicit. Where is the " domination " to be 
 eliminated ? Frankly admitting that the present writer believes 
 that railways belong to the persons whose money has built or pur- 
 
32 THE PEOPLE AND THE E AIL WAYS. 
 
 chased them, and that their quasi-public character is justified and 
 satisfied by their honest performance, by the best methods that 
 applied science up to date has furnished, of the duties of public 
 transportation, he purposes from this standpoint to examine : first, 
 Mr. Hudson's indictment as a whole, passing thereafter as far 
 as the limits of a single volume will allow to the particulars 
 exhibited. 
 
 According to Mr. Hudson, the railways of the United States 
 either " dominate " at present, or propose sooner or later to " dom- 
 inate," the republic. How ? By being " gigantic monopolists," 
 says Mr. Hudson. And how do they become gigantic monopolists ? 
 By being gigantic corporations, controlled by men of altogether 
 too enormous private fortunes. Now, we have always known that 
 a railway was a corporation, and that some of our railways might 
 fairly be called " gigantic." But there is not one of these " gigan- 
 tic " corporations which is, in any sense of the term known to dic- 
 tionaries at least, a monopoly. To be exactly all-fours with the 
 lexicographers, the only railways in the Union which are mono- 
 polies are countable on the fingers of one hand, and must be as in- 
 significant in extent, capitalization, importance of terminals and 
 every other characteristic, as they are in number. Everybody 
 knows that a shipper or traveler from New York to any point in 
 the United States has an abundant choice of routes before him. 
 Whether his objective be Buffalo, New Orleans, or San Francisco, 
 or any city or town large enough to make a dot on the map, or any 
 one of the ten thousand points reachable from every one of these, 
 there are certainly half a dozen lines of railway at his option ; and 
 if there are two points in the United States between which there 
 is but one means of transportation, it is because the points them- 
 selves are of such exceedingly minor importance that a second 
 means has entirely failed to be a temptation to local capitalists. 
 I once happened upon a railroad on the top of the Alleghany 
 Mountains, five miles in length, called the Wilcox and Burning- 
 Well Railroad, running between a tannery and a saw-mill, which 
 as there was no other means of going from one to the other except 
 by taking an axe and a compass and tempting the aboriginal 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 33 
 
 forest might, I think, be fairly called a monopoly, especially 
 since the owner of the railroad was also the owner of both the ter- 
 minal tannery and the terminal saw-mill. But the great majority 
 of American railways are, just now, competitors rather than 
 monopolists, and, if gigantic at all, are gigantic competitors. It 
 is to be admitted, of course, that to construct, maintain, and 
 operate a " gigantic " railway, gigantic corporations may not be 
 unnecessary. 
 
 Now, railways " dominate," says Mr. Hudson, by being these 
 gigantic corporations against which units have no chance. But 
 just as capital is the storage of labor, so a corporation is the ag- 
 gregate of units, and if units can combine to " dominate " other 
 and uncombined units, why can not these other units combine to 
 resist the domination ? Mr. Hudson does not recognize such a 
 question, suggests no device by which the unit unassisted by cap- 
 ital can equal in strength the unit when so assisted, nor any rea- 
 son why the units incorporated for transportation purposes should 
 not compete for the transportation business of the units not in- 
 corporated for transportation purposes. This word "competition," 
 however, is no favorite of Mr. Hudson's. He immensely prefers 
 " domination " : and properly so, too, since in the employment of 
 the latter word lie not only his premises, but the conclusions at 
 which he assumes to arrive. The railways, concreted, " dominate " 
 the republic (that is to say, all the United States except the rail- 
 ways), and therefore, since they " dominate " by doing the trans- 
 portation business of those not in that business, the only safety is 
 to reverse the situation, so that the units not incorporated for 
 transportation purposes should hereafter dominate the units who 
 are so incorporated. In other words : Let our railroads, by all 
 means, be run by men who do not understand railroading, and let 
 those who do understand the running of railroads step down 
 and out at once. 
 
 But why should those individually concerned in railway manage- 
 ment step down and out ? Why, says Mr. Hudson, because sev- 
 eral of them have accumulated enormous fortunes ; fortunes fabu- 
 lous, even when compared with all the other private fortunes in 
 
34 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAIL WA YS. 
 
 the world. But whence come these ten or a dozen (if so many) 
 vast fortunes ? Why, says Mr. Hudson, with admirable circum- 
 ferentiality, from the domination of railways. Clearly we must 
 get this kernel out of Mr. Hudson's crop if we are to proceed with 
 him any further : and to dispose of it may require a moment or 
 two of our attention. 
 
 The greatest of powers, undoubtedly, is the human brain ; and, 
 so long as it is the instinct of man to scheme for his own aggran- 
 dizement, certainly the greatest brain will scheme to the greatest 
 profit to himself. A dozen men in the United States have been 
 able to amass, from management (or, if the word is preferred, 
 manipulation) of the securities of the railway systems of the coun- 
 try, the largest single fortunes known to history : not in land, in 
 interests in estimated wealth, but in actual comfortable, conver- 
 tible cash, representing no manual labor of their own, no com- 
 mensurate investment of capital, and no proportional benefit to 
 the race. But, because Mr. Hudson is virtuous, are there to be 
 no more cakes and ale ? Because Mr. Gould is very rich, are 
 there to be no more railway companies ? Because these dozen 
 fortunes are beyond any heretofore conceived relation of reward 
 for personal industry, is the material by manipulation of the se- 
 curities of which they have been accumulated, noxious, bad in it- 
 self, and dangerous to the common weal ? These fortunes are, 
 for our present purpose, the pure result of brain-labor, the re- 
 wards of pure thought. Let us leave out of the reckoning whether 
 they are honest or dishonest fortunes ; or, if Mr. Hudson prefers, 
 let us concede them to be dishonest. The fact, the only fact, 
 necessary to the discussion of his own questions on his own ground 
 is that they have been accumulated by the purchase, manipula- 
 tion, and operation of railways. The people make the laws, not 
 the railroads. To argue that railroads, quoad railroads, are hateful 
 to public policy, dangerous to the public peace, threatening to 
 public morals, and destined in time to destroy the commonwealth, 
 as private luxury once destroyed old Borne, seems to me the 
 simple fallacy which logicians call an "undistributed middle." 
 As well condemn any other thing because at some time some- 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 35 
 
 thing of its species has been manipulated to a personal and exor- 
 bitant profit. Banish corn, wheat, or coal, because great " cor- 
 ners " have been planned in those staples, and hundreds of thou- 
 sands of dealers obliged to pay more than they ought to have 
 paid, when a few schemers, who had schemed for months, had 
 suddenly sprung upon these unsuspecting gentlemen their long- 
 perfected plans ! 
 
 Shakespeare makes one of his characters put the question, " How 
 do men live ? " and another answers it : " Marry, as the fishes in 
 the sea, the big ones eat up the little ones." The struggle for 
 existence which our brute ancestors carried on with teeth and 
 claws and fangs, we still perpetuate with interlocked and grap- 
 pling brains. They strove and tore and trampled each other for 
 the food their bellies craved, in specie / we fight for values in- 
 stead. But the result is the same : the strongest brain, as once 
 the strongest limb, wins. And w r hen, as within the last half- 
 century right here in the United States, in what is scarcely more 
 than the close of the first half-century of the railroad, a few phe- 
 nomenal brains have amassed more of these values than their 
 share, more than they can consume with their own personal wants 
 while I admit that the problem looks serious to those whose 
 brains have not taken part in the struggle the wrong seems to 
 me one for which Nature, not art or science or schools, is at present 
 mostly responsible, just as much as she is responsible for the lion 
 that rends the ox, or the fox that pillages the farm-yard. The 
 United States of America does not make treaties with individuals : 
 and yet the treaty between the United States and the kingdom of 
 Hawaii is, or was once, practically for the single benefit of one 
 man. Why ? Because there happens to be but one article of ex- 
 port from Hawaii to the United States ; and because that one 
 product happens, or happened, to be controlled by the brains and 
 capital of one man. So this anomaly this wrong, we suppose 
 Mr. Hudson would call it is to be charged to the crime of having 
 brains, or to the domination of (not railways this time, but) sugar ! 
 Perhaps the situation can be made very clear to Mr. Hudson by 
 a quotation from himself : 
 
36 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 He says, page 1 : " Watt could see in the steam which lifted 
 the lid from the tea-kettle a force which might yield man some 
 aid in his labors ; but he could not foresee the immense applica- 
 tion of that force to every phase of life. He could not dream of 
 the millions of factories, the thousands of steamships or the 
 myriads of railway-trains that lay dormant in his discovery." 
 And yet it is simply and solely because a human brain here and 
 there did foresee what Mr. Hudson says Watt could not or did 
 not that massive fortunes, larger than an aggregate of thousands 
 amassed by mere manual labor and economy, have been accumu- 
 lated. Shall the owner of such a brain assume that Nature in so 
 endowing him endowed him with a curse to his fellow-men, and 
 that it is his natural or moral duty to devise a means of redistri- 
 buting this accumulation to the two hundred thousand or hundred 
 thousand millions who, like Watt, could not foresee ? I do not so 
 understand Mr. Hudson to urge ; but perhaps he will kindly in- 
 dicate to what other duty his attempt at satire on the men who, 
 by building, buying, controlling and operating railways, amass 
 vast properties, surely and implacably points. 
 
 The processes by which the fish with capital swallows the fish 
 without capital by which money attracts money, and foresight 
 eclipses hindsight stand possibly in bolder and nearer relief, just 
 now, in the case of the three or five railway kings (whose fortunes 
 may last another generation or two without division) than else- 
 where. But, that they are processes unfamiliar in any given 
 commercial undertaking or venture, I do not find any note in Mr. 
 Hudson's indictment to assert. His indictment of railways and 
 railway management is the constant and simple and single charge 
 that they " dominate " the non-railway world by making the rich 
 richer and the poor poorer; and this, principally, by piling up 
 vast accumulations of wealth in the hands of the very few. Mr. 
 Hudson is wary enough to see that railroads, not being per se 
 illegal, the accident and consequence are not illegal ; he, there- 
 fore, argues deftly that the railways, although legal, are illegally 
 handled by their managers. This illegality he separates into seven 
 counts that the transportation business, legitimate in itself, has 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 37 
 
 been made pernicious to public and private rights, and "domi- 
 nates " them by certain imported incidents, viz., by 
 
 I. Land-grants. 
 II. Pools. 
 
 III. Construction companies. 
 
 IV. Rebates and discriminations. 
 
 (a) by "drawbacks " or returns to shippers, 
 
 (&) by "long and short haul" that is, by charging 
 
 more money for the shorter service. 
 V. " Fast freight lines.' 7 
 VI. Stock " watering " or " (As Mr. Hudson terms it) 
 
 " The Fictitious Element in Railway Policy." 
 VII. "Eminent domain." 
 
 Mr. Hudson does not add to these sleeping, hotel, and parlor- 
 car companies, railway-lighting companies, and all the numerous 
 other auxiliaries to modern railway management, which save the 
 time and economize the capital, while they accommodate the pat- 
 ronage of railways. I know not why, but since he has left them 
 out of the indictment, we will follow his example. But Mr. Hud- 
 son does pause just here by what logical process is not apparent 
 to fulminate to the length of many solid pages over and against 
 the Standard Oil Company, its history, career, and the procedure 
 by which, before the days of " pools," it was able to force favor- 
 able contracts upon the railways to its own vast advantage ; ac- 
 cumulating thereby assets almost as enormous as either of the 
 three or four private fortunes in which Mr. Hudson sees such im- 
 minent peril to the republic. As we are just now considering the 
 railways, perhaps we might as well leave out the oil company. 
 We may admit, I think, however, in passing, that the Standard 
 Company was an accident a thing by itself, like the moon or the 
 Gulf Stream from whose existence even a possibility of another 
 can not be predicated, since the present system of " pooling " as- 
 sociations would render its repetition practically impossible. Mr. 
 Hudson is perfectly right in announcing that this great corpora- 
 tion is not a charity or an eleemosynary foundation of any sort ; 
 that it does business for the enrichment of its own stockholders 
 
38 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 rather than in behalf of those of its rivals ; that it takes all it can 
 get is soulless, grasping, and selfish. That it has been en- 
 gineered by men of brains until it has become in certain localities 
 a practical monopoly may also be conceded. That, so long as the 
 laws under which it is incorporated permit other incorporations 
 for like purposes, it is a monopoly, legally or derivatively speaking, 
 I am afraid must be denied. And yet it may surprise some 
 readers to know it is actually possible to say something even for 
 the Standard Oil Company which shall not prate of selfishness, 
 extortion and greed. Lest, however, I may be called an apologist 
 for that " octopus,' 7 I prefer to use other words than my own in 
 saying it, and so quote from the New York Tribune of 
 15 th, 1887 : 
 
 " A good deal of the prejudice against great corporations is 
 vulgar and ignorant. These organizations as a rule become 
 powerful and rich in proportion as they serve the public efficient- 
 ly, and confer upon it valuable benefits. If the corporation has 
 realized many millions, there is a probability that the public has 
 realized through its services several times as many millions, and 
 only the stupid or the malevolent will forget the service rendered 
 when they see the magnitude of the reward obtained. The 
 Standard Oil Company, for instance, has so improved the pro- 
 cesses of refining that the price of refined oil has been reduced 
 from 70 to less than 7 cents per gallon. Had the people of this 
 country been able to obtain at any price as abundant, comfortable 
 and convenient light as they now enjoy, it would have cost them 
 $4 per capita in 1860, whereas it now costs them less than 40 
 cents per capita. That means an actual benefit conferred worth 
 $216,000,000 yearly to a present population of 60,000,000, and 
 if the company which made the investments, and took the risks 
 that secured this result, obtains a large return for it, who will say 
 it didn't deserve to ? " 
 
 In other words, whoever has been robbed by the Standard Oil 
 Company, it is not the people. Whosoever it has crushed, it is 
 not the consumer. If that corporation has made its product 
 cheap to the consumer by domineering over and grinding the 
 railways, Mr. Hudson, who loves not railways, ought to be found 
 among the warmest admirers of the Standard Oil Company and 
 even quoting it here by name as the greatest of Railway Reform- 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 39 
 
 ers. If it has accomplished this great reduction in the staple it 
 handles by grinding other producers and handlers other corpo- 
 rations then the question arises as to how far consumers are in- 
 terested in the rivalries of producers so long as they themselves 
 are cheaply served which question, Mr. Hudson is careful not 
 to include within his otherwise comprehensive purview. 
 
 But by far the most remarkable feature of Mr. Hudson's equip- 
 ment for the discussion upon which he enters is his understanding 
 of what a railway tariff schedule represents, and what is the 
 meaning of railway competition. 
 
 Mr. Hudson is under the impression that railways compete with 
 each other just as tradesmen on opposite sides of a street each 
 putting up or putting down prices ; each keeping his eye on 
 the other's advertised prices and marking up or marking down his 
 stock accordingly. The impression is a natural one, and we can 
 not wonder that Mr. Hudson has received it. But the least 
 familiarity with the inside of a railroad office (and it is unfortunate 
 that he did not acquire, at least at second hand, such a famili- 
 arity before selecting Railroads as the theme on which to become 
 an authority) would have convinced him that, excepting the one 
 element of distance, no element entering into the framing of 
 tariff schedules is either constant or determinable in advance. 
 The tariff schedules are framed by a conference of many depart- 
 ments, by long and intricate computations, by estimates of prob- 
 able business, expenses and calculations of profit and loss, all tem- 
 pered by the results of a lifetime of experience, by the cost of 
 material, of labor and services, maintenance of way, by gradient, 
 limit of motive power, wear and tear of engines and rolling stock. 
 Nor, after being arrived at, and settled upon, are they exposed, 
 like price-lists, for other railroads to undersell or undercarry. The 
 competition is not among the companies so much so as among the 
 trade centres and what are known as trade areas, which latter are 
 not concentric, but overlap and often include each other. For 
 example, there is scarcely an appreciable difference in the rates 
 from Chicago to New York, or Chicago to Baltimore (as a mat- 
 ter of fact may be only from two and two-thirds to three cents 
 
40 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 per hundred pounds.) Sucli a city as Albany, Syracuse or Roches- 
 ter the actual mileages being annihilated by railroads are really 
 as near in point of rates to either Boston, New York, Philadelphia 
 or Baltimore and to one as another. Therefore, the competition 
 is not by which road the tariff is less, but to which seaport shall 
 the load be delivered. And the merchants of New York, Phila- 
 delphia, Boston, Chicago, Baltimore nay, even Pittsburg, St. 
 Louis, Cincinnati are the competing parties on our lines of inter- 
 state commerce, while the railways are the humble servants of 
 these merchants, not their masters or in any way dominating 
 them. As far south as New Orleans, as far north as Louisville, 
 merchants are competing. In dressed beef, grain, packed pro- 
 visions, flour and other staples, the competition goes on practically 
 without consideration as to distance, and upon the differences in 
 the prices of these staples in Europe and at various points in our 
 own country depend not only prices but railway rates. The price 
 of wheat in Liverpool has much more to do with the railway 
 freight tariff on that staple from New York to Chicago than the 
 actual distance in miles between those two points or the cost per 
 wheel of hauling it. But of these facts Mr. Hudson has no sus- 
 picion; and so he blunders along with his examples of railway ex- 
 tortion and consequent peril to the republic. Verily, a little learn- 
 ing is by far the most dangerous of accomplishments ! It is 
 within the memory of most of us, that this government once at- 
 tempted to handle its armies in the field by telegrams from Wash- 
 ington, and that the result was not illustrious. For myself, I 
 doubt if the attempt to operate our railways from the same centre 
 would be of any more potency for good upon the trade of this 
 Union than the other plan was distinguished for putting down 
 rebellion. It may not unreasonably, however, as a sort of plea in 
 abatement, should we require one in the course of this discussion, 
 to deny at the outset, first, that railways are ever (or hardly ever) 
 the private and personal property of their officers merely calling 
 attention to the fact that their ownership, as a rule, shifts with 
 every sale of stocks made in Wall Street, or on the 'Change of a 
 dozen capitals ; second, that in Mr. Hudson's formula (page 5) " of 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAIL \VAYS. 41 
 
 the existence of actual abuses in the railway system of the 
 country there is little room for dispute ;" it were not impossible 
 to substitute for the term " railway system of the country " the 
 term " everything human ;" and third (and this, even, perhaps at 
 the risk of becoming elementary), that one railroad company is 
 not all railroads. Such syllogisms as : 1. A railway corporation 
 which charges more for a short haul than a long haul is a public 
 enemy. 2. The A B and C D Railroad charges more for a short 
 haul than a long haul ; ergo, ALL railroads are public enemies 
 or, 1. A corporation which " waters " its capital stock is a public 
 enemy. 2. The E E and G H Railroad once " watered " its 
 stock ; ergo, ALL railroads are public enemies and the like, are 
 mere replica of the schoolboy fallacy : Food is necessary to life : 
 Corn is food ; ergo, corn is necessary to life (in which the undis- 
 tributed middle is supposed to elude an urchin logician), and are 
 altogether beside adult discussion of economical questions. But 
 let Mr. Hudson's processes be waived while we address ourselves 
 to the material of the charges he pastes and I assume that he 
 pastes them correctly in his scrap-book. Let us pass to the 
 counts of his indictment. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OF LAND-GRANTS. 
 
 OF land-grants Mr. Hudson says : " We might even make 
 allowance for the men who, having received a gift of an empire of 
 lands and money for the construction of a transcontinental rail- 
 way, proceed to bribe legislators and buy up public officials to 
 prevent adverse action as to the ratification of past donations. . . ." 
 (page 6). " If the Government has secured the settlement of the 
 Western Territories, the pacification of the Indians, and quick 
 transit to the Pacific coast, by giving the men who built the 
 transcontinental railways the money to build the roads, and an 
 empire of land in addition, it is still permissible to ask whether it 
 
42 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 will not suffice to present the projectors of the next enterprise 
 with the completed railroad, without adding the millions of acres 
 of territory to induce them to take the gift " (page 8). This is 
 hardly in what might be termed " the scientific spirit." But let 
 that pass. The point is, does Mr. Hudson know what a land-grant 
 is ? In the free and buoyant West, where language is as bound- 
 ing and breezy as its own prairies, a land-grant is often spoken of 
 as a " land-grab." Mr. Hudson is more choice in his phrase, and 
 calls it simply and grandly, a gift a " gift of empire " but his 
 idea appears to be much the same. If the Government makes 
 one a gift of land, that ought to be the end of it, by every prin- 
 ciple of morality and justice, if not of politics. The Government 
 is just as much bound by its gifts (barring the rule of construction 
 to be noted) as any other giver. But Mr. Hudson says it is not 
 a gift, exactly ; but " a gift ... for the construction of a transconti- 
 nental railway." Those who have tried it have been heard to 
 affirm that " the construction of a transcontinental railway " is a 
 matter of some considerable magnitude, requiring time, persever- 
 ance, and even labor. The Government, then, makes men a gift 
 to build a transcontinental railway much as Mr. Hudson would 
 make a builder a gift to build Mr. Hudson a house ; and Mr. 
 Hudson will even " make allowance for " men who will bribe 
 legislators to prevent adverse action as to ratification of such a 
 gift as that ! Bribery is an intolerable crime ; of all crimes most 
 subversive of the public weal. But if bribery were ever, or ever 
 by any possibility could be, justifiable as a last resort, it seems to 
 me it would be justifiable to prevent adverse action by legislators 
 who were determined to prevent the Government from ratifying a 
 gift of land to men who had relied upon its honor and good faith 
 even to such a trifling extent as to build a mere transcontinental 
 railway ! If the Government gives Mr. Hudson land, surely it 
 ought not to take it away again, ratified or unratified. But, if it 
 gives him land in consideration of labor and services rendered and 
 material furnished, and he deliver the material and perform the 
 labor and services, surely he ought not to be put to the peril of 
 the Government's refusal to ratify the gift, or to the expense of 
 
THE PEOPLE AfrD TtiE RAILWAYS. 43 
 
 bribing legislators. But if Mr. Hudson had received a gift of 
 lands (and even " an empire " is not some who have attempted 
 it say too great for the task) in exchange for the construction of 
 a transcontinental railway, from the General Government, I think, 
 on reflection, he would consider himself harshly treated if, on 
 constructing the same, the Government should withhold ratifica- 
 tion of its gift. And if Mr. Hudson, why not a railway company ? 
 But what is a land-grant, or " gift of an empire," since Mr. 
 Hudson prefers that term ? To begin with, it is a devotion or 
 dedication of a certain portion of the public domain to railway 
 purposes. Instead of purchasing it at two or three dollars an 
 acre, the railroad company purchases it by building a railroad ; 
 not where and when they pleased, but between certain points, 
 perhaps even through mountain-ranges, no matter how great the 
 difficulties or how costly the construction, tunnels or viaducts, 
 banks or bridges ; not at their leisure, but in good faith as nearly 
 within a specified time as human industry and allowance for the 
 uncertainty of human events, financial and physical, would permit. 
 Surely, this is no " gift " or " grab," to begin with. But, on 
 building this railroad, does the land thus " given " become the 
 property of the company ? Not yet. There are other details ; 
 the land must be surveyed by Government surveyors, and the 
 company must pay the cost of the survey in cash before it can 
 take possession. Even Government surveyors do not work for 
 nothing, and land in its native wildness, where human foot hath 
 scarcely trod, is not apt to recoup much of engineering expenses. 
 Nor is this all. If there happens to be upon the " empire " of 
 land (which is granted by the square mile, and without reference 
 to any map, or former record of grant, by general description in 
 terms of quantity only) any acre or plot already occupied by an 
 individual, Indian tribe, or other company, does the Government 
 guarantee its own " grant of empire " given to this company as a 
 consideration for the labor, services, and material it has exhausted 
 in building a transcontinental railway ? Strange as it may seem, 
 the Government not only does nothing of the scrt, but in its own 
 general land-office sits as arbitrator between this earlier proprietor 
 
44 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 or these earlier proprietors and its own grantee, upon its own 
 grant ; and appeals to the rule (first laid down by Lord Ellenbor- 
 ough) that, whereas a private grant is to be construed strictly 
 against the grantor, a public grant, from a state to a subject, is to 
 be construed strictly against the grantee ! This matter (in which 
 the Government's grantee is made that unusual character, a de- 
 fendant with the burden of proof) is tried before the grantor 
 Government, is heard by the commissioner whose decision is to be 
 affirmed or reversed on another hearing before another employe 
 of the grantor, the Secretary of the Interior. Or should the con- 
 testing proprietor or alleged proprietors elect to begin his or their 
 action for trespass in the local State or Territorial court, it can be 
 carried step by step up to the Supreme Court at Washington. As 
 a matter of fact the reports of this court teem with these cases, 
 wherefrom the reader can imagine something of the routine liti- 
 gants have undergone to get there. All these hearings and re- 
 hearings, appeals and new trials, and further appeals, have to be 
 attended and argued by counsel in behalf of the Government's own 
 grantee, the defendant company. And since, should the company 
 finally secure its title to the land the Government had already 
 granted it, it can only sell it for two or three dollars an acre, and 
 lawyers' bills are not apt to be prepared on a diminuendo scale, 
 the public mind can now begin to appreciate how recklessly 
 magnanimous a " gift " this land-grant was on the part of the 
 Government, and the extent of Mr. Hudson's charity in being 
 able to " make allowance " for the recipients ! 
 
 But the above is not all. This gift, Mr. Hudson himself 
 admits, has to be ratified, and legislators bribed to ratify it. He 
 would come nearer the truth did he assert that it has to be rati- 
 fied at every session of Congress. I have in my mind a company 
 whose land grant was received considerably more than twenty 
 years ago, and which has earned it by building and operating its 
 entire road, and yet I doubt if the lawyers of that company 
 could, without considerable research, mention a year in which 
 that grant had not been a matter of attack upon the floor of Con- 
 gress. Nor is it yet at rest there, although that road is oper- 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS 45 
 
 ating over three thousand miles of trackage. Mr. Hudson says 
 that the men who receive these dubious "gifts of empire/ 7 "bribe 
 legislators and buy up public officials," to prevent adverse action 
 as to the ratification. Doubtless he knows of what he speaks. 
 Our legislators are elected by the people, and to the people they 
 are responsible. But the fact that our legislators do not, as a 
 rule, allow land-grant questions to rest, and are constantly de- 
 manding adverse action, even in cases as old as the one I have 
 just referred to, does not look as if land-grant companies had 
 largely added to the expense of receiving their already costly 
 present of lands by large " bribes to legislators and purchase of 
 public officials " ; for certainly they have not prevented adverse 
 action upon these grants to any very memorable extent. 
 
 Mr. Hudson speaks of money-grants as well as land-grants to a 
 transcontinental railroad. In the throes of a bloody civil war it 
 is to the eternal credit of one patriotic Congress that it did vote 
 a loan to a transcontinental railway company to enable it to con- 
 nect the shores of two oceans whose communications otherwise 
 were at the mercy of pirates and privateers, fitted out by a rival 
 nation, interested in driving our commerce from every sea. But, 
 with the necessity, the policy ceased forever. In other cases, to 
 make their heavily purchased " gifts " available, the plan of 
 mortgaging them was resorted to. They have been so mort- 
 gaged, and, on the faith of the Government, the bonds secured by 
 these mortgages are now held by tliis people ; this republic 
 whose enemies, Mr. Hudson will have us believe, all railways are. 
 Nor is it a figure of speech to say, in this case not only, but in 
 every case of a railroad upon which a mortgage is spread, that so 
 far from the railway being the enemy, it is the creature of the re- 
 public, for the republic is the people, and the people, by owning 
 the securities of a railway, own the railway itself. Mr. Hudson 
 may fire the popular heart of the non-investor by his periods ; 
 but if, perchance, he desires more than this, he can not yet claim 
 to have found either a place to stand, or a fulcrum for his lever. 
 
46 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 POOLS, CONSTRUCTION COMPANIES, REBATES, FAST FREIGHT 
 
 LINES, ETC. 
 
 POOLS are combinations of railways at once with and against 
 each other, never against the public, or (if Mr. Hudson prefers) 
 the republic. The name is unfortunate, as suggesting a pot or 
 lump, whereas, in fact, the pool is an elaborate system of differ- 
 entiation and equating, by which railroads practically pay into 
 the pool, not their lumped receipts, but percentages thereof. 
 These pools are the legitimate and necessary results of the re- 
 chartering over and over again of railway companies to transact 
 business between the same points, by paralleling each other. So 
 long as the people in their legislatures will thus charter parallel 
 lines serving identical points thus dividing territory they once 
 granted entire it is not exactly clear how they can complain if 
 the lines built (by money invested if not on the good faith of the 
 people, at least in reliance upon an undivided business) combine 
 to save themselves from bankruptcy. Without such combination 
 the strongest company must bankrupt and " gobble " the others, 
 which survival of the fittest would be exactly what Mr. Hudson 
 declaims and deprecates a Monopoly ; and this time a most 
 grasping and cruel one, since the first aim of the surviving road 
 must logically be to recoup itself for the tremendous expenses of 
 the " gobble " by extravagant overcharges ! Had a pooling sys- 
 tem existed at the date of its birth, the Standard Oil Company 
 octopus could never have grown up. And it is interesting read- 
 ing as Joe Gargery would say to find our Mr. Hudson snarling 
 on one page at railways because they render such monopolies as 
 the Standard Oil Company possible, and, on the next, cursing 
 pools as against public interest. And not only are pools safe- 
 guards against private monopolies, but, as against the "tie-up" 
 
'////; PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 47 
 
 and the boycott, bound to become the needed, possibly the only, 
 antidote if not the only relief, possible. Individuals may, and 
 no doubt do, from geographical conditions, suffer from the ab- 
 sence of competition which pools guarantee. Doubtless a shipper 
 at Buffalo could make better terms to New York were five trunk 
 lines engaged in the suicidal pastime of cutting each other's 
 throats. But the greatest good of the greatest number is sub- 
 served by an honest rate, and that the pool secures to it. 
 
 Mr. Joseph Nimmo, Jr., late Chief of the United States Govern- 
 ment Bureau of Statistics, (not a railroad man nor interested in rail- 
 ways) summarizes the effect of pooling combinations as follows : 
 
 First. They have been instrumental in preventing unjust dis- 
 criminations through special secret rates to favored shippers, and 
 the consequent demoralization of trade. 
 
 Second. They have prevented many unjust and ruinous dis- 
 criminations against towns and cities, and against particular States 
 or sections of the country. 
 
 Third. They have put a stop to violently fluctuating rates. 
 
 Fourth. They have had the effect of protecting the weaker lines 
 and of preventing their absorption by the stronger lines, and 
 thus of conserving elements of competition in transportation. 
 
 Fifth. By preventing the absorption of the weaker by the 
 stronger lines, they have prevented the threatened danger to the 
 country of its being districted among a few great corporations, by 
 which means the regulating influence of the competition to trade 
 forces would have been eliminated, and transportation would 
 have gotten the mastery of trade. 
 
 Sixth. They have tended to prevent those shocks to the 
 financial interest of the country which generally accompany the 
 bankruptcy of great railroad corporations. 
 
 Seventh. Since they have been adopted the railroad transporta- 
 tion facilities of the country have been greatly extended. The 
 volume of traffic has also enormously increased, and rates have 
 constantly fallen. These facts seem to prove that railroad federa- 
 tion has not had the effect of obstructing the beneficial operation 
 of the overruling competition of trade forces and of the direct com- 
 
48 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 petition between transportation lines. Statistics herein before pre- 
 sented clearly indicate this fact. 
 
 But Mr. Hudson on almost every one of his six hundred pages 
 persists in treating the " pool " as meaning a corner in transporta- 
 tion, nothing more and nothing less. He gloats over this definition, 
 tells us that though the rich man has more iron than he wants 
 the poor man cannot have bread because the pool has cornered 
 transportation so that that iron cannot be converted into cash so 
 that the poor man can get his trifle of that cash to buy bread 
 with for his starving family (p. 249), and makes other like 
 statements, which, deliberately and disgustingly false as they are, 
 may yet be quoted by the Socialists and Anarchists for whose ap- 
 plause Mr. Hudson constantly and flagrantly caters. It needs 
 but the most superficial examination of the matter to know that 
 Mr. Hudson's statements are utterly false. That a pool is not a 
 corner in transportation but a careful joint system whose opera- 
 tion must necessarily tend to the benefits which Mr. Nimmo 
 catalogues. Mr. Hudson himself even, if he would reflect, would 
 see that two, or six or a dozen railway companies could not com- 
 bine to put up transportation rates without cutting their own 
 throats. Supposing that the only three railway companies in a 
 territory should refuse to move grain unless at a prohibitive rate of 
 a dollar a bushel what would result ? What indeed, except that 
 the railways would have no business for their hands to do ? 
 Mr. Hudson says (p. 324) that it is a practical maxim among 
 business men that to quarrel with the railways is commercial 
 suicide. Perhaps. But if it is, certainly the converse is not untrue ; 
 for the railways to quarrel with the business of their territory 
 cannot be of large advantage to the railways. 
 
 Construction companies are conservers of time and capital at 
 once to the public and to the railway builder. If a railway between 
 two given points be needed at all, it is needed as soon as possible. 
 The construction company, by procuring the capital, obviates the 
 delay of resorting to individual subscriptions, and the dilatoriness 
 of small subscribers ; and, by securing a rapid building and equip- 
 ment of the desired road, serves the public by affording them 
 
THIS PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 49 
 
 cures the stockholder and builder by relieving against the reason- 
 able probability that a railroad built to develop new territory 
 would pass into the bondholders' or into a receiver's hands before 
 the territory could be developed, the benefit to the stockholders 
 ought not reasonably to be considered an offset to the benefit to 
 the shippers. 
 
 Rebates and discriminations are neither peculiar to railways 
 nor dangerous to the " republic." They are as necessary and as 
 harmless to the former as is the chromo which the seamstress 
 or the shop-girl gets with her quarter-pound of tea from the small 
 tea-merchant, and no more dangerous to the latter than are the 
 aforesaid chromos to the small recipients. The trouble Mr. 
 Hudson finds with them is that the railway systematizes 
 them instead of granting them at random or for sentimental 
 reasons. The quasi-public, character of railways, he thinks, should 
 make these rebates illegal. The railway, in exchange for its 
 right of eminent domain, should listen to the wants of the whole 
 people instead of to individuals. Undoubtedly. But the whole 
 people are not shippers over any one railroad ; nor does any one 
 railroad draw its revenue from the whole people. Of course, I 
 am proceeding upon the supposition that the United States Gov- 
 ernment does not propose to become a gigantic railway corpora- 
 tion, and add to its legislative, judicial, and executive functions 
 the operating of 125,379 miles of railway, with a funded debt of 
 $3,669,115,722. Did " the republic " undertake such a task, does 
 Mr. Hudson, after reading his own book, believe that there would 
 be no rebates or discriminations extended to anybody for political, 
 economical, or social purposes ? 
 
 The subject of " fast freight lines " might well be dismissed in 
 the same breath, these being a financial consideration entirely 
 between the companies and their stockholders. It may be noted, 
 however, that they are public accommodations, affording to large 
 parcels the safety, care, and prompt delivery which express com- 
 panies afford to small ones, and that, like the express com- 
 panies, they have grown to be public necessities. They not only 
 
50 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 secure the delivery of freight at destinations beyond the receiv- 
 ing line, but have introduced new amenities into civilization by 
 distributing products. By their aid the New Yorker finds daily 
 on his table the fruits of California, or the glorious beef from 
 Texas grazing ; and the dweller in the lake-shore States his sea- 
 food, as if each had changed places with the grower and gatherer. 
 Nor do the figures show an increase, but, paradoxical as it may 
 seem, a substantial decrease in tariffs on non-perishable freights 
 by their means. 
 
 Construction companies, however, Mr. Hudson prefers to de- 
 scribe as conspiracies of the founders of the corporation to enrich 
 themselves by robbing it, that when they have ruined their cor- 
 poration they may sell out their stocks and bonds before the swin- 
 dle is discovered, and finally inflict the loss upon the investing 
 public (p. 279). He does not say, be it observed, that they are 
 sometimes, or often, or even generally, this terrible swindle. He 
 simply gives the above as a definition of the term " construction 
 companies " ; and so everywhere, not a single device, not a single 
 contrivance, not a single method or custom of a railway company, 
 by any chance finds favor in his eyes. They are never under any 
 circumstances, anything but schemes to plunder, override, and 
 cheat Mr. Hudson's involuntary clients, the people. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THERE certainly never arose in practical railway operation a 
 situation wherein a railway company was solicitous to charge less 
 money for doing more work and to pay its own expenses mean- 
 while. But in practical railway policy a difference between the 
 cost and the value of certain business to the company might, and 
 sometimes does, arise which appeals to the company's instinct of 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 51 
 
 self-preservation too despotically to be disregarded. A railway 
 company, which has for long years acceptably served its local 
 and throuoh patrons, finds itself suddenly paralleled by a rival 
 company, serving all or some of the same localities not only, but 
 prepared as a part of its (the second comer's) investment to under- 
 go the expense of " cutting " rates, and so to supplant the first 
 comer by offering to take business for less than the actual expense 
 of doing it, even though some of the competing points are far- 
 ther distant from the common terminals of the paralleled line than 
 the actual length of the roads. Under such circumstances, the 
 value of all of its original business it could retain would be clearly 
 of more value to the first company than the then present cost of 
 doing it : and the result would, of course, by every law of human 
 economy or of human nature, be that the first company would 
 either anticipate or respond to the " cut." The effect in either 
 case would be to cheapen tariffs to the shipper to the people. 
 But Mr. Hudson, at this moment, does not care for the people. 
 Later on he will take up the cudgels for them, but just now he 
 kindly holds a brief for the railroads. He thinks it shameful that 
 deserving and hard-working railroads should be obliged to take 
 long hauls for actually less than they are legally entitled to charge 
 for short hauls for much smaller distances. Mr. Hudson has 
 no objection, of course, to one of his fellow-countrymen riding 
 from New York to Chicago for five dollars, or shipping live-stock 
 from Toledo to Buffalo at one dollar a car-load during a railway 
 war. (Or, if he should still remember the poor public, it will be 
 not the poor public who ride a thousand miles for five dollars, or 
 at the rate of half a cent a mile, but the poor public who common- 
 ly ride one hundred and sixty-seven miles for five dollars, thereby 
 being compelled to either walk or pay the legal mileage of three 
 cents which the company is allowed by law to charge.) But 
 should the railway companies find that carrying passengers from 
 New York to Chicago for five dollars, or cattle from Toledo to 
 Buffalo at one dollar a car-load does not pay that by making such 
 rates they are robbing not the public at large, perhaps, but their 
 own stockholders, and depreciating their own securities j and 
 
THE PEOPLE AXD THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 should, since no others offer, the railway companies themselves 
 propose becoming their own reformers, and so evolve the idea of 
 pool commissions whereby each company might yet live and 
 enjoy the franchises the people had given it when this new 
 aspect presents itself, we say Mr. Hudson shifts back to his orig- 
 inal brief, and finds the railways once again the rampant enemies 
 of his corraled clients the people. But on taking up his brief 
 our unfortunate Mr. Hudson finds himself once more out of court, 
 confronted with the terrible truth that under the pool the rates 
 have not only not been raised but have actually fallen below a legal- 
 ized minimum, and his occupation and standpoint again departed. 
 A comparison of tariffs before and after the local pool systems 
 existing at the passage of the Interstate Commerce bill of course 
 can not be attempted here. But it will be found to correspond 
 everywhere throughout the country to the following figures taken 
 at random. (Of course the tariffs need not be compared with 
 figures existing at the inception of railroads or at intervals of ten 
 years since, because everybody knows who knows anything, or 
 who reflects upon the subject at all that the history of the rail- 
 way has been the history of tariff reductions upon every commod- 
 ity, every product of human manufacture or yield of Nature) : 
 
 HAUL. 
 
 Rates before es- 
 tablishment of 
 pool (per 100 
 Ibs.) 
 
 Rates after 
 tablishment 
 rl (per 
 ) 
 
 es- 
 of 
 100 
 
 Omaha to Kansas City or Denver, first 
 class 
 
 $240 
 
 $2.10 
 
 
 Omaha to Kansas City or Denver, 
 fourth, class . .... 
 
 1.40 
 
 1.15 
 
 
 Omaha to Salt Lake City, first class. . 
 Omaha to Salt Lake City, fourth class 
 *New York to Pittsburg, fourth class. 
 *New York to Altoona, fourth class.. 
 
 3.30 
 1.75 
 .30 
 
 .28 
 
 c.oo 
 
 1.50 
 .20 
 .17 
 
 
 All the above being non-competitive or " short-haul " points 
 (since Kansas City, Denver, and Salt Lake can only be reached 
 
 * I take these last two quotations from Mr. E. P. Alexander's " Rail- 
 way Practice; its Principles and Suggested Reforms reviewed," New York, 
 1887. In 1885, Mr. Joseph Nimmo, Jr., chief of the government Bureau 
 
THE PEOPLE AND TILE RAILWAYS. 
 
 from Omaha or the points Pitts ourg or Altoona can only 
 reached from New York by land transportation), there was no 
 legal, certainly no natural, reason (according to Mr. Hudson) why 
 the mere technical fact of a pool should have lowered rates. If, 
 as Mr. Hudson asserts, railways are selfish, grasping, lawless 
 monopolies, enemies of the republic and devourers of the people, 
 there was, on the contrary, every reason why, when three or 
 four railways pooled their issues and monopolized all the pos- 
 sible rail connections to thatpoint, rates should be as high as, 
 if not higher than before. Certainly there is no reason, legal 
 or natural, why, to a point like Altoona, among the moun- 
 tains, to which but a single through line has had the courage 
 or the charter to climb (and that one, according to Mr. Hud- 
 son, one of the most grasping of all his category of grasping 
 monopolies), freights should be lower after the organization of a 
 pool than they were before. The explanation appears, however, 
 as the demonstration proceeds and the technical meaning of 
 the terms " long haul " and " short haul " becomes self-evident. 
 Clearly the points we have named become " short hauls" as 
 against (for example) San Francisco, the haul to which is there- 
 fore called a "long haul." Now, in establishing rates to San 
 
 of Statistics, gave the following table of Kates from Chicago to San Fran- 
 cisco : 
 
 [Rates per 100 pounds.] 
 
 Classes. 
 
 Freight 1 
 
 ariff of 
 
 
 December 
 IS, 1809. 
 
 January 1, 
 
 1880. 
 
 
 Dollars. 
 
 Dollars. 
 
 First ... 
 
 750 
 
 500 
 
 Second 
 
 6 20 
 
 4 00 
 
 Third 
 
 5 20 
 
 3 25 
 
 Fourth 
 
 4 20 
 
 2 50 
 
 Special A . 
 
 
 2 25 
 
 Special, B 
 
 
 200 
 
 Special C 
 
 
 1 75 
 
 Special, D 
 
 
 150 
 
54 THE PEOPLE AND THE HAIL WAYS. 
 
 Francisco, certainly it is very apparent that the railroads which 
 have pooled to Salt Lake City or Denver must take a new factor 
 into the account, for San Francisco has a most excellent water 
 communication with the entire world, and is perfectly independent 
 of railways, monopolies or otherwise. In other words, it is 
 Nature and not railroad corporations that have discriminated 
 against Denver and Salt Lake City, and in favor of San Francisco, 
 by making it a commercial fact that (since water is cheaper than 
 land transportation) San Francisco is actually nearer New York 
 than Denver or Salt Lake City. The fact is that so long as 
 railway rates are regulated by geography however distorted they 
 may appear to the non-expert, the substitution of arbitrary for 
 geographical rules in framing a tariff would result in rendering 
 them still more distorted and uneven. And if the railways, pooled 
 or unpooled, charge proportionately less rates to San Francisco 
 than to Denver or Altoona or Salt Lake City, the higher power 
 that has ordered it is the irresistible power of Nature. To what 
 lengths of invective aud diatribe Mr. Hudson and his kind would 
 proceed, did Nature and geography "pool" with the railways, it 
 is amusing to speculate ; but the fact which oppresses the rail- 
 way company at present, and imposes upon it the necessity of ac- 
 commodating its rates to Nature (since Nature will not accommo- 
 date herself to the railways) is that no pool can be made with 
 the ocean, which charges nothing to the sons of men who plow its 
 bosom with their, ships, and which is at no expense to keep itself 
 in repair. For, let it be always remembered, in discussing these 
 and like questions, a railroad is not, per se, a means of transport- 
 ation. Such a definition is rery far from being definitive by 
 exclusion, as a definition ought to be. A railroad is a prepared 
 and exclusive highway for traffic by means of the motive power 
 of the locomotive engine, and is available only where locomotives 
 can be used. There are still die foot-path, the bridle-path, the 
 wagon-road, the ocean, the river, the canal, with which it must 
 compete. There is still the inclined plane, with which (for the 
 down-grade, certainly) no locomotive even can compete. And so, 
 even were railway companies, the terrible affairs, the grasping 
 
TUE PEOPLE AND THE RAIL JJMYS. 55 
 
 monopolies, the enemies of the human race, which Mr. Hudson 
 asserts them, they are only so because the human race uses them, 
 if it uses them at all, in preference to other means of transporta- 
 tion. Should Mr. Hudson induce his clientele to discontinue 
 their preference, the fact might be different ; but in order to ac- 
 cept Mr. Hudson's conclusion (which, be it remarked again, is 
 not the rule of the Interstate Commerce Law) that railways are 
 public enemies because their tariffs sometimes are greater for the 
 short than the long haul, we must primarily assume the two 
 propositions : first, that the public are not at liberty to use any 
 other means of transportation than the railways ; and, second, 
 that there is no such thing as competition. Does Mr. Hudson 
 desire us to accept these propositions, or think that he has estab- 
 lished them ? What else does he mean by such a paragraph as 
 this (page 40) : " While the force of competition causes the rail- 
 ways to accept moderate or even narrow profits on the Western 
 grain-traffic, the absence of that force allows them to collect what, 
 by comparison, are shown to be exorbitant profits on the grain 
 shipped by the farmers of the Eastern or Middle States." As a 
 matter of fact, the figures actually show that it is combination, 
 not competition, which has reduced the rates charged by the 
 enemies of the republic and forced them to " accept moderate or 
 even narrow profits." Surely, Mr. Hudson does not wish us to 
 believe him guilty of catering to the general public by misstate- 
 ments of fact in cases with which, from the least apparent foot- 
 hold for grievance, he assumes such fluent familiarity. And yet, 
 what else can we conclude from his retort to Mr. Fink's calm 
 statement before the Senate Committee on Railroads in 1883, 
 to the general effect above stated (viz., that geographical and 
 not arbitrary conditions controlled pool-rates) in which he 
 happens to mention Winona (using that town, as we have used 
 Denver or Salt Lake City above, as an instance of a " short-haul " 
 point)? "Why," says Mr. Hudson (page 161), "the road, if 
 built for Winona, should have stopped at that place and given 
 its exclusive attention to the transportation interests of that 
 town." And, if this could be exceeded in artless incapacity, he 
 
56 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 meets Mr. Alexander's statement (page 162), that " no railway 
 has ever raised its local charges to meet the loss caused by lower- 
 ing its through rates," by the following i "When railway rates 
 have been reduced fifty per cent on through traffic within the 
 last ten years, and local rates have virtually remained unchanged, 
 the burden of the local shippers has been practically doubled, 
 no matter what sophistry is used to conceal the fact." Surely, it 
 needs no expert in railway affairs to detect that the " sophistry " 
 just here is not Mr, Alexander's. Lawyers of a certain grade 
 sometimes talk to juries in this vein, but they are shrewd enough 
 to know their jury pretty well before attempting it. An indus- 
 try that employs seven or eight thousand millions of capital in 
 these United States ought, one would say, to be reasonably sus- 
 pected of employing brains here and there certainly ought not 
 rashly to be assumed to neglect the entire remainder of its con- 
 tinental field (to say nothing of the keeping of its own books), 
 in order to concentrate its entire energies upon the commercial 
 destruction of a single village ! There has yet to be discovered, 
 I suppose, a human institution in whose workings there was not 
 hardship or inequality somewhere. But Mr. Hudson has only, 
 it seems to him, to select his hardship to demolish the entire 
 railway system his principle being, not the greatest good 
 to the greatest number, but the least good to the greatest number 
 (or, possibly, the greatest good to the least number), so that the 
 selected village is favored. But what else would this be, again, 
 but a monopoly of commercial privileges ; and how soon did the 
 railway or the railways adopt Mr. Hudson's suggestion and dis- 
 criminate exclusively in favor of his village before Mr. Hudson 
 would be on his feet again with an entirely new compilation of 
 grievances, demanding to know why this particular village was 
 selected out of the entire continent to be so pre-eminently favored ? 
 Does not even Mr. Hudson begin to catch a glimpse of just how 
 vast, how complicated, and inexhaustible this railway problem 
 really is ? But possibly he does not, for he says, You charge this 
 village of B too much. No, we charge everybody according to 
 geographical position ; it saves us labor to do so, says Mr. Alex- 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 57 
 
 ander, Well, anyhow, says Mr. Hudson, you lowered the rate to 
 A, and did not lower the rate to B, and that's the act of a public 
 enemy ; and he straightway sits down and inflicts us with a book 
 of 500 pages, of which the argument is (or ought to be, to be con- 
 sistent) that A is not the public or even the republic, whereas B 
 is both the one and the other. If Mr. Hudson will kindly turn to 
 one of his own pages (in which possibly the mass of excerpta has 
 bewildered him), he will be doubtless surprised to find (page 159) 
 an admission that, astounding as it may seem, on a single trunk- 
 line in a single year, as between the anti-pool rates of 1865 and 
 the pool rates of 1882, a saving to the public, in freights alone, of 
 $318,947,486,261 has been effected. But, having made the ad- 
 mission, he is ready to meet it after his kind. " This is an as- 
 tonishing instance," he continues, " of giving away what the giver 
 never owned or possessed ; the fact is kept out of sight that the 
 business of 1882 is the result of the progressive reduction of rates 
 for many years, and could never have existed but for the reduc- 
 tions." Surety, the shades of Adam Smith and Kicardo 
 have never witnessed quite such a wiping out of the laws of supply 
 and demand as this ! Mr. Hudson will have us believe that the 
 people of the United States on the line of the given railroad would 
 not have eaten and drunk, or purchased supplies, worn clothes or 
 slept on beds, and that population itself for seventeen years would 
 have suspended its rules perhaps the laws of gravitation them- 
 selves have ceased had not this railroad reduced its rates. But 
 let us overlook any possible increase of population or of the wants 
 or luxuries of a given territory in the space of twenty-two years, 
 and consider this particular railway company as all railways. The 
 argument will then remain as follows : Kailways are public ene- 
 mies because they are exorbitant in their charges. But figures 
 show that their charges are constantly decreasing. Never mind 
 that, says Mr. Hudson, if railways reduce their rates they only do 
 so from the selfish "motive of getting still more business. Most 
 shippers over a railway would be contented if the railway would 
 only charge them low rates. But Mr. Hudson (who, possibly, is 
 not a shipper over any line) will have none of their reduced rates 
 
58 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 unless they reduce them from the proper motive. After all, the 
 act is nothing. It is the motive which must govern. And doubt- 
 less we could nowhere elicit a more virtuous, certainly nowhere a 
 better specimen than this of Mr. Hudson's public-spirited argu- 
 ment against railroads, from this most exhaustive and most en- 
 tertaining of scrap-books. " No matter what you do, if your 'eart 
 is only true," says the old song. And so says Mr. Hudson to the 
 railroads of this republic. But let it at least be remembered in 
 their behalf that, even if they did it with selfish motives, the 
 railways were themselves tfie first to attempt their own reforma- 
 tion. Railroads are and must remain built for the private emolu- 
 ment of their owners, and not for charitable purposes. They were 
 not proof against the temptation of charging more money for a 
 short haul to non-competitive points than for a long haul to com- 
 petitive points in the struggle to live alongside of paralleling lines 
 which the people themselves have chartered. But, when the pool 
 removed this temptation by making all points non-competitive 
 although no law, human or divine, compelled them; they did vol- 
 untarily resist the temptation to pool at maximum rates the 
 rates not only fell, but became proportionate to cost of hauling, 
 the competition remaining only as to those "long-haul" points in 
 whose favor Nature has discriminated by establishing water com- 
 munications. Mr. Hudson has, perhaps, read a great many books. 
 He should not have omitted from among them the late Dr. Lieb- 
 er's " Civil Liberty and Self-Government " (especially the chapter 
 wherein is treated the principle of the " Freedom of Rivers.") Then, 
 remembering that the United States has not only two ocean coast- 
 lines, but great lakes and a system of navigable rivers more magnifi- 
 cent and more benign than that of any other country, he might 
 possibly have perceived how in his railway problem so slight 
 a consideration as our national geography might be at least as im- 
 portant a factor as a handful of selected individual hardships. 
 Mr. Hudson does not relish the rates charged by our railway com- 
 panies. He suggests no others, but is entirely clear, none the 
 less, that they should be changed somehow. If rates are at pres- 
 ent arranged upon a system, let us drop the system and make them 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 59 
 
 arbitrary according to Mr. Hudson's selection, if he would only 
 agree to abide by it. If your present rates are robbing the people, 
 low as they are very well, lower them still more, and rob your 
 stockholders. It is evident that Mr. Hudson, for one, is no stock- 
 holder. But are not our stockholders parcel of the people ? And 
 so the old impossibility of finding standpoint or rather, the ne- 
 cessity of shifting his point of view with each newspaper-clipping 
 he pastes in his scrap-book renders Mr. Hudson everywhere 
 specious, inconsistent and absurd ; which leads us up to the next 
 chapter where we must consider the reason why railway stock- 
 holders are not to be considered along with or as well as other 
 citizens of this republic, by Mr. Hudson. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 OF STOCK " WATERING." 
 
 A RAILWAY stockholder, says Mr. Hudson, cannot really be 
 robbed, you know, because his stock is " water " ; since railway 
 capitalization is largely fictitious. At any rate, this capitalization 
 has so large a fictitious element in it, upon which it is forced to 
 attempt the payment of dividends, that your stockholder is en- 
 titled to nobody's sympathy, if he receive no dividend whatever, 
 for or on account of whatever money the original subscriber for 
 the stock held by him put into the construction of the railway 
 tracks, stations, fixtures, rolling stock or furniture of any sort. 
 If you have any sympathy to give us any tears to shed give 
 that sympathy to, shed those tears for, the shipper, who (as we 
 have seen) is often forced to pay less to send his freight to Cali- 
 fornia than to Pittsburg, and whose rates are lowered when his 
 objective is Buffalo instead of Schenectady or Palatine Bridge. 
 For, Mr. Hudson or anybody else to the contrary notwith- 
 standing, this was the situation, and the exact situation, at 
 the passage of the Interstate Commerce Law. The history of 
 railways in the United States, as we have just seen, is the history 
 
60 THIS PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 of the reduction of railway tariffs, and when these tariffs had 
 reached their lowest, there and then steps in the government to 
 regulate and control them. Of course, how much lower these 
 tariffs might have gone, or how much less the long-suffering ship- 
 per might have been compelled to pay for freightage, nobody can 
 conjecture. Judging, however, the future by the past, the next 
 change of tariffs, like the last, would have followed the still 
 downward tendency. But let us look into this "water," this 
 alleged or fiat capital, which Mr. Hudson prefers to call " The 
 Fictitious Element in Railway Policy," (Chapter Seven.) 
 
 Many a worthy cause and many a worthy man have been slain 
 by an epigram. It was a happy coup d* esprit of Wall Street to 
 call the increased capitalization by a corporation a " watering " of 
 its stock ; and the phrase has doubtless often done yeoman serv- 
 ice in the transactions by which Wall Street lives and thrives. 
 But the fact is that " stock watering " is A CKIME COMMITTED 
 AGAINST and not A CRIME COMMITTED BY a railroad company. 
 In other words, the old syllogism must be accepted very peremp- 
 torily here if we are to admit because corporations sometimes do 
 increase their capital on paper that all railway companies are 
 public enemies. Nobody can defend, and nobody ought to at- 
 tempt to defend, the pouring of pure water into the capital stock 
 of a corporation. But there are some four hundred railroad com- 
 panies in these United States ; and Mr. Hudson, to sustain the 
 charge of universal watering against railway companies, instances 
 two capital cases. One of these was one of the most flagrant 
 cases on record (it would be difficult, indeed, to find one more 
 flagrant). It dates back nearly twenty years ; was first held up 
 to public criticism by a gentlemen who, more than any other one 
 man, is in receipt of Mr. Hudson's constant and most unqualified 
 strictures everywhere else in Mr. Hudson's pages for his own 
 career as a railroad president ; moreover, this very case became 
 the moving cause of legislation which forever prevented a repeti- 
 tion of the particular process by which this particular stock was 
 "watered." As to the other case cited by Mr. Hudson, the 
 " watering," according to his own figures, amounted to one-third 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 61 
 
 of its increased capital. But I doubt if any shipper of the line of 
 that particular railroad, or any patron of the line who remembers 
 its previous condition, will agree with Mr. Hudson that a better- 
 ment of one-third at least did not accrue at about the time of the 
 " watering." Suppose a zigzag line of railways operated by half a 
 dozen petty corporations, requiring endless delays, a change of 
 cars for passengers and breakings of freight bulk between two of 
 the most important terminals in the country metamorphosed into 
 a system of four through tracks to conserve the safety of life and 
 property by separating freight and passenger service. Suppose 
 the improvement marked by increased prosperity, not only of the 
 line but of the territory it traversed would there have been no 
 betterment to capitalize, or would the capitalizing of this better- 
 ment be " water " ? Would stockholders, in such a case, be apt to 
 object to the company borrowing money to make their own stock 
 more valuable ? And which is Mr. Hudson's public just now, the 
 public along the line of this improved railway, and who pay its 
 tariffs ; or the entire continent from Sandy Hook to the 
 Golden Gate, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, for whom 
 Mr. Hudson assumes to take up his parable ? Another 
 curious fact which Mr. Hudson may not be aware of (or 
 if aware of, which he has inadvertently omitted to clip and 
 paste in just here), is the fact that up to Feb 4th 1887, these two 
 selected corporations were members of the same pool, serving respec- 
 tive but almost parallel territory at rates at least thirty-three per 
 cent lower than at the dates at which their recapitalization oc- 
 curred. Mr. Hudson's platitudes against "stock-watering," so 
 long as he confines himself to platitudes and truisms merely, are 
 perfectly safe. But when, in 1886-7, he prints the newspaper- 
 clippings of 1869-70, and moralizes therefrom, he can hardly 
 complain if his public demur, not only to his antique instances, 
 but to his general safety as a guide in the complicated questions 
 with which he assumes to deal. I mention these two examples 
 (which are now ancient history) not to suggest an excuse for 
 them, but as showing how entirely superfluous Mr. Hudson's em- 
 ployment of them is ; and how as a matter of fact the wrong, so 
 
62 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 far as the public is concerned, had been entirely neutralized by 
 application of the pooling system. Other things being equal, 
 there is no reason why a railroad should not capitalize its earn- 
 ings by employing them for betterments, any more than that an 
 individual should capitalize his by putting back his earnings into 
 his business. Nor is it quite apparent that any moral dishonesty 
 enters into the act of even capitalizing those betterments which 
 Nature and the march of civilization bring, which I understand 
 are called (just now) " the unearned increment." I do not re- 
 member that any company has so far been guilty of this particu- 
 lar sort of watering ; but, had the early Dutch settlers of Man- 
 hattan Island built the present, elevated railway, it is interesting 
 to speculate what sin would have been committed against natural 
 or moral law had their assigns in 1888 capitalized that structure, 
 not at an approximate to its earning power at the date of its con- 
 struction (in, say, 1666), but at a sum representative of its actual 
 earning power in the later year. Neither am I aware by what 
 mental processes one can insist on " unearned " increments at all, 
 if by that popular term we mean the increase to one's property 
 by the efforts or investments of one's neighbors. It is fashion- 
 able, I am aware, to say that if A's corner lot increases fifty per 
 cent by reason of the purchase and improvement of adjoining lots 
 by B, C, D, E, and F, that fifty percentage is A's unearned in- 
 crement; but is A's foresight and shrewdness in investing in the 
 corner lot aforesaid, when he might have placed his money else- 
 where, to count for nothing ? Are not brains a part of one's 
 capital, and may not A's foresight and shrewdness have been and 
 continued a considerable part of his capital or stock in trade or 
 earning power ? Assuming that Mr. Hudson does not contem- 
 plate the removal of cerebral inequality between man and man by 
 due process of law, it might occur that, whereas the rest of the 
 alphabet had no confidence in the future of let us say, a certain 
 B and C Railroad A might foresee a Pacific Railway, or a com- 
 mercial development, or the bankruptcy of a competing line 
 which would make it valuable, and so might without sin buy up 
 its stock at five cents on a dollar and in due time reap substantial 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 63 
 
 rewards. And supposing even that A, by the transaction (or even 
 by recapitalizing this same B and C Railroad), was ultimately en- 
 abled to accumulate one of those enormous fortunes in which Mr. 
 Hudson sees such peril to his republic, would even such a public 
 calamity go to prove railways public enemies, or that any and all 
 increase of capitalization was " stock-watering " ? Doubtless im- 
 proper practices will obtain with evil-minded men until the end 
 of time. But if the enormous fortunes aforesaid have been ac- 
 cumulated by watering railway-stocks, then it instantly follows 
 that they have not been accumulated by the management and 
 operation of railways ; and thus another of Mr. Hudson's charges 
 falls to the ground. And the facts are within this statement. 
 As a matter of fact these accumulators of mammoth fortunes were 
 operators in Wall Street, who by accident become loaded with 
 a favorite security, or with the debentures or stock of a single 
 corporation, which necessitated (or at least suggested) their iden- 
 tification or assumption of the management, directorship, or pres- 
 idency of this, that, or the other railway corporation. In not a 
 single case have these fortunes arisen from the earning power of 
 the road itself. If a certain railway corporation increases its stock 
 without proportionately increasing its earning power, then the 
 transaction is properly characterized as " stock-watering." But 
 it does not make all railways enemies of the republic, nor in any 
 way cause them to " dominate " the people who have granted 
 them franchises for transportation purposes. It is from a preva- 
 lence of the very spirit which Mr. Hudson's volume, " The Rail- 
 ways and the Republic," labors vigorously and constantly to cul- 
 tivate in this people, that railway-wrecking and stock-watering 
 ever become possible. If Mr. Hudson honestly desires to make 
 stock-watering impossible, let him advise his constituency to yield 
 the railways such tariffs as they are obliged to demand, thus en- 
 abling them to meet their fixed charges and so keep out of the 
 hands of " speculative directors," who will, from private greed, 
 proceed to " water " their stocks. Here is a field wherein Mr. 
 Hudson could write books to his heart's content, from a con- 
 sistent, public spirited, and even contemporary standpoint, and 
 
64 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 with the best results. The mere collecting of antique newspaper- 
 clippings is, beyond the passing amusement of the hour, of very 
 small utility, and very trifling exemplary value, and certainly of 
 not the slightest assistance whatever in solving the problem of 
 the American railway. 
 
 Just as Mr. Hudson everywhere treats the pool as a cornering 
 of transportation facilities, and as an act of hostility to the public ; 
 so he treats the feature of over capitalization which is sometimes 
 necessary to obtain funds for the building of trunk lines to open 
 barren territory to civilization (the American policj^, by the way, 
 which has added hundreds of millions of dollars to the wealth and 
 dignity of the nation) as " stock-watering." The power of this 
 nation among her sister nations lies in her wealth. Her annual 
 surplus is a better coast defense than all the forts that could be 
 built than all the torpedoes which could be sunk, than all the 
 iron-clads which could be floated. Doubtless Mr. Hudson him- 
 self, dragon of public virtue as he poses himself, would ask the 
 temptation of more than a cent for cent investment to build a 
 railway through a howling wilderness, and to wait for settlers to 
 open it up, to wait patiently through the pioneer-period the out- 
 skirt-period the development period for the returns that only 
 compacted improvement brings. 
 
 Over capitalization has been a purely American device for civil- 
 izing, at once, vast areas which, under old systems, it would have 
 required centuries to bring out of barbarism and uselessness, so 
 that time could be saved by the century and the wealth of the 
 nation reduplicated by the hundreds of millions. It does not oc- 
 cur to Mr. Hudson, the scope of his vision is not large enough 
 to include the idea that it may be patriotism as well as private 
 acquisitiveness which dictates the investment of private capital 
 in that which can only make returns to one's children. Somebody 
 said lately to De Lesseps. lt Chevalier, this Panama Canal is 
 costing immense amounts of money. What do you suppose it 
 will ultimately cost." a Who cares how much it will cost," replied 
 the grand old man. "It is for eternity!" And so we have the 
 Railways of the United States. They are built and will not be 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 65 
 
 abandoned. They are for eternity, and so far as we have gotten 
 along, they have added to the power, wealth and dignity of the 
 nation. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 OF EMINENT DOMAIN AND WHAT IT ENTAILS. 
 
 ANOTHER of Mr. Hudson's specifications against railway com- 
 panies, and one in which he finds not by any means the least 
 danger to this Republic, is that railway companies usually pos- 
 sess by virtue of their charters, the power or duty of exercising 
 in certain precise cases, the power or facility of eminent domain; 
 that is to say, that modicum of the power of the state by accept- 
 ance of a grant of which a railroad company is understood to 
 accept the burden of certain fixed public obligations. 
 
 Mr. Hudson's definition of this facility of railroad companies is 
 as follows : " To take away the property of A and give it to B 
 for the latter's private use and behoof, provided always that 
 B is a railway corporation " (page 114). Now, actually and 
 practically, the above is a remarkably comprehensive and exact 
 definition, not of eminent domain but of what eminent 
 domain is not, and of what it never can be under any circum- 
 stances. Mr. Hudson himself has inadvertently told us what it 
 really is : " Experience shows that no railroad twenty-five miles 
 in length can be built without the resort to the power of the 
 State, for there are always some proprietors who demand an ex- 
 orbitant price, or altogether refuse to let the railway pass over 
 their property. . . . No railroad of greater importance than a 
 mere switch ever has been or ever can be built without invoking 
 the sovereignty of the Government in its behalf " (page 111). 
 Under such circumstances, where a man's neighbors have decided 
 that they want a railway, the law so far from taking anything 
 from anybody simply steps in and applies the well-known maxims 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
66 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 that a man must use his own so as not to injure his neighbors ; 
 and that, in civilized communities, every citizen yields a fraction 
 of his rights for the general good and society of all. To enable 
 the railway to enforce the general consent, it is convenient to 
 apply these maxims against the recalcitrant citizen by the fiction 
 that the Government endows the railroad company for the 
 emergency and for the emergency only with a portion of its own 
 (the Government's) right to take the property of its subjects in 
 cases of necessity (as for the public good in times of peace, or the 
 public defense in time of war, etc.). This force is applied, how- 
 ever, not at the expense of the Government, nor even at the ex- 
 pense of the recalcitrant and unpleasant citizen who will not 
 accord with his neighbors, but at the sole expense of the railway 
 company. The result is that, instead of the citizen suffering for 
 his obduracy and obstinacy, he is actually rewarded since he 
 ultimately receives a greater value for his land, without being 
 mulcted in any of the expenses of the taking. So far as he is 
 concerned he has lost nothing by his contumacy ; whereas the 
 railway, by his contumacy and without fault on its part, has been 
 put to the costliest plan of acquiring the land. For the purchase 
 of any strip of land, at almost any price, is invariably cheaper 
 than the process of condemnation by private " view," which, both 
 in time and money, is by all odds the very costliest known method 
 of obtaining a railroad's right of way. These " views " are, by 
 statutory requirement, made by persons of the vicinage, who, in 
 estimating their neighbor's land, estimate their own ; as individ- 
 uals it can be readily imagined they are not over-solicitous to 
 save the corporation expense, nor to estimate at all without liberal 
 compensation to themselves for their own services : and the result 
 can be readily computed. The laws of eminent domain, as ap- 
 pertaining to railway companies, and their operation in cases of 
 land condemnation, are too technical to be elaborated here. But 
 it may be said, as a matter of fact, that their application ceases 
 with the single act of the acquirement of land. Nor is the power 
 of the Government over the citizen ever, except in this solitary 
 instance, exercised by the railway company from the beginning to 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAIL WA YS. 67 
 
 the fine and term of its career ; and, moreover, the grant itself is 
 not only not against public policy and interest, but is directly in 
 favor of the public : being positively granted to the railways as 
 against themselves rather than in their favor, so far as a possible 
 question between the railways and the public can possibly arise. 
 What is known as the police power of railways, which is derived 
 from and determined by the local police power of each separate 
 community, although sometimes granted by proclamation from the 
 State Executive, since Mr. Hudson has not assailed it, I will not 
 defend. In the granting of railway passes I confess my inability 
 to discover a crime against the State. Wherein they differ from 
 the orders that a manager issues to seats in a theatre especially 
 since his theatrical privileges come from the people by special 
 license I am unable to perceive. " Passes " are the small cur- 
 rency of the railway company, payable for favors not estimated 
 in, or convertible to, money ; and are used just as the small trader 
 bestows an apple or a toy upon the juvenile carrier between his 
 small customer and himself. The company's rule is to issue 
 passes only for services ; but the rule is construed liberally to 
 apply to prospective as well as actual services, and to count pre- 
 sumed influence or, perhaps an assumed or expected favorable 
 mention of the particular corporation issuing them as a service. 
 But, even if issued for no service, real or prospective, I know of 
 no human being, institution, or concern, public or private, that is 
 not allowed to perform acts complimentary in their nature, or 
 even entirely gratuitous. In the course of many years' experience 
 I have seen fully as many acts of public charity as of private 
 compliment performed by railway companies. A friendless and 
 penniless woman, whose husband has been left behind or has de- 
 serted her, en route she knows not whither, can be transported to 
 a desired destination, if not in the discretion of the conductor at 
 least by telegraphing for permission to the proper department. 
 And there is not a railway in the country where such gratuitous 
 services are not constant, and as unchronicled and unheralded as 
 they are constant. Nevertheless, while I frankly say that, for 
 one, I can not see where the granting either of chanties or of 
 
68 THE PEOPLE AND THE BAIL WAYS. 
 
 " passes " militates against the public character imposed by leg- 
 islatures upon railroads, or is forbidden by the fact that to facili- 
 tate its construction the railway company once enjoyed a parcel 
 of the State's power of eminent domain I must admit that 
 (except as to employes) the system has always been a nuisance to 
 the railway companies and one which they have constantly labored 
 to abolish. It is impossible to forecast what quantum of credit 
 Mr. Hudson and his kind may take unto themselves for the 
 Interstate Commerce Act, which has at last promised the railways 
 a grateful relief from the pass-beggar. But if that act shall 
 abolish both pools and passes, public sympathy will be with the 
 honest shipper who must pay increased tariffs, rather than with 
 the local Solon who wakes to find that while screaming at " dis- 
 criminations " and " long and short hauls" he has actually been 
 emptying his own pockets of the passes with which he has insist- 
 ed that they be lined. 
 
 The power of the Government over the citizen, then, except in 
 this solitary instance of land condemnation, being never exercised 
 by a corporation : being bestowed invariably and always for the 
 benefit and in the interest of the people, and not of the railway 
 company ; taking always the shape of a duty and never the shape 
 always the shape of a duty and never the shape of a privilege 
 granted that railroads are quasi-public corporations, it would ap- 
 pear to follow since they are only ^wcm-public, that they have 
 still some elements of private proprietorship ; and (since it is their 
 private and not their public character which continues) that it is 
 by this private character they must be continually judged. Grant- 
 ed that they must carry freights for the public in such a way as 
 not to injure either the public or the freight in the carrying, most 
 emphatically (it seems to me) it does not follow that they must 
 add to the value of the freights they carry by charging only such 
 rates as the public, or the owners of the freight, insist on. Mr. 
 Hudson, as a member of society, has a presumptive right to light 
 and air; to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Supposing 
 that society should pass one law affirmatively compelling Mr. 
 Hudson to recognize his neighbor's rights to life, liberty, and the 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 69 
 
 pursuit of happiness ; and, on top of that, another restraining him 
 from interfering with these rights ; still another compelling him 
 to positively contribute in cash or services to the life, liberty, and 
 the pursuit of happiness of his neighbors ; and add to all these a 
 still further law taking away his (Mr. Hudson's) own life, liberty, 
 etc., because he had not in the past so contributed ? Would not 
 Mr. Hudson begin after a while to consider the propriety of look- 
 ing up his own constitutional privileges ; or, possibly, the charter 
 of the particular society that was enacting all these statutes ? 
 or query, perhaps, if the mere grant of power to breathe himself 
 were a fair consideration for the burden of seeing to it that the 
 entire neighborhood breathed ? But our laws are daily imposing 
 upon the railway companies they have chartered (on account of 
 this so-called quasi-public character w^hich the once granting 
 of this long-lapsed power of eminent domain has saddled upon 
 them) the duty of carrying whatever of passengers or freight is 
 offered of reasonably accommodating the public of forfeiture 
 of their charter if, even at a loss, trains are not so run as to accom- 
 modate reasonably ; of operating, whether at a profit or at a deficit 
 (under penalties for refusal to perform services desired of them) 
 under a burden of proof always to prove a negative if the refus- 
 al is alleged of them under a disadvantage always before a jury 
 and of being obliged to accept the jury always of the locality 
 where ideas of value and damage are the largest. Liabilities 
 always to patrons, servants, abutters and adjoiners ; to the State ; 
 compelled to pay damages for accidents caused by trespasses on 
 their own rights of way ; to maintain alert and vigilant counsel 
 always to watch, lest at any moment they inadvertently overlook 
 any of the thousands of statutes that thirty-eight Legislatures are 
 annually pouring from the legislative mill ; black-mailed on every 
 hand,* and always under the conviction that the average citizen 
 
 * I have been assured that the following story is true, at least I do not be- 
 lieve it improbable. A certain member of the board of aldermen of a city, 
 not a thousand miles from the city of New York, confided to a fellow mem- 
 ber that he was hard up. " Well then," replied the latter" Give notice 
 of your intention to introduce a resolution for a city ordinance providing 
 
70 TEE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 sees no dishonesty in getting the better of them by dodging fares, 
 or getting passes under false pretenses ; and, if they receive a 
 public gift of land, having it at once construed against them and car- 
 ried to defend it against the grantor himself in the grantor's own 
 courts these are the least of the burdens which this once granted 
 and quickly terminated privilege of eminent domain is supposed to 
 impose, and practically does impose, upon railway companies. 
 Admitting their public character even such a character is, per- 
 haps, not morally a deterrent to the rights of their stockholders 
 to get the interest on their investment ; or otherwise a displace- 
 ment of the unwritten law of meum and tuum. Railroads, by the 
 uniform decisions of half a century, are indeed public conven- 
 iences. But, so far, this character of a public convenience has been 
 only a burden, never a blessing, or even a shield. The man who 
 steals a ride on a railway-train and imputes it to himself for sin 
 would be a curiosity. The railway company has no conscience- 
 fund ; and, had it, there would be no contributors. It may sub- 
 mit to robbery, may carry for less than the cost of the service 
 and so plunder its stockholders to its heart's content, and Mr. 
 Hudson and his clique have no protest to put on record. But if 
 under all this load the railway company succumbs to bankruptcy, 
 Mr. Hudson, from his elastic standpoint (or rather from his lack 
 of any standpoint whatever) is enabled to cite this very bankrupt- 
 cy as another instance of the hostility and danger of railways to 
 the republic. He has charged them with being enemies to the 
 public, firstly, because of their tariffs. He charges them, second- 
 ly, with being public enemies because of the bankruptcy which a 
 failure to collect those tariffs has brought upon them ; and yet 
 again, thirdly when that bankruptcy has made the stock nominal 
 in value and so speculative, and a shrewd operator absorbs it and 
 so lays the foundation of a private fortune Mr. Hudson still 
 
 that the , and Railway Company provide two brake- 
 men for every passenger, and one for every freight car it runs." The 
 notice was given, the resolution was never introduced. But the member 
 giving the notice made no further complaints of impecuniosity. 
 
'I HE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 71 
 
 charges the railways with being public enemies because the far- 
 seeing operator has accumulated this very private fortune ! More- 
 over, he lumps the whole catena of cause and effect into a series 
 of indictments (or, more absurdly still, into a series of specifi- 
 cations under a single indictment against railways as a class or an 
 institution), and proposes as a relief from the whole what ? Why, 
 that the Government confiscate (or purchase by way of condemna- 
 tion) these railways, and make them a public highway upon which 
 any one may run his own rolling-stock on payment of a trackage- 
 fee! 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CONCLUSIONS FROM THE FOREGOING. 
 
 IT would seem, then, that while railroads are not philanthropic 
 or charitable bodies, organized for good works among the poor and 
 needy, neither are they basilisks, or gorgons, or minotaurs, 
 destroyers of the state, or dragons that feed upon the people. 
 And now we might well leave Mr. Hudson and all his works, were 
 not his lack of standpoint just here so ludicrous as to tempt from 
 us a further word. He cries (page 9), " Railway projectors have 
 invariably embarked in these enterprises, not so much for the 
 public welfare as for their own private enrichment." What else 
 had Mr. Hudson been led to suppose ? The millennial state in 
 which private enterprises are conducted for public ends is cer- 
 tainly not yet a State in the Federal Union, wherever else on 
 this planet it may be discovered. Mr. Hudson's next proposition 
 is that, "if the country has had hundreds of millions added to its 
 wealth by railway construction, the builders have also secured 
 tens of millions for their individual fortunes." In any but the 
 millennial state one would think that a free gift to the common- 
 wealth of ninety per centum of one's profits was a rather liberal 
 tithe, and an exceedingly handsome thing. Most private parties, 
 certainly most governments, would open their coffers to their 
 friends on the same terms. But Mr. Hudson is ashamed to think 
 
72 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 that private capital, enterprise, patience, and labor should have 
 been returned anything. Clearly, the Government should take 
 fully cent per cent for the industry of its subjects. 
 
 " While the nation has gained in wealth and population by the 
 general extension of railways/' says Mr. Hudson, "it does not 
 follow that the wealth could not have been more justly distributed 
 if railway management had been universally governed by the 
 principles of equity " (page 8). What wealth ? Mr. Hudson 
 was just now complaining that the entire benefit did not go to 
 Government, and that the individual received ten per cent. Now 
 he regrets that it was not even more widely distributed among 
 individuals. What are Mr. Hudson's views as to the meaning of 
 the word " equity " ? Would " equity " have been subserved if 
 the ten per centum or the hundred per centum were distributed 
 by lot, or on a basis of pauperism, or covered at once into the 
 treasury of the republic ? The statements that " the equality of 
 all persons is denied by the discriminations of the corporations 
 which the Government has created " ; that " under them the 
 increase of national wealth is not distributed among all classes 
 according to their industry and prudence, but is concentrated 
 among those who enjoy the favor of the railway power "; and 
 that by means of railways " general independence and self-respect 
 are made impossible " (page 9), may perhaps be passed over with 
 the remark that if Mr. Hudson himself believed in propositions as 
 silly as these, to argue with him at all would be like reading 
 Herbert Spencer to the Salvation Army. The railway is certainly 
 an eminent factor in our American civilization, though it has not 
 just yet, perhaps, usurped the functions of the humanities ! 
 
 It is a bonne bouche to bring into the discussion at any point 
 in a discussion like this, an allusion to the riots of 1877 in lurid 
 juxtaposition with the French Revolution j and our Mr. Hud- 
 son does not neglect his opportunity, but since, wherever 
 planted, the roots of neither of these cataclysms lie in land-grants, 
 construction companies, pools, rebates, or fast-freight lines it 
 need not detain us here. I have not touched upon the " Granger " 
 cases (so called), my limits forbidding. But I do not understand 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 73 
 
 that the principles enunciated in them conflict with any of the 
 statements I have made. I lately had the pleasure of perusing a 
 learned article in an English magazine which proposed that 
 railway companies, like post-office departments, make rates inde- 
 pendently of distances or extent of services rendered j or at least 
 establish two rates, " one for short distances and others for long 
 distances : so much for every distance not exceeding one hundred 
 miles, so much for every distance between one hundred and three 
 hundred miles, and so much for all distances exceeding three 
 hundred miles, keeping the one rate for all distances in view as 
 the ultimate object." It seems to me that, if gentlemen who 
 write in this fashion expect their papers to be read, they expect 
 the utmost they are entitled to. Similarly, I think that Mr. 
 Hudson's loving treatment of the ancient claim that, since rail- 
 ways are public highways, any citizen has a right to send his 
 own limited express along the line at any moment on payment of 
 a trackage-fee, ought to stamp the value of his criticism. Mr. 
 Hudson's book is printed on better paper and more nicely bound 
 than the usual socialistic attack upon things as they are. But 
 that he is, or is destined to become, the long-looked for reformer 
 of the American railroad, I fear can hardly be hoped. But even 
 Senator Cullom argues, (see post p. 88), that, since Congress 
 cannot constitutionally protect the railways against wreckage and 
 stock jobbery, the next best thing is to collar them. 
 
 I know what the railways of this continent are, what services 
 they perform. I know that, by vigilant watch for and adoption 
 of the latest triumphs of engineering and mechanical skill, and by 
 employment of the costliest of expert assistance, they have reduc- 
 ed the percentage of accident to a minimum, and the chances of 
 loss of life to a fraction so small that it is actually a mathematical 
 truth to assert that a man is safer in a railway-train running at 
 full speed than in his bed, or in any other spot on this most pre- 
 carious globe ! What these railways could become if operated 
 upon Mr. Hudson's plan I can not question ; the details of that 
 picture I can not, for one, fill in. I know not what terminal 
 facilities, what time-tables, or what per centage of slaughter would 
 be necessary did every man, woman, and child possess the inalien- 
 
74 THE PEOPLE ANU THE UAILWAYS. 
 
 able right to place upon their tracks their own locomotives, 
 their own passenger-coaches and freight-carriages, and to run 
 them at their own sweet will hither and thither. Nor can my 
 fancy devise where all this rolling-stock would be stored when not 
 in use (unless, indeed/ means were devised to suspend it, by 
 balloons or other aerial contrivance, over the railways themselves). 
 Mr. Hudson does not discuss these questions at all, but leaves 
 them, possibly, to the inventive genius of the race. And there, 
 perhaps, we may also rest them. 
 
 But, taking leave of Mr. Hudson and his chimera, we have yet 
 before us the railways themselves. Against the inequality of 
 their own rates and the hardship of the long and short haul (in 
 other words, against the discriminations of Nature and of physical 
 laws), no less than against the peril of bankruptcy and the conse- 
 quent speculative tendency of their stocks (after which may come 
 the wrecking, the watering, and the vast individual fortunes), 
 the railways of this republic have endeavored, by establishment 
 of pool commissions, to defend both the public and themselves ; 
 and, w r hatever their motive may have been, their record as to that 
 can not be disturbed. As to the effect of the Interstate Commerce 
 Law upon the shipper and the passenger, time and trial alone can 
 testify. But it is precisely such literature as Mr. Hudson's, and 
 the sentiment it manufactures, which have made railway-wrecking, 
 stock-watering and their concomitant disasters possible 5 while 
 for these disasters, down to date at least, the pool has been found 
 the only and entirely adequate remedy. That remedy, drastic as 
 it is, the railways (far from being public enemies) had them- 
 selves applied. The honest administration of railways for all 
 interests, the payment of their fixed charges, the solvency of their 
 securities, the faithful and valuable performance of their duties as 
 carriers, can be conserved in but one way by living tariffs such 
 as the pools once guaranteed. But we want no living tariffs, says 
 our Mr. Hudson. Give us a governmental control, and we will 
 pay no tariffs only a trackage-fee ! Supposing this revolution 
 accomplished, and how many years or months would, perhaps, 
 elapse before another declamation in five hundred more pages of 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 75 
 
 close type against the excessive trackage-fees, the favors to public 
 officials or private cronies, or a formulated demand that the Gov- 
 ernment provide terminals at its own expense (another planet, 
 possibly), sumptuous rolling-stock, motive power, and accident 
 insurance policies for its passengers, would arrive from the con- 
 stant, sleepless, and irrepressible Mr. Hudson ? Is it not, after 
 all, Mr. Hudson and his kind and not the Wall Street operator 
 who trades on the sham public opinion they manufacture who 
 are the true stock-waterers, railroad-wreckers, and enemies of this 
 republic ? 
 
 CHAPTEK X. 
 
 THE INTERSTATE COMMERCE ACT. 
 
 SUCH being, then, the situation, why an Interstate Commerce 
 Act ? Why should, for any public reason for any reason of the 
 public safety the interstate commerce law have " come to 
 stay ? 
 
 I. To begin with, the present act abounds in punishments for 
 and prohibitions against an industry chartered by the people, 
 but nowhere extends to that industry a morsel of approval or of 
 protection. It bristles with penalties, legal, equitable, penal, and 
 as for contempt, against railway companies, but nowhere alludes 
 to any possible case in which a railway company might, by acci- 
 dent, be in the right, and the patron, customer, passenger or 
 shipper in the wrong. The law of the land is more benign in its 
 policy. That law, indeed, hangs murderers and imprisons thieves, 
 but it none the less protects even the life of a murderer and the 
 liberty and property of a thief against other murderers and other 
 thieves and abductors. 
 
 II. The constitutions of civilized nations, for the last few cen- 
 turies, at least, have provided that not even guilt should be pun- 
 ished except by due process of law, and have uniformly refused 
 to set even that due process in motion except upon a complaint of 
 
76 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS, 
 
 a grievance. But the interstate commerce law denies the one 
 and does away with any necessity for the other. That statute 
 (section XIII) provides that the commission it creates shall pro- 
 ceed " in such manner and by such means as it shall deem proper/' 
 or " on its own motion," and that " no complaint shall at any time 
 be dismissed because of the absence of direct damage to the com- 
 plainant." Even the Venetian council of ten provided for a cer- 
 tain and described hole in the wall through which the anonymous 
 bringers of charges should thrust their accusations. Even the 
 court of star chamber was known to dismiss inquisitions when it 
 found that no wrong had been done. But the statute of inter- 
 state commerce appears to issue lettres de cachet against anything 
 in the shape of a railway company -to scatter them broadcast, 
 and to invite anyone who happens to have leisure to fill them 
 out, by inserting the name of a railway company. It says to the 
 bystander : Drop us a postal card, or mention to any of our com- 
 missioners, or to a mutual friend, the name of any railway com- 
 pany of which you may have heard, and so give us jurisdiction to 
 inquire if that company may have by chance omitted to dot an i 
 or cross a t in its ledgers, or whether any one of its hundreds or 
 thousands of agents in the rush of a day's business, or in a ship- 
 per's hurry to catch a train may have named a rate not on the 
 schedule then being prepared at headquarters, or charged a six- 
 pence less than some other agent 250 miles down the line may 
 have accepted a week ago for what might turn out to be a fraction 
 more mileage service in the same general direction ! No partic- 
 ular form is necessary. Drop into luncheon with our Commission 
 any day between twelve and one and mention the name of a rail- 
 way company. The railway company may have done you no 
 damage, nor grieved you in any way ; just mention the railroad 
 and we will take jurisdiction of its private (or <^6m-public) affairs.* 
 
 * " The fullest opportunity has been afforded to any citizen of the United 
 States who desired to be heard upon the matter, to present facts personally 
 or by affidavit and arguments viva voce, in writing or print." Opinion of 
 the Interstate Commerce Commission inre Louisville and Nashville R. R. 
 Co. p. 2. 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 77 
 
 Or if you don't happen to have time to mention it, we will take 
 jurisdiction, anyhow, " of our own motion,' 7 of any railway com- 
 pany whose name we find in the Official Gazette. It really does 
 not matter which ; any one will do. 
 
 III. Last, but not least not on account of any individual, nor 
 any railway company, but on high grounds of public policy if 
 there is anywhere a danger to the public convenience (and the 
 law construes the public convenience to be the public safety), 
 arising in any way, directly or indirectly, out of the existence of 
 the railway industry, a federal statute should be framed to meet 
 that public danger and to protect the people against possible 
 calamity from such threat. Now, it happens that there is just 
 such a real danger threatening the public health and convenience. 
 The greatest financial and personal suffering has resulted in the 
 past and is even now resulting from the machinations of the rail- 
 way wrecker, and from the consequent bankruptcies and defaults 
 in meeting fixed charges arising from the overconstruction of 
 branch lines and paralleling of trunk lines, that money may be 
 made in their building, and the like. Our national credit has 
 fallen in foreign markets more than once from the defaults of 
 railway companies to pay dividends, and the evil is one which it 
 would be prudence and expediency to the nation and to the peo- 
 ple, as well as salvation to the railroads, to protect against. Why 
 not, then, enact a statute that should protect all interests, the 
 railway stockholder's as well as the shipper's the men who have 
 put their hands into their pockets to clear the forest and lay the 
 track and run the locomotive, as well as those who ship their 
 wheat and coal and beeves over the railways the others have 
 built ? Why should the statute of interstate commerce neglect 
 or ignore all their interests and remain simply silent as to any- 
 body but the shipper ? 
 
 Supposing that A and B are malicious and designing men. 
 Supposing that they should learn that a certain railway company 
 had half a dozen millions of surplus in its treasury, which its 
 stockholders had accumulated by the honest administration of its 
 servants, and the skill of its employes. Supposing that they 
 
78 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 should jointly set to work, fabricate rumors, forge dispatches, 
 work on the fears of one timid stockholder after another in 
 other words, " bear " the market ; until by one scheme and de- 
 vice or another, they caused enough securities of that company 
 to be unloaded to bring its stock down from par to where they 
 could buy it in at nominal prices and get control of the company's 
 directory. Supposing, then, that they should proceed to convert 
 the surplus in the treasury of that company to their own pockets 
 by such legalized devices as projecting branch lines, issuing 
 stock therefor, and guaranteeing that stock in the name of the 
 until now solvent road until they had wrecked it beyond repair, 
 sold it out and bought it in, etc., etc. Seriously, ought there not 
 to be a federal statute against such a transaction as this would 
 be, which might not only cause widespread ruin and distress in 
 the locality of the wrecked road, but precipitate panic and im- 
 peril the credit of the nation itself ? I, for one, certainly do 
 think so, and that if an act of the national legislature is needed 
 to supervise the railway interests of the country if a railway 
 law is to come and to stay these are the wrongs that act should 
 prevent or redress, rather than exhaust its provisions upon such 
 mere temporary matters as the posting of tariffs and the regu- 
 lating of rates by mere mileage, instead of by the value of the 
 business or the cost of the haul, etc. In so far as it regulates 
 any national concern which this people have in their railways, it 
 seems to me that the interstate commerce law is like a policeman 
 who collars the innocent sufferer and clubs the little newsboys 
 and bootblacks who looked on, but lets the bully and the slugger 
 strut away in safety. For, remember, in the case above sup- 
 posed, the railway that A and B wrecked has still its road-bed, its 
 tariffs, its schedules, its charter, which still compels it to go on 
 paying its operating expenses, running its trains and running for 
 all who desire its services. The interstate commission can still 
 fine it and imprison its officers for contempt of court, if copies of 
 its tariffs are not properly filed at Washington or exposed with 
 sufficient publicity along its line, and it must still try to meet its 
 running expenses by competing with other lines of traffic. A 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 79 
 
 dollar is worth considerably more to it now than before these 
 wreckers sacked its treasury. But while there is no law to meet 
 those who have taken its substance, there is a sleepless statute 
 watching the wrecked railroad to discover if, perchance in 
 wicked zeal to earn a dollar here or a sixpence there it takes 
 what business it can get, without sufficient discretion lest now 
 and then it haul at a greater rate for an annoying fractional than 
 a convenient through haul. 
 
 As already demonstrated, no railway company or individual 
 other things being equal performs the greater service for the 
 smaller wages. But railways, as well as individuals, must live, 
 and, somehow or other, pay their bills. The railway company is 
 always more or less at the mercy of the stock jobbers and the 
 wreckers, and no national law steps in to protect it. They must 
 take their chances as to these anyhow. But once let the com- 
 pany default in payment of its fixed charges, and there are no 
 chances to take ; it is bound hand and foot, and lies at the mercy 
 of the operators, who can then pick its bones at their leisure. 
 And yet, it seems, the situation did not call for enough vigilance, 
 and so the interstate commerce law steps in and says, " Shut 
 your eyes to what your competitors by water are doing, or to the 
 laws of supply and demand. You are not supposed to know that 
 wheat is a thousand miles from its market and beef only twenty 
 miles, or vice versa. You are to be indifferent to the fact that 
 dividends must be paid or you may be wrecked, and interest met 
 or you go into the hands of a receiver. But strain your energies 
 to filing of copies of your tariffs properly, and see to it that 
 you never charge more for the short than the long haul under 
 what may or may not hereafter happen to appear to the casual 
 (or, say, to the most attentive and expert) beholder to be " sub- 
 stantially similar conditions." 
 
 Judge Deady has recently, it seems, held that a corporation 
 chartered by the State even if it be a railway company has yet 
 a right to its corporate life. Unless the commission, therefore, sees 
 fit to rule differently, or until Judge Deady is overruled, such is 
 the law. And if the words "under substantially similar circum 
 
80 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 stances and conditions " in section 4 of the act are a substantial 
 part of the law, what becomes of the Act of Interstate Commerce ? 
 What is or was the necessity for any Act at all ? It was hardly 
 worth while for Congress to enact that railway companies should 
 be guided by circumstances ; and should consider the conditions 
 under which they operated in making their rates. 
 
 DEADY, J. " It appears from the petition filed by the receiver 
 that the Oregon and California Road will soon be connected with 
 the California and Oregon Road, when the two will form a through 
 line between Portland and San Francisco : that between these 
 points there is also water communication by steamers and sail 
 vessels that carry passengers and freight at less than the average 
 cost of transportation by rail between the said places and all in- 
 tervening stations ; that the Oregon Pacific Railway, with the 
 aid of steamboats on the Willamette River, now receives a portion 
 of the freight which would otherwise be carried on the Oregon 
 and California Road ; that the Canadian Pacific Road connects 
 with a line of steamers running between the western terminus and 
 San Francisco, and that to compete with such all water and rail 
 and water transportation it is necessary to make the correspond- 
 ing rates on the Oregon and California Road. 
 
 "The receiver asks, first, whether under the Interstate Commerce 
 Act such rates can be made for through traffic as will enable the 
 Oregon and California Road to compete for the same at points 
 where competition by water or rail exists, although the rates for 
 the long haul between Portland and San Francisco or intervening 
 points may be less than those for a shorter haul in the same direc- 
 tion between said places or such points, and second, whether in 
 conjunction with the Northern Pacific Railroad or other transporta- 
 tion lines the Oregon and California Road may meet the compe- 
 tition of the transcontinental business orginating to the north and 
 east of Portland, although its share of the through rates may be 
 less than the local charges over the road, or its share of the through 
 rates on competitive business between Portland and San Fran- 
 cisco 7 ' 
 
 Judge Deady refers at some length to the decision he made two 
 years before in ex parte Koehler, 23 Fed. Rep., 529, in which 
 
Til E PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 81 
 
 he authorized the Receiver of the Oregon and California Road to 
 make a lower rate for a competitive long haul than for a short 
 haul, notwithstanding the act of the Oregon Legislature of 1885, 
 known as the Hoult Law, which prohibited a corporation from 
 charging a greater rate for carrying similar property for a short 
 haul than for a long one in the same direction. In this decision 
 for the first time in the United States, the principle was laid down 
 that a railway corporation has a right to live." * * * " This 
 opinion has been before the world for more than two years, 
 and on account of the importance of the subject, has attracted 
 some attention, but so far as I am aware it has received no un- 
 favorable criticism, and time and reflection have finally satisfied 
 me of the ruling. The Interstate Commission is intended, among 
 other things, to prevent discrimination between long and short 
 hauls, except where they are made under substantially dissimilar 
 circumstances and conditions. In my judgment Congress in limit- 
 ing the prohibition contained in section 4 has recognized the rule 
 laid down in ex parte Koehler as a proper one. Freight carried 
 to or from a competitive point is always carried under substan- 
 tially dissimilar circumstances and conditions from that carried to 
 or from non-competitive points. In the latter case the railway 
 makes its own rates. In the former case the circumstances are 
 altogether different. The power of a corporation to make rates 
 is limited by the necessities of the situation. Competition con- 
 trols the charge. It must take what it can get, or, as was said in 
 ex parte Koehler, abandon the field and let its trade go to rust. 
 Competition may not be the only circumstance that makes the 
 condition under which longer and short hauls are performed sub- 
 stantially dissimilar, but it certainly is the most obvious and most 
 effective one, and must have been in contemplation of Congress in 
 passing the act. The court refers to the case of the Union Pacific 
 Railway, v. the United States (10 U. S. 662, and 117 U. S. 355), 
 wherein the company charged the Government local rates for trans- 
 porting United States troops from Council Bluffs to Ogden, such 
 rates being higher than the Union Pacific's share for a through 
 passenger to San Francisco. The question was decided in favor of 
 the Union Pacific by the Supreme Court, which held (117 U. S. 
 
8U THE PEOPLE AND THE RAIL WA YS. 
 
 355) f the services rendered by a railway company in transporting 
 local passengers from one point on its line to another is not iden- 
 tical with the service rendered in transporting a through passenger 
 over the same rails.' The decisions of the Supreme Court in 
 these cases were doubtless present in the mind of Congress at the 
 passage of the Interstate Commerce Act, but under the Inter- 
 state Act, mere difference in distance is not such a circumstance 
 as will justify a greater or even an equal charge for a short haul 
 than a long one, yet Congress must have contemplated that there 
 might be such a difference in the circumstances attending a long 
 and a short haul as would make it necessary for railway corpora- 
 tions in the acquisition and retention of the business for which 
 their roads are constructed and operated to charge less for a long 
 haul than for a short one. Congress never intended to make of 
 this act a procrustean bed in which the conduct of the business of 
 roads engaged in interstate commerce shall be made to conform 
 to one arbitrary rule without reference to probable and even un- 
 avoidable differences in the conditions and circumstances under 
 which it must be transacted." But, eliminating this, and the pro- 
 visions which establish at Washington a Depository or Congres- 
 sional Library of Railway Tariffs and Schedules for Immemorial 
 Preservation and what is left ? Certainly nothing except the 
 penal clauses to which allusion has just been made. 
 
 The bottom trouble is that the people of this great nation the 
 masses, the voters have neither leisure nor inclination to study the 
 workings of the railway industry, an industry that operates 139,- 
 986 miles of roadway with $8,000,000,000 of capital, and gives di- 
 rect employment to two or three millions of the population and in- 
 directly supports some seven millions more (though that there is 
 a single individual of our sixty-five or seventy millions of popula- 
 tion who is entirely independent of any railway service may be 
 reasonably doubted.) What they do see is that vast private fort- 
 unes have been accumulated somehow in connection with rail- 
 ways. But nothing is further from the thoughts of these masses 
 these voters than to pause to inquire whether the private fort- 
 une has been produced by the operation of the railways, or by the 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. M 
 
 manipulation of their securities, by the earnings, or by the bank- 
 ruptcies of the companies themselves. The masses the voters 
 say, therefore, " We must have a law to put an end to this over- 
 aggregation of wealth in the hands of a few ; it is dangerous to 
 society, to the nation." They have the interstate commerce law. 
 They think it suits them. Perhaps it does. But while it will 
 have no effect on the accumulation of private fortunes, it certainly 
 will not operate to relieve the railway companies fromthechanc.es 
 of bankruptcy or the railway wrecker who comes after. Possibly 
 it would be premature to say exactly what the interstate law can 
 or cannot do. That its only effect so far has been to increase 
 rates to the shipper, I suppose is conceded. But the raising of a 
 few rates is a most trifling matter compared with the question 
 whether the law itself is in accord with our national policy. 
 Never mind what private industry it embarrasses if it only con- 
 serves a public interest. If it can be shown that the inter state 
 commerce law is patriotic and constitutional, its mere effect upon 
 any matter of private concern sinks at once into the perspective. 
 I am sure that the law the people wanted was one not framed to 
 cripple any given industry, but rather, if possible, to protect all in- 
 dustries. And that in their desire to protect all alike, the fact 
 that railway companies, like other artificial persons, were yet per- 
 sons in law and entitled to enjoy every privilege given them by 
 the State, was neither intended to be overlooked or denied. I ad- 
 mit, of course, that the common law ought to protect the railway 
 companies from the railway wrecker so that no statute should be 
 required. But so, also, ought the common law to protect the 
 shipper by providing (and it so happens that it does so provide) 
 that every railway should make its rates reasonable, so that no 
 statute should be required. If the common law, however, has 
 failed in either case, let us examine if it has not likewise failed in 
 both. But the fact is, that while the common law has neither 
 protected the railways from the wreckers nor the people from ex- 
 orbitant rates, the pool has and did both. But, no sooner had it 
 done so, than the interstate commerce law stepped in and abol- 
 ished the pool ! 
 
 It is not the purpose of this monograph to attempt to meet all 
 
84 THE PEOPLE AND THE HAIL WA TS. 
 
 the specifications of disability which the inter state Commerce Act 
 must necessarily work. We might inquire, for example, as to the 
 expediency of increasing the national patronage by running all 
 the railway companies of this Union (as we once attempted to 
 run its armies in the field) at Washington. At present the peo- 
 ple are happy in the appointment of an interstate commerce com- 
 mission which leaves nothing to be desired. But can we be cer- 
 tain always of an equal good fortune ? Even as we write, rumors 
 of socialist parties and so-called " labor " and anarchist parties 
 hurtle in the air. Is it the part of safety to put into the hands of 
 politicians and office-seekers all these delicate interests in which, 
 as we have seen, the very commercial life of this people of this 
 nation is wrapped up ? To recapitulate, practically : The rail- 
 roads of the United States in 1887 had 139,986 miles of track, 
 the value of railroad property was $8,287,834,614, and the earn- 
 ings for the year were $765,310,519. Over two million persons 
 directly draw their support wholly or in part from the railways, 
 and all the vast commercial and financial interests of sixty-five 
 millions of people are involved in every move or measure that af- 
 fects their welfare or efficiency. And yet, under the close and 
 skilful management of men of ability, who have given their whole 
 lives to the business, the railways of the country, out of aggregate 
 earnings of nearly $800,000,000 a year, did not average a profit of 
 three per cent per annum on the capital invested in them. In 
 1885 the excess of available revenue over actual payments of op- 
 erating expenses, interest and dividends, was but $2,817,218 for 
 the entire railway system of the United States, and the total of 
 the dividends paid was less than one per cent upon the capital, in 
 spite of the fact that of the nearly two million men employed by 
 the railway companies of the nation, over 75,000 are trained and 
 skilled in the profession, some 25,000 being expert clerks and 
 accountants, many of them at salaries of from $10,000 to $25,000 
 a year. But to remedy these evils the Interstate Commerce Act 
 provides for a bureau headed by five commissioners at salaries of 
 $7,500 per year, with a single chief clerk at $3,500, and while 
 defining the political complexion of these only touches the ques- 
 tion of their qualification by practically enacting that no man 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 85 
 
 should be eligible to the office of commissioner who, from his 
 previous training, occupation or experience, could be supposed to 
 know anything of railway management ! a provision upon the 
 ignoring of which in the appointment of the Hon. Thomas R. 
 Cooley chairman of the first commission, the public is to be sin- 
 cerely congratulated. 
 
 Then, allusion should be made here to the embarrassment which 
 the trans-continental companies are suffering from the inroads; 
 made into the traffic business by the Canadian Pacific since the 
 interstate law went into effect. As was predicted, the new law, 
 taken in connection with the provisions of the treaty of Wash- 
 ington, which permits the transportation of goods in bond from 
 points in one country through the territory of the other, back to 
 the country from which consignment was originally made, is 
 found to result in a material advantage to the Canadian company. 
 This road is, of course, not affected by the provisions of the inter- 
 state law, and so it is able to cut freight rates to figures far below 
 those which are offered by the American roads. Did Congress 
 propose to crush its own constituency in behalf of Canada, if 
 so be in the operation it could " dominate " the railroads ? 
 Again, in section 6 of the act, the words : " And any freight 
 shipped from the United States through a foreign country, the 
 through rate on which shall not have been made public as re- 
 quired by this act shall, before it is admitted to the United States, 
 from said foreign country, be subject to customs duties as if 
 said freight were of foreign production ; and any law in conflict 
 with this section is hereby repealed" not only repeal a portion of 
 the United States customs law, but make domestic goods subject 
 to duty in domestic ports, thus making the owner or producer 
 suffer for an act not performed or procured by him ! What was 
 the intention of Congress here ? As we write we are under the 
 disability arising from the fact that no provision of the act has 
 yet been enforced (for fear, as the enemies of the act will have 
 it, of making a case for the Supreme Court, and a probable opin- 
 ion by that court declaring the act unconstitutional.) The only 
 positive decision by the commission, so far, has been the declara- 
 
86 TEE PEOPLE AND THE HAIL WAYS. 
 
 tion (re Louisville & Nashville R. E-. Co.) in which the Commis- 
 sion refused to interpret the act under which itself was created, 
 but declared that the railroad companies must observe it at their 
 own peril, which to some might, perhaps, suggest that Roman 
 Emperor who wrote his laws above the heads and out of sight of 
 his subjects, but punished their non-observance thereof with 
 death.* 
 
 To so much of the foregoing as relates to the rights of the stock- 
 holder (on its publication in the columns of the Railway JZeview.) 
 I had the honor of receiving (through the same channel) the fol- 
 lowing reply from Senator Cullom, who championed the Interstate 
 Commerce Bill in the Senate : " The article (mine) in question is 
 based largely upon a misapprehension of the powers of Congress 
 with respect to the regulation of interstate commerce which seems 
 to be quite common, and to which, perhaps, public attention 
 should be called. 
 
 The writer begins by stating that he is unable to see any 
 
 * As a sample of the speculations with which the non-railway reader 
 perused the provisions of the Interstate Commerce Act, I instance the fol 
 lowing : 
 
 EXPENSIVE CURIOSITY. 
 To the Editor of The Tribune. 
 
 SIR : The Interstate Commerce of the country looks to Judge Cooley 
 and his associate commissioners to nullify and render inoperative the pro- 
 visions of the extraordinary law under which they were appointed. If by 
 an expenditure of $ 100,000 (or of $ 10,000,000 for that matter) the country 
 can be saved from the folly of a Democratic Congress, and the laws of 
 trade put back to where they were before it began to meddle with the laws 
 of supply and demand, the country can well afford the money. That the 
 first step to centralization should be taken by the party that has always 
 claimed to abhor it (especially when dominated by an element that was 
 once willing to take the hazard of a civil war rather than surrender a mod- 
 icum of the doctrine of State rights) is only one, and the least, of the cu- 
 riosities of the Interstate Commerce Act. Indeed, it is a difficult thing ex- 
 actly to define its purpose. It may be extravagant to suppose the legisla- 
 tion a scheme to help spend the surplus by enacting a law to change a per- 
 fectly satisfactory situation and then appointing a costly commission to 
 nullify the law so as to restore the situation. Or it may be a case of the 
 lion in the lobby, the question for the Speaker being whether the animal 
 is to be kept out or let in for the purpose of seeing whether it can be put 
 out in either case a rather expensive piece of curiosity. 
 
 Yours respectfully, 
 
 JOHN W. BKT,L. 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 87 
 
 necessity for such a statute as the Interstate Commerce Act, and 
 that he does not believe in its justice, fairness, equity, or expedi- 
 ency either to the people or the 'railroads. In these respects he 
 certainly differs with a very large majority of both branches of 
 Congress, and, as I believe, of the people of the United States. 
 He criticises the law because { it abounds with punishments 
 against an industry chartered by the people, but nowhere extends 
 to that industry a morsel of approval or protection/ It might 
 suffice to say in answer to this that the railroads have always 
 shown themselves fully competent to protect their own interests, 
 while the shippers have found great difficulty in doing so. But in 
 the practical administration of the law Mr. Morgan will find, if lie 
 will examine it carefully, that all reasonable protection has been af- 
 forded the railroads, which are only subject to the penalties provid 
 ed in case of willful and intentional violations of the statute, and 
 which are expressly relieved from liability for violations that may 
 have occurred through accident or mistake in the hurry of great 
 and complicated business transactions, if they are disposed to cor- 
 rect the wrongs thus done when their attention is called to them. 
 As was said by the Interstate Commerce Commission, in one of 
 its first decisions : 
 
 ' Throughout the act, as it now stands, in confessedly experi- 
 mental form, there is exhibited an obvious and a generous pur- 
 pose to allow to the corporations ample scope in the conduct of 
 their business as common carriers for the people, and fair con- 
 sideration of every reasonable claim, while insisting upon just, 
 impartial, open and consistent rates of charge to which every 
 citizen shall be subject alike whose situation is the same. Surely 
 the people could not ask for less.' 
 
 "But theburden of Mr. Morgan's complaint against the law ap- 
 pears to be that it does not protect the railways and the people 
 " from the machinations of the railway wrecker, and from the 
 consequent bankruptcies and defaults in meeting fixed charges 
 arising from the over construction of branch lines and paralleling 
 of trunk lines, that money may be made in their building and 
 the like." And he asks why a national statute should not be en- 
 
88 TUB PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 acted to protect the interests of the railway stockholders as well 
 as of the shippers. 
 
 "If Mr. Morgan will examine the report of the Senate committee 
 on interstate commerce, which drafted the measure that formed 
 the basis of the present law, he will find these questions fully 
 discussed and answered. The committee recognized the import- 
 ance of preventing in the future the building of unnecessary 
 railroads for purposes of speculation, stock watering, fictitious 
 capitalization, and similar operations by railway speculators and 
 wreckers, which have resulted in imposing a continuous and 
 serious illegitimate burden upon the commerce and people of the 
 country ; but inasmuch as, under the constitution, the jurisdic- 
 tion of Congress extends only to the transportation of inter- 
 state commerce, and not to the methods of organization, the 
 manner of construction and the financial transactions of railroads 
 chartered by the States, no way could be suggested by which 
 congress by a national statute could properly interfere with 
 matters which were exclusively within the jurisdiction of the re- 
 spective States. Speaking of these questions, the committee say : 
 ' The importance of affording better guarantees to the invest- 
 ment of capital in future legitimate railroad enterprises, and of 
 maintaining the credit of American railway securities at home 
 and abroad, naturally suggest the inquiry whether any remedy 
 for the evils that have been pointed out lies in the hands of Con- 
 gress. The peculiarity of the situation is that, so far as concerns 
 the charter restrictions which have been suggested, the jurisdic- 
 tion of the states extends over both the State and the interstate 
 roads ; and the committee, after due consideration of the questions 
 involved, does not believe that Congress, by virtue of its un- 
 doubted power to regulate interstate transportation, can, with- 
 out interference with the rights of the State exercise any 
 direct or indirect control over the granting of charters to rail- 
 roads by the States or over the other proceedings preliminary to 
 their construction.' 
 
 " Congress has endeavored to protect the interests of the shippers 
 in so far as its jurisdiction extends, but it has no authority to 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 89 
 
 enact such legislation as Mr. Morgan suggests in the interest of 
 railway stockholders, even if it should be deemed advisable."* 
 
 Is it possible that the above can be true ? Is it a fact that 
 Congress has no jurisdiction over any personal rights except 
 the personal rights of shippers over railways ? that the fact of be- 
 ing a railway company or a stockholder or officer of one removes a 
 corporation or a citizen from any benign or protective jurisdiction of 
 Congress, that such artificial or natural person can be reached by 
 an Act of Congress only to ban and never to bless ? 
 
 But admitting that Senator Cullom's rejoinder is final as to the 
 reason why Congress felt itself able to protect only one party to 
 the contract of transportation (and that one the party already pro- 
 tected at common law), it does not appear to me to meet the fore- 
 going general criticisms of the context of the Interstate Com- 
 merce Act ; namely, that by abolishing the pool, that act has raised 
 rates to the shipper and put the railways more than ever into the 
 power of the stock-jobber and the railway wrecker by re-inaugu- 
 rating the era of railway wars arid suicidal competitions, while at 
 the same time forbidding them to recoup themselves by holding 
 their own local tariffs. Congress may have had, indeed, no con- 
 stitutional power to interfere directly and favorably in behalf of the 
 citizen who has invested in railway properties. But, it seems, 
 that it none the less has interfered, indirectly and unfavorably 
 against MQ\I citizen. 
 
 Senator Cullom passes my criticism that the Interstate Com- 
 merce Act abolishes the magna charta principle of " due process of 
 law"; but urges that railway companies "are only subject to the 
 pains and penalties provided in case of willful and intentional vio- 
 lation of the statute " and that the present Interstate Commerce 
 Commission has so directly held. Of course, if the railways will 
 refrain from doing any interstate business they will not come 
 under jurisdiction of the interstate act, and I expressly urged that 
 the present commission left nothing to be desired. My point is 
 that the act had provided penalties, " civil, criminal and as for 
 
 * The Railway Review, Chicago, October 1st, 1887. 
 
90 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 contempt " ; that it is not impossible that, in view of certain 
 political portents, we might come to have a commission less satis- 
 factory than the present one ; and that the power to inflict such 
 penalties upon a perfectly legitimate industry (and one which the 
 people themselves had chartered) is as dangerous as the penalties 
 themselves are undeserved. It does not do to pass bad laws sim- 
 ply because we happen to have conscientious judges who will look 
 to it that they are not strictly administered. 
 
 The Interstate Commerce Act is either one-sided, injudicious and 
 unpatriotic, or else it is altogether unnecessary. I think it one- 
 sided, because it favors one party to a contract at the expense of 
 the other ; injudicious, because it abolishes the practical method 
 (the pool) which the railways themselves had devised) from the ac- 
 cumulated wisdom of fifty years of experience) for actually and 
 practically doing away with the very evil (discrimination) which 
 Congress (with no wisdom or experience on the subject from which 
 wisdom could be born, and with nothing but public clamor and 
 pure theory however well meant to guide them), framed a the- 
 oretical law to prevent. I think the Interstate Commerce Act un- 
 patriotic, not only because it is turning over to the foreign rail- 
 roads, which parallel our own through Canadian territory, business 
 which our own can apply and satisfactorily do, but because it it- 
 self discriminates against the shipper and the product of native in- 
 dustry. Take for example in the sixth section the words : "And 
 any freight shipped from the United States through a foreign 
 country, the through rate on which shall not have been made pub- 
 lic as required by this act, shall, before it is admitted to the United 
 States from said foreign country, be subject to customs duties as 
 if said freight were of foreign production. And any law in con- 
 flict with this section is hereby repealed " (which have already been 
 quoted, but cannot be quoted too often.) I have not before me 
 (as perhaps I should have, to competently criticise this passage) 
 the debates of Congress : but here, it seems to me, in a single clause, 
 is not only a repeal of a portion of our federal customs law, but a 
 positive provision subjecting certain domestic goods to duty in 
 domestic ports, and making their citizen owners suffer for acts 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 01 
 
 not performed or procured by themselves and entirely beyond their 
 control. 
 
 But if the interstate commerce act be not one-sided, injudicious 
 and unpatriotic that is to say, if the clause " under substantially 
 similar circumstances and conditions " is held to be of the essence of 
 the act then it certainly is unnecessary. For it is certainly unnec- 
 essary to pass a law that railway companies shall be guided by 
 circumstances, and observe the conditions under which they op- 
 erate. The act in such case then, as to the shipper, simply sub- 
 stitutes a question of fact for a question of law, and as to the rail- 
 way (except that it establishes a sort of national library at Wash- 
 ington for the deposit and preservation of railway schedules) is a 
 nullity. And perhaps for the people this would be the happiest 
 construction possible, were it not for the unfortunate policy of 
 building up Canadian railway systems, constructed by English 
 Government loans for the express purpose of " knifing " the rail- 
 way systems of the United States. 
 
 Says Mr. Nimmo : " The case as it stands is that the Canadian 
 Goveenment has thrown the full force of a subsidy of about 
 $130,000,000 expended for the construction of the Canadian Paci- 
 fic Railway, and of an annual subsidy of $300,000 to a British 
 ocean steamer line, for the purpose of diverting an important 
 branch of our foreign commerce from American to British trans- 
 portation lines and trade centres, and that, too, with the special 
 object in view of promoting Imperial objects on this continent. 
 The audacity of the scheme would be astounding if it were not 
 British. We must protect American interests against such pro- 
 tection of British interests. One of the reasons assigned in the 
 Declaration of Independence for a creation of a new nation was 
 that the King of Great Britain had given his assent to legislation 
 " for cutting off our trade with all parts of the world." But so 
 far from complaining, we have passed an act of interstate commerce 
 which assists this political railroad to cripple our own railway 
 systems. And the proposition is not to abolish it but to strength- 
 en its provisions by making more rigid the penalties for its in- 
 fraction. 
 
92 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 APOLOGIES FOB THE LAW FROM ITS PROMOTER ; SENATOR 
 CULLOM'S SPEECH CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTIONS. 
 
 IT is one of the cardinal rules for the interpretation of statutes 
 that when an apparent ambiguity does not yield readily to 
 known canons of construction, the intention of the framers of 
 the statute should he sought. It is certainly nothing less than 
 simple fairness, therefore, to quote verbatim a speech made by 
 the Hon. Shelby M. Cullom, who fathered the Interstate Com- 
 merce Act in the Senate, made by him at Springfield, Illinois, 
 June 29th, 1887. The senator spoke as follows : 
 
 " Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention : 
 
 I appreciate fully the compliment implied in the invitation ex- 
 tended me to address you on this occasion, and I feel gratified 
 that such a representative body of business men should be willing 
 to suspend its regular proceedings to listen to any remarks from 
 me. Realizing that you have come together here as men of affairs 
 to discuss questions affecting your business interests in a 
 business-like way, and feeling that it would be imposing on your 
 courtesy to occupy much of your time, I promise to be brief and 
 to confine myself to some general observations in relation to the 
 subject of interstate commerce and the law recently passed on 
 that subject about which you have requested me to talk. 
 
 I may be allowed to say in the outset that since the passage of 
 the law, I have so far been silent in relation to the act or its 
 effects upon the country, preferring to wait for a time after the 
 law had been in force, and until the Commission appointed to en- 
 force it had got fairly to work in the performance of its respon- 
 sible duties. The law has not been in force quite three months, 
 yet in this brief time the business of the country and of the 
 railroads have made some progress in adjusting themselves to the 
 new law, and I may be mistaken, but I venture to say that I 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE 11 AIL WATS. 93 
 
 doubt not that you gentlemen and the farmers with whom you 
 have to deal, feel that you have so far been benefited by the act. 
 You are placed on an equality with each other in your dealings 
 with the railroads, which now pay more attention to the rights of 
 non-competing points; and I am told by grain buyers in this 
 section that freight rates between this section and the East have 
 been reduced very considerably since the law took effect. The 
 enactment of that law at the last session of Congress marked the 
 beginning of a new era in railway administration, and was the 
 culmination of a memorable and long-continued struggle for 
 supremacy between the people of this country and the combined 
 power of the railway corporations which the people brought into 
 being, but which have assumed to be independent of the power 
 that created them. This was the real issue, although it was 
 ingeniously involved in numerous side issues, and all the powerful 
 influences possessed by vast aggregations of capital were arrayed 
 together with the common purpose of preventing the Federal 
 Government from assuming to control the operations of the 
 railroads subject to its authority. The contest which has been 
 waged of late years in Congress was but a continuation of the 
 struggle inaugurated here in Illinois and in neighboring States 
 years ago, and which finally resulted in the notable triumph 
 achieved by the people in the decisions by the United States 
 Supreme Court in the so-called " Granger Cases," and in the 
 establishment of State railroad regulation. 
 
 " Whatever may be found upon trial to be the merits or demerits 
 of the new law, I consider its enactment a great victory for the 
 people, because its passage was a declaration by Congress of its 
 power over the subject, under the constitution, and that hereafter 
 the power of the General Government will be used to see that 
 these great highways of traffic are conducted upon honest business 
 principles for the common good, instead, as in many instances, for 
 the benefit of such localities and individuals or corporations as 
 their managers may see fit to build up and favor. 
 
 It cannot be denied, and men engaged in the conduct of rail- 
 roads will not deny, that in the management of the business of 
 
94 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 railroads there has not been exercised a proper regard for the 
 rights of the people. The new law is confessedly an experiment 
 as to some of its provisions. Those who are responsible for its 
 terms have never been disposed to claim that it was perfect, but 
 it represented their best judgment after careful investigation. 
 
 " To put it in a little different way, it was the best bill to which 
 the two Houses of Congress could agree. It could not reasonably 
 be expected that the intricacies and complications of the railroad 
 problem, which have puzzled the wisest minds of this and other 
 countries for years, could be solved at the first attempt ; but a 
 long stride in advance has been taken, and if we hold fast the 
 great advantages already gained, time and experience will render 
 further progress safe and certain. 
 
 " The act will not be repealed, and if any persons or corporations 
 imagine it will, they may as well dismiss that expectation. Its 
 substantial provisions have come to stay, because the people will 
 find out, if they have not already, that they are in the interest of 
 the general welfare. 
 
 " The new law is often represented by those with whose accus- 
 tomed privileges it has interfered, to be a vague, ambiguous, 
 bungled affair, which its promoters do not understand and could 
 not explain. This was the fashionable mode of attack upon the 
 measure while it was pending in Congress, but that mode of 
 attack has become less popular since the law went into effect, and 
 those interests have been obliged to study its provisions. As a 
 prominent railroad man said to me some time ago, referring to 
 such statements : " We quit saying that some time ago we 
 know too well what it means." So far as my observation goes, 
 those who are attacking the law and seeking to overthrow it, are 
 the persons who profess to find difficulties in understanding its 
 meaning. It is in their way. They want to get rid of 
 it. The true ground of objection on the part of such critics is 
 to be found in the purposes and not in the alleged ambiguity 
 of the law. The fact is, that there is nothing particularly new or 
 startling in its provisions ; similar provisions are found in 
 the constitutions and statutes of many of the States and 
 in the laws of other countries. Much of the language used 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE BAIL WAYS. 95 
 
 in the most important sections has a settled meaning, having 
 been judicially construed either in this country or in England, 
 and this is especially true of some of the phases which have 
 been most generally attacked as meaningless and ambiguous. 
 Briefly stated, the great purpose of the law is to prevent unjust 
 discrimination. About all the wrong-doing by common carriers 
 in dealing with the people, is the result of unjust discrimination 
 in one form or another. The law requires that all charges shall 
 be reasonable and just it prohibits all kinds of unjust discrim- 
 inations between individuals ; it prohibits undue or unreasonable 
 preferences or advantages in favor of persons or places, or any 
 particular description of traffic. 
 
 "It requires reasonable and equal facilities to be extended to 
 others for the interchange of traffic, and it prohibits pooling. 
 Surely, there is nothing unreasonable or outrageous in these re- 
 quirements. They simply apply the cardinal principles of the 
 Declaration of Independence to the management of railroads by 
 declaring that all men shall be equal in the eye of the railroad 
 manager, and that all who are situated alike shall be treated alike 
 without fear or favor, and that whatever their situation may be, 
 all must be treated fairly. 
 
 " The need of such a declaration has been shown more plainly 
 than ever, by the nature and character of the complaints made 
 against the enforcement of the law. The entire system of rail- 
 road management has been honeycombed with discriminations, 
 some justifiable, but more wholly without excuse. The new law, 
 to a large degree, revolutionized the methods of railway rate- 
 making that previously prevailed, and it was to be expected that 
 when it went into operation it would seriously disturb the exist- 
 ing conditions of business. The object of the lawis'to secure the 
 greatest good to the greatest number, and this could not be ac- 
 complished without interfering with the arrangements of those 
 who were recipients of undue or unreasonable advantages. It 
 was necessary that those who had previously been especially 
 favored should be denied these privileges for the common good, 
 and the readjustment of business to the changed condition of 
 
96 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 affairs brought about when the law took effect has taken place 
 with very much less friction or commercial disturbance than I 
 had anticipated. 
 
 " The prohibition of a greater charge for a shorter than for a 
 longer haul is objected to on the ground that it is an interference 
 with the natural laws of trade and with natural trade centres. 
 My answer to this is, that for many years past the railroads of 
 the country have so absolutely controlled our interstate commerce 
 that we have no means of knowing what are the natural channels 
 of traffic or what would be the effect of the natural laws of trade 
 upon many at least of the present commercial centres. What the 
 critics of the law call natural centres of trade are centres created 
 by railway favoritism, which has diverted trade from its natural 
 channels into artificial ones at the expense of less favored local- 
 ities. So far the chief opposition to the law by the railroads has 
 been directed against the fourth section, which provides against 
 charging more for the short than for the longer distance on the 
 same line and in the same direction, etc. That section was at- 
 tacked with such earnestness by so many railroads and combina- 
 tions of roads after the law took effect and the Commission was 
 appointed, that the Commission was induced to make orders in 
 several cases suspending the operation of that section as to certain 
 roads, and to relieve other roads from the operation of the section 
 in the transaction of certain portions of their business. The Com- 
 mission has been somewhat severely criticised in certain quarters 
 for so doing. It has recently given notice that the relief will not 
 be continued after the specified time expires. I thought the 
 Commission was straining the authority granted to them in their 
 action in granting relief, and if they had the power it was per- 
 haps a mistake to exercise it to the extent they did. They had 
 just come into office, however, but a few days before the law went 
 into force. There had been a constant expression of fear on the 
 part of some and a declaration of many men operating long lines 
 of road that a compliance with the section would ruin them and 
 the business of the country, and under all the circumstances I 
 was not surprised at the action of the board. They now have 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 97 
 
 their grip, and feel that they comprehend the situation ; and their 
 opinion on petitions for relief under section four of the act indi- 
 cates that they intend to allow that section of the act to have as 
 much force and effect as other provisions of the statute, except in 
 such special cases as clearly call for relief, and I trust that relief 
 will hereafter be granted only after careful investigation. 
 
 " It is easy to abouse a public officer, and the most ignorant can 
 do it, and frequently do with more freedom than do the wise : 
 and I feel like saying, I take pleasure in saying, that while the 
 commission may have made a mistake in giving relief from the 
 short-haul clause to the extent they did in the outset, yet I have 
 no question but that they believed the course they pursued was 
 the wise one, and I am not prepared to say with confidence that 
 it was not. I believe they are doing the best they can. I do not 
 believe that the law would result in any substantial good to the 
 people without such a special tribunal for its enforcement. JSTo 
 law would be of any account to the country without a wise and 
 prudent commission to enforce it. It is fashionable to attack 
 commissioners charged with a special duty, but I trust that the 
 commission charged with the great work of protecting the people 
 in their dealings with the railroads engaged in interstate com- 
 merce under this neV law will be upheld and strengthened in the 
 performance of their duty. It is their duty to enforce the law, 
 and I hope now that they have made known to the railroads their 
 general views on the question of the construction of the statute 
 as it applies to the operation of railroads, and as it affects their 
 own action, that they will give more definite and specific attention 
 to the question whether the schedules of rates of freight filed in 
 their office are made out according to law without unjust discrimi- 
 nation or extortion against any persons or localities, and also the 
 question whether the roads are actually complying with their 
 schedules and the law. 
 
 " The danger in my judgment is that, even with the Commission, 
 after a little time the railroads will drop back into their old 
 habits of unjust discrimination, of paying rebates and practicing 
 favoritism, etc. It will require the vigilance of the Commission 
 
98 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 as well as of the people to bring our common carriers into the 
 way of doing business as the law and justice to all require. It is 
 charged that they are not yet doing business in that way. It is 
 charged that they are trying to so operate by appearing to comply 
 with the statute as to make the law offensive to the people, 
 and thereby secure its repeal. I make no such charges, because 
 I do not know what the facts are ; but railroad companies and 
 their managers need not attempt to deceive the people, and I 
 trust they will not, for any such attempt will fail and will only 
 prolong the struggle. There should be no antagonism between 
 the shipper and the common carrier ; the one is a necessity to the 
 other. You gentlemen engaged in the grain trade cannot get 
 along without the railroads, and I am sure so many railroads can- 
 not be supported without your patronage ; so the relation between 
 the railroads and the people should be thoroughly friendly, their 
 prosperity being dependent on each other. The great purpose of 
 the law, as I said, is to prevent unjust discrimination, to bring 
 the common carriers down to legitimate, fair, straightforward 
 dealings. The railroads are common carriers ; they are, in a sense, 
 agents of the people ; they occupy a different relation to the 
 public from the merchant or the farmer. They are from the very 
 nature of things monopolies, and are performing a public trust, 
 and it is the duty of the State and nation to see that as monopo- 
 lies they do not abuse the privileges granted to them. 
 
 "But gentlemen, I promised you that I would be brief. This 
 subject is too great to discuss satisfactorily in a few moments' 
 time. If the law in its general scope and purpose is right, stand 
 by it ; if it is imperfect and needs modifying, strengthening or 
 amending, let the Commission and Congress know wherein; and 
 I trust that it will not be long before we shall have a perfect 
 statute that will secure justice to the people and the railroads 
 alike, and that increased prosperity may result to all." 
 
 The minor points of this argument would seem to yield to a 
 very rapid treatment. Some of its readers, indeed, might object 
 to such a division of the inhabitants of the United States into 
 "men engaged in the conduct of railroads " and "the people^" as 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE MAIL WA YS. 99 
 
 being neither geographical, political, economical or social: or 
 that it was scarcely reason enough for writing a new law in the 
 statute book for the regulation of either class that such law 
 "represented the best judgment " of those "responsible for it:" 
 or that " it was the best bill to which the two houses could 
 agree." Such a statement, no doubt, fails utterly to reach the 
 question at issue, namely : the necessity for any law of the sort at 
 all. And it surely will not lead to any conviction of the neces- 
 sity of such a law when the senator himself admits "that 
 the intricacies and complications of the railroad problem " have 
 " puzzled the wisest minds of this and other countries for years," 
 and could not reasonably be expected to be " solved " by the Inter- 
 state Commerce Law. The simple rejoinder is, why, then, coquette 
 with these intricacies and complications ? Why not leave them to 
 those whose life-training and experience it has been to meet and 
 struggle with them ? Why, most of all, enact a provision for 
 summary treatment of these problems by non-experts (who, we 
 are willing enough to admit, were doing the best they could with 
 them) into a law of the land ? 
 
 Senator Cullom proceeds : 
 
 " So far as my observation goes those who are attacking the 
 law and seeking to overthrow it, are the persons who profess to 
 find difficulties in understanding its meaning." 
 
 Well, why not ? It is certainly not unnatural that persons who 
 are aggrieved by a law should be the ones to attack it. One could 
 hardly expect the reverse ; that those who are not aggrieved by a 
 law should be the ones to attack it. We certainly do not find the 
 iron trade attacking the duty on wool or the wool growers fight- 
 ing the tariffs on iron. Who should be aggrieved by a law regu- 
 lating the railways if not the railways themselves ? 
 
 The senator says (going on to dispose of the charge that the 
 law is ambiguous) " much of the language used in the most im- 
 portant sections has a settled meaning, having been judicially 
 construed either in this country or in England, and this is espe- 
 cially true of some of the phrases which have been most generally 
 attacked as meaningless and ambiguous." But if this is true, if 
 
100 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 it is true that all the phrases which the Interstate Commerce Act 
 employs have already been judicially construed, and are already 
 a part of the common law applying to carriers, why not let 
 them stand in the common law why rearrange them and so 
 necessitate their being judicially construed all over again in 
 their new context ? We know what a reasonable charge is ; that 
 it has been held over and over again a rule of the common law 
 relating to carriers that all their charges must be " reasonable." 
 And any volume of Reports of any State over whose territory 
 a railway runs will give us the rules by which to determine 
 whether a certain charge is or is not " reasonable." But here 
 comes an act and overrules and overrides all common law and 
 says that the " reasonableness " must be " under substantially 
 similar circumstances and conditions," thus raising a question of 
 fact which it might easily require the subpoenaing of the entire 
 pay roll of a trunk line to adequately try ! For certainly no item 
 or element of fact, from the price of cotton waste to an eclipse of 
 the sun, could reasonably be excluded were it proposed to exhaust- 
 ively examine so complicated a problem, and the inquest might 
 readily stretch out to the crack of doom. As to the advisability 
 of controlling our railways as imperial Germany does hers, and 
 of administering them by English procedures, we may have some- 
 thing to say further on. 
 
 The senator says : " Briefly stated, the great purpose of the law 
 is to prevent unjust discrimination. About all the wrong doing 
 by common cariers in dealing with the people is the result of in- 
 just discrimination in one form or another." But "to prevent un- 
 just discrimination " was the purpose and has come to be the result 
 of the pools which the act abolishes. This I have so fully discuss- 
 ed elsewhere that there need be no demonstration here. But why 
 pass an act to prevent in the future that which has already been 
 prevented in the present and forever ? Why theoretically and under 
 construction of the courts provide a prevention for that which has 
 already been actually and practically put an end to ? 
 
 'The history of American Railways down to the date of the 
 Interstate Law is the history of tariff and rate reductions to the 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 1()1 
 
 shipper and the passenger. Since that date the procession re- 
 versed itself and the rates and the tariffs are on the crescendo 
 again. 
 
 Here again the Interstate Law has kept the word of promise to 
 the ear and broken it to the hope. It provides that there shall 
 be no more discrimination. But in the same breath it abolishes 
 the practical instrument which prevents discrimination. 
 
 What, then, is meant by the phrase " under substantially similar 
 circumstances and conditions ? " If it means what Judge Deady 
 meant when he declared that railway companies have a right to 
 live, then the Interstate Commerce Law is surplusage and un- 
 necessary. For certainly it is not necessary to pass a law pro- 
 viding that railway companies shall be governed by circumstances 
 and operated with reference to existing conditions. Railway 
 companies, are, I suppose, reasonably certain to do that under any 
 circumstances and conditions. The senator says, " If the law is 
 unnecessary it can be amended." Who wants to amend an " un- 
 necessary law ? " If the familiar fact that a law can be amended 
 is an excuse for passing it, what law is not entitled to be written in 
 our statute books ? 
 
 The senator says, " The Interstate Commerce Law is nothing 
 but an application of the cardinal principle of the Declaration of 
 Independence to the management of railroads, declaring that all 
 men should be equal in the eye of the railroad." So be it. But 
 why should not the cardinal principle of the Declaration of In- 
 dependence be applied to the Railroad Company as well as to the 
 shipper, to the man who invests his money in an embankment 
 and a track and rolling stock, as well as to the man who sends his 
 produce to market by means of those conveniences ? 
 
 But the words " under substantially similar circumstances and 
 conditions/' are not the only ones used in the Interstate Commerce 
 Act which must now be construed, we italicise several others. 
 
 " The Law," says Senator Cullom, "prohibits all kinds of unjust 
 discriminations between individuals, it prohibits undue or un- 
 reasonable preferences or advantages in favor of persons or 
 places or any particular description of traffic. It requires rea- 
 
102 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 sonable and equal facilities to be extended by each railroad to 
 others for the interchange of traffic * * Surely there is 
 nothing unreasonable or outrageous." But every one of these 
 words in the vernacular, is a relative not a positive term, and an 
 act which uses them, unless construed anew in every given case, is 
 like a sumptuary law which should provide that every man wear 
 a hat as large as a piece of chalk, and should neglect to decree the 
 size of the piece of chalk. 
 
 The question of the constitutionality of the Interstate Com- 
 merce Act is a long one, and would require a volume to even 
 approximately discuss. Authorities are not wanting, for the gen- 
 eral policy of the act lias been often before the State courts as 
 well as the Supreme Court of the United States. Upon careful 
 perusal of the opinions, often elaborate, from those of Chief Justice 
 Marshall to the late Chief Justice Waite, of course differently 
 constituted minds will reach utterly antipodal conclusions. But 
 admitting that the cautious grant of power to Congress "to reg- 
 ulate * * commerce * * * among the several States " was not 
 limited to securing equality TO THE SEVERAL STATES, and to 
 quieting jealousies between them, but extends to the instruments 
 of commerce, (the tracks, trains, motive power) or even to (where 
 the present Interstate Commerce Act extends it) the question of 
 differentiations between "long hauls" and " short hauls," (and so 
 practically to the differentiation between large parcels which 
 require but little handling, and small parcels which require much 
 handling) that grant could hardly extend to Congress power to 
 attempt to equalize the conditions of each hourly detail, the 
 power to cope with which is a liberal education in railroading, and 
 comes only to the expert of long standing and habitude. 
 
 Whether the Interstate Commerce Act, as to its context, exactly 
 and entirely expresses the intention of the fathers in using this en- 
 tremely cautious language, is certainly a question for the courts. 
 The "regulation of commerce" has not ordinarily been con- 
 strued to mean the regulation of the manual and mechanical op- 
 erations of the instruments of commerce. Somewhere or other, 
 it would seem, a discretion must be provided for in the practical 
 
THE PEOPLE AXD THE RAILWAYS. 103 
 
 working of the instrument. If, under a grant of power to regu- 
 late commerce, Congress can prescribe the particular brand of 
 axle-grease to be used, or the amount of cotton waste to be pro- 
 vided for each wheel, certainly a new jurisdiction would be as- 
 sumed by Congress. But where exactly is the line to be drawn ? 
 The Interstate Commerce Act draws it arbitrarily at the tariff. 
 It does not itemize the curious details that go to the cost of hauling 
 frieghts from one State into another, but it says what proportion 
 the prices charged for that haul must be in relation to each other. 
 But is this line the constitutional line ? The gist of the author- 
 ities construing this passage appears to be that the intention of 
 the constitutional clause was to secure a perfect equality to the 
 several States as to commercial rights. And to prevent unjust 
 and invidious distinctions which local jealousies or local and par- 
 tial interests might be disposed to introduce and maintain as 
 against States. (Veazie v. Moor, 14 How., 568, 574 ; Mobile v. 
 Kimball, 102 U. S., 691 ; Welton v. Missouri, 91 Id., 275 ; Gib- 
 bons v. Ogden,9 Wheat,!, 224 ; and see The Federalist, Nos. 7, 71). 
 
 " It may be doubted," said Chief Justice Marshall, " whether 
 any of the evils proceeding from the feebleness of the Federal 
 government contributed more to that great revolution which in- 
 troduced the present system, than the deep and general convic- 
 tion that commerce ought to be regulated by Congress. It is 
 not therefore, matter of surprise that the grant should be as ex- 
 tensive as the mischief, and should comprehend all foreign com- 
 merce and all commerce between the States. (Brown v. Maryland, 
 12 Wheat. 419, 446)." 
 
 So far, then, it would seem as if the power granted to Congress 
 was for the purpose of quieting jealousies between States as to 
 commercial privileges between the States, not to give Congress 
 control of the operations of the instruments of commerce, or to 
 regulate the charges made by transportation companies in differ- 
 entiating those charges to their expenses, the cost of construction, 
 operation, the volume of freights or the presence of competition. 
 Still less was it designed to make States equal commercially, which 
 geography had made unequal in commercial advantages. 
 
104 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 But in Gibbons v. Ogden, the same Chief Justice said : " the 
 power to regulate is to prescribe THE RULE by which the commerce 
 is to be governed. This power, like all others vested in Congress, is 
 complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent * * * 
 as absolutely as it would be in a single government having in its 
 constitution the same restrictions on the exercise of the power as 
 are found in the Constitution of the United States * * * * 
 the government, in regulating commerce between foreign nations 
 and among the States, may use means that also may be employed 
 by a State in the exercise of its acknowledged powers ; that, for 
 example, of regulating commerce within a State * * * 
 The power " to regulate commerce " here meant to be granted, 
 was that power to regulate commerce, which previously existed 
 in the States." (9 Wheat., 197, 204, 207). 
 
 But with all the above amplification which gives to Congress 
 all the power which the States have (and which they still retain 
 undiniinished although they give it) and which interprets the 
 right of Congress to regulate interstate commerce, to include a 
 right also to regulate the internal commerce of any one State it 
 does not seem to be anywhere exactly stated that Congress may 
 regulate any one single detail in the internal operation of any one 
 single instrument of commerce, such as a railway company, and so 
 determine what rate or tariff or classification of freights between 
 what two points shall be a legal and proper, and what illegal and im- 
 proper. And even the language of Waite, C. J., in delivering the 
 opinion in a late case (Pennsylvania Telegraph Co. v. Western 
 Union Telegraph Co., 96 U. S. 1, 9), does not seem, broad as it is, to 
 include it. The Chief Justice's language was as follows : " The 
 power conferred upon Congress to regulate commerce with foreign 
 nations and among the several States is not confined to the in- 
 strumentalities of commerce known or in use when the Constitu- 
 tion was adopted, but keeps pace with the progress of the 
 country, and adapts itself to the new developments of time and 
 circumstances. It was intended for the government of the busi- 
 ness to which it relates at all times and under all circumstances^ 
 and it is not only the right, but the duty of Congress to take care 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 105 
 
 that intercourse among the States and the transmission of intel- 
 ligence are not obstructed or unnecessarily incumbered by State 
 legislation." 
 
 It will be observed that the Chief Justice (after declaring that 
 a telegraph company occupies the same relation to commerce as 
 a carrier of messages, as a railroad company does as a carrier of 
 goods), based his decision on the right of THE STATES to equality, 
 so far as commerce between them was concerned, and to see that 
 the legislation of any one STATE did not operate as a commercial 
 discrimination against any other. This, at any rate, is exactly 
 consonant with holding of the same court in the earlier case of 
 Weltou v. Missouri, 91 U. S. 275, viz. : " It (the grant of power 
 to Congress) covers property which is transported as an article of 
 commerce, from foreign countries or among the States, from 
 hostile or interfering State legislation until it has mingled with 
 and become a part of the general property of the country, and 
 protects it even after it has entered a State, from any burdens 
 imposed by reason of its foreign origin." Again, the power is 
 co-extensive with the subject on whom it acts, and cannot be 
 stopped at the external boundary of a State, but must enter its 
 interior. (Marshall, C. J., in Brown v. Maryland, 12 Wheat. 
 446.) " The fact that several different and independent agencies 
 are employed in transporting the commodity, some acting en- 
 tirely in one State and some acting through two or more States, 
 does not in any respect affect the character of the transaction. 
 To the extent in which each agency acts in that transportation, 
 it is subject to the regulation of commerce." (Field, J., The 
 Daniel Bull, 10 Wall. 557, 565.) 
 
 In the above decisions it would appear that what was insisted 
 on was the right of each State to equal commercial privileges 
 with all the rest ; and even the exact words of the decision of 
 Field, J. (in Sherlock v. Ailing, 93 U. S. 99, 103), in which he 
 holds that the constitutional power of Congress to regulate com- 
 merce " authorizes legislation with respect to all the subjects of 
 * * * interstate commerce, the persons engaged in it, and the in- 
 struments by which it is carried on," do not seem to cover THE 
 
106 . THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 TARIFFS charged by the " instruments," at any rate unless they 
 discriminate against States. In Canada Southern Railway Co. v. 
 Bridge Co., 8 Federal Reports, 190, it was held, indeed, " that 
 Congress may, in the exercise of its power to regulate commerce, 
 prescribe the charges for the use of a bridge over a navigable 
 stream." But the charge was an arbitrary one, or, if not arbi- 
 trary, at least bearing some desired proportion to a fixed sum, such 
 as the cost of the bridge, or the average expenses of keeping the 
 bridge in repair. But railway tariffs are not rigid or arbitrary ; 
 nor could a railway company be found so superior to the fluctua- 
 tions of value of material, rates of wages, cost of material, etc., as 
 to make rigid and arbitrary rates. So long as States are not dis- 
 criminated against, where is there a decision which prevents a 
 railway company from being as much its own judge of the con- 
 ditions under which it can afford to do business as the grocer 
 or the butcher who watches the markets, and sells his molasses 
 or his beeves at one rate by retail and another by wholesale ? 
 But the times when the fathers provided that there should be 
 no discriminations against STATES are not these times. There 
 were no Pacific Railroads indeed, no railroads at all, State or 
 Interstate. Hereafter it may be argued that, since those 
 words did not contemplate could not have contemplated rail- 
 roads, which were yet to be conceived in the brain of man, it is 
 unconstitutional to apply them to railroads at all. But let us 
 waive that question here. The words "discrimination between 
 States " then could not have certainly contemplated the problems 
 of freight tariffs arising in 1887, just a century later, when al- 
 most every railroad in the country was the contracting agent of 
 every other, and receivers of freights for points indifferently upon 
 the Atlantic or Pacific, or Lake or Gulf ports, and every conceiv- 
 able point anywhere between, in an area of 8,832,000 square miles. 
 The term discrimination against a state at that date could only 
 have meant the debarment of the citizens of one State from trans- 
 portation privileges into another State, which were granted to a 
 third. How possibly in 1787 could a state of affairs have been 
 contemplated when the enforcement of a "short and long haul 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAIL \VA YS. 107 
 
 clause in a Federal statute should make the wheat and corn and 
 hogs of Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota, and 
 the cattle of Texas, New Mexico and Colorado (undiscovered 
 countries then, not even indicated upon the maps of the world), 
 not worth shipment to New York or Baltimore at the rates 
 which railroads, to pay running expenses, charge Pennsyl- 
 vania, Virginia and New York farmers. Very possibly in the 
 days when our fathers put that clause into the constitution, years 
 ago, potatoes were imported into Boston from Scotland and sold 
 at a profit. But here, in January, 1888, Scotch potatoes have 
 been imported into Boston, and have been sold at a profit, simply 
 because, under the clause they then draughted, a law has been 
 passed providing that the railway systems of the United States 
 (which the poets who were then contemporaries never dreamed of 
 in their wildest flights), should not charge more for a short than 
 for a long haul under substantially similar circumstances and 
 conditions." Is the Interstate Commerce Law intended to put the 
 United States back into the condition in which they were in 
 1787 ? I quote from a late authority, which seems to suggest 
 something of the sort : " The humblest artisan, mechanic, and 
 farmer now finds a small advance upon fuel, and every article 
 that he eats or wears, luxuries and necessities as well, and when 
 he becomes educated up to the fact that the advance upon all 
 these articles is owing to this law, which bars the free inter- 
 change of commodities throughout our vast domain, which has 
 hitherto existed under the untrammeled laws of trade and busi- 
 ness, he will be heard from." 
 
 The fact undoubtedly is that the interstate law has introduced 
 the protection of distance for localities, especially to the advan- 
 tage of Western manufacturers against Eastern manufacturers, 
 and to the disadvantage of the Eastern consumer of Western pro- 
 ducts. The untrammeled traffic before the law was passed made 
 the breaking down of this barrier of distance possible by cheap 
 through rates. 
 
 I have said that the history of the railway in the United States 
 was a history of freight reduction. Let me quote here a couple 
 
108 
 
 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 of convenient tables, taken at random from those published con- 
 stantly by the Federal Bureau of Statistics : 
 
 STATEMENT SHOWING REDUCTION IN FREIGHT CHARGES PER TON PER 
 MILE ON LEADING TRUNK RAILROADS OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Railroads. 
 
 1868. 
 
 1873. 
 
 1883. 
 
 New York Central Railroad t 
 
 Cents. 
 2 743 
 
 Cents. 
 1.573 
 
 Cents. 
 91 
 
 Pennsylvania Railroad *. . . 
 
 1 906 
 
 1 415 
 
 819 
 
 New York, Lake Erie and Western t 
 
 1 81 
 
 1 454 
 
 78 
 
 Boston and Albany Railroad t 
 
 2.811 
 
 1.958 
 
 1.19 
 
 Philadelphia and Erie* 
 
 1 609 
 
 1 135 
 
 62 
 
 Lake Shore and Michigan Southern * 
 
 2.336 
 
 1.335 
 
 .728 
 
 Michigan Central* 
 
 2 45 
 
 1.891 
 
 83 
 
 Chicago, Burlington aud Quincy * 
 
 3.248 
 
 1.921 
 
 
 Chicago and Northwestern J 
 
 3.168 
 
 2.351 
 
 .42 
 
 Chicago, Milwaukee and Saint Paul* 
 
 
 2 50 
 
 39 
 
 Saint Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern* 
 
 
 
 .56 
 
 Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific 
 
 
 2.29 
 
 .17 
 
 Illinois Central * 
 
 
 2 20 
 
 43 
 
 Chicago and Alton * 
 
 
 
 .13 
 
 Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago * 
 
 
 1.41 
 
 .79 
 
 
 
 
 
 Average 
 
 2.453 
 
 1.803 
 
 1.055 
 
 AVERAGE CHARGES PER BUSHEL FOR TRANSPORTATION OF WHEAT 
 
 FOR SIXTEEN YEARS. 
 
 1868*. 
 
 1869 . 
 
 1870 . 
 
 1871 . 
 
 1872 . 
 1873*. 
 
 1874 . 
 
 1875 . 
 
 1876 . 
 
 1877 . 
 
 1878 . 
 
 1879 . 
 1880. 
 
 1881 . 
 
 1882 . 
 1883*. 
 1884 . 
 
 Charge 
 per Bushel. 
 ....42.6 
 
 ..35.1 
 ..33.3 
 ..31.0 
 ..33.5 
 . .33.2 
 ..28.7 
 ..24.1 
 ..16.5 
 ..20.3 
 ..17.7 
 ..17.3 
 ..19.7 
 ..14.4 
 ..14.6 
 ..16.5 
 ..13.0 
 
 * Year ended December 31. 
 J Year ended May 31. 
 
 t Year ended September 30. 
 Year ended March 3" 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 109 
 
 Among railway experts this history of the reduction of rates 
 is, perhaps erroneously, charged to the constantly decreasing rato 
 wars and the gradual adoption of pooling systems. But let us 
 assign it to their yielding to the laws of supply and demand. It 
 still follows, however, that (since, unless there is a difference of 
 value in commodities at different points, freights cannot he moved 
 at all) if the element of mere distance only is to be considered, 
 the inferior merchandise at a certain point can control the market 
 to the entire exclusion of a better quality further off. Here 
 again was a problem for the railway experts to meet, and they 
 met it by a system of freight classification. But freight classifi- 
 cation is "discrimination" which the Interstate Commerce Law, 
 if rigidly applied puts an end to. In other words the Interstate 
 Commerce Law is a bull in a china shop, rushing in rough-shod 
 among all sorts of delicate complications and elaborate calcula- 
 tions and upsetting them all by a single "fiat" born of the high- 
 est sense of the public safety, no doubt but none the less utterly 
 ruinous if actually applied to the interests, not of the railways 
 but of the people the very people who have enacted the law ! 
 and who are the beneficiaries of those reserved powers of the 
 States of which they are respectively citizens without interference 
 with which the interstate law cannot be enforced. Not to men- 
 tion certain penal jurisdiction conferred upon the commission by 
 the act which it would be impossible to find in the powers of 
 the general government itself unless actually granted to it by the 
 States themselves. Here again, it is the rights of the citizen no 
 less than of the railroad company (admitting a distinction be- 
 tween a citizen and a company) which are invaded. For a crime 
 implies a criminal and admits of an accessory, and if in any case 
 a railway is a criminal by reason of disobedience of the Inter- 
 state Commerce Act, then any aider and abettor of the company 
 committing the act that is to say, any shipper who accepts the 
 transportation is a criminal equally with the company. But, says 
 the advocate of the law all these objections are finical and 
 visionary. The " long and short haul ;; clause has a definite 
 meaning, settled long ago. It is taken from the second section of 
 
110 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 the British " Railways and Canal Traffic Act." A sufficient 
 answer to this, however, we have seen would he that if the clause 
 has a defined and settled meaning, it was impolitic to upset and 
 unsettle that meaning by addition of the qualification " under 
 substantially similar circumstances and conditions." (And an 
 equally pertinent answer might be that Great Britain and the 
 United States have different political systems, and do not re- 
 gard political legislation with the same sentiments.) But the 
 practical and sufficient answer is, that British railway manage- 
 ment does not present the same problems as ours to be over- 
 come. There are no extreme linear distances to be overcome ; 
 no transcontinental systems no great climatic differences of 
 tropics and temperate zones whose commodities are to be in- 
 terchanged j and, above all, no paralleling lines. By the large 
 system obtaining in the United States, by which any and 
 every railroad company is an agent for any and every other, 
 ticketing passengers and billing freight over any other line, it 
 is rather difficult to conceive of a railroad which is or may not be 
 an interstate railroad and subject to jurisdiction of the Interstate 
 Commission. It must not be forgotten then that the single 
 element of distance is, and constantly must be, a very unwise 
 element in this discussion. The sliding scales adopted by the 
 railroads were for the benefit of shippers, not for the benefit 
 of the companies. Everybody acquainted with the matter knows 
 that to charge by the element of distance alone would save the 
 companies from fifty to sixty per cent, of the cost of its book- 
 keeping and auditing departments, besides enabling them to dis- 
 pense with certain other departments (such as, for example, its 
 freight contracting departments) altogether. But to adopt that 
 rigid rule would ruin more interests than it conserved, and those 
 the interests of shippers, not of the railroad companies. The " draw- 
 back " and the " rebate " are conveniences merely whereby in- 
 equalities of haul and handling can be equated without disturb- 
 ance of general schedules for particular and single cases. It costs 
 more to handle small parcels going short distances than large 
 parcels going long distances and no amount of legislation can 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAIL WA YU. 
 
 make it otherwise, and the making of freight schedules is one in 
 which every department is and must be consulted, and in which 
 hundreds of circumstances and conditions (rarely even "sub- 
 stantially similar ") must be taken into the account. We have seen 
 what the railwaj^s themselves, of their own motion, have done to 
 meet and ameliorate, if not solve, these difficult and delicate prob- 
 lems. Now let us step aside and see the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission dispose of them ! Senator Cullom's statement about 
 trade-centres is so remarkable that it deserves a chapter by itself. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 RAILWAYS AND TRADE CENTRES. 
 
 IF, therefore, a century or so from now, a student of the politi- 
 cal history of the United States shall ask, How happened it that 
 its Congress was once moved to establish a court of star-chamber 
 aimed at an industry not ordinarily operated except by charter ; 
 a court which was to be not only an oyer and terminer, but an 
 inquisitor of its own motion ; which should dispense with due 
 process of law or with any process at all ; which should supply 
 penalties, civfl, criminal, and as for contempt with plentiful lib- 
 erality ; but never assume, nay, never so much as hint or suggest 
 a probable or even possible protection or premium upon any proba- 
 ble or even possible good or useful thing to be by any accident 
 done or subserved by that industry if, we say, the political stu- 
 dent should ask that question, in view of the fact that no public 
 interest seemed to have required such a statute, and that its im- 
 mediate effect was to raise freight rates to the people passing the 
 law the lawyer of that date might suggest possibly that an ap- 
 plication of this rule of interpretation, providing that the inten- 
 tion of the framers of a statute may be looked into (under certain 
 restrictions), would be most likely to furnish some sort of a clew; 
 and in turning to Senator Cullom's speech, just given, possibly 
 might select the following most remarkable passage, as possibly, 
 
112 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 the real re/ ison for the passage of this most extraordinary act : " The 
 requirements of the law that all charges shall be reasonable, and 
 that there shall be no unjust discrimination or unreasonable ad- 
 vantage or preference in favor of any person or place, had been 
 shown by the character of the complaints against the enforcement 
 of the act to be absolutely demanded.' In reference to the long 
 and short haul clause, he said : 'For many years the railroads 
 of the country have so absolutely controlled our interstate com- 
 merce that we have no means of knowing what are the natural 
 channels of trade, or what would be the effect of the natural laws 
 of trade upon many, at least, of the present commercial centers. 
 What the critics of the law call natural centers of trade are cen- 
 ters created by railroad favoritism which has diverted trade 
 from its natural channels into artificial ones at the expense of 
 less favored localities' " [The italics here are ours.] 
 
 In reading the above, the student of political history aforesaid 
 might be led to remark that to centralize and to submit to the es- 
 pionage of a single paternal commission of this Government, not 
 only the entire railway interests of the United States (being its 
 operation of 139,986 miles of railway, with a funded debt of 
 $3,669,005.722, upon which interest is to be earned), but the min- 
 utest daily detail of such operation, were a rather costly method 
 of gratifying a single Senator's or even a whole Congress's laud- 
 able curiosity as to "what are the natural channels of traffic, or 
 what would be the effect of the natural laws of trade upon 
 many, at least, of the present commercial centers " ; and that it 
 appears to be a rather cool proposition to charge the cost of grat- 
 ifying the aforesaid curiosity upon the only party who had be- 
 trayed no curiosity in the premises whatever, but kept on its even 
 tenor, operating at its own cost the franchises the people had given 
 it, and endeavoring to pay one and one third per cent on the cap- 
 ital it employed. 
 
 But, to drop the student of political history, it is important, it 
 seems to me, for the present generation to know, at last, just why 
 the Interstate Commerce law was passed, and for just what sins 
 of the railways they have been put under pedagogical surveillance. 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 113 
 
 It is because these wicked railways have been creating trade-cen- 
 tres ! The revelation is a particularly startling one, because 
 among the railways themselves the maxim had always been to try 
 and accommodate themselves to such trade-centres of the country 
 as already existed at any possible expense and at all hazard. No 
 terror of injunctions out of chancery were too terrible; no right 
 of way was too costly ; no rivers too broad ; no mountains too 
 solid ; but the railway must supermount and penetrate, at what- 
 ever expense, to reach the trade-centre which Nature had already 
 provided. This, I say, has always been the maxim of the railway 
 company : " Do the business of your territory, count first cost of 
 construction as absolutely nothing. A railway is a means of sup- 
 ply to a trade-centre, or a connection between two or more 
 trade-centres. The product of the country must have its best 
 markets, but those best markets are at its trade-centres ; at all 
 odds we must get to them. No matter where the president of the 
 company lives, or where the capital is subscribed. Construct our 
 line to the best market ! " Such, practically, have been the direct- 
 ors' and the promoters' instructions. And, indeed, it has always 
 seemed to be supposed, even outside of the magic circle of the 
 railway companies, that the capital to build railroads was subscrib- 
 ed on the understanding that they were to do the public business, 
 and not operate against it and in its teeth, and that it would be 
 unnecessary demonstration of corporate idiocy to attempt to procure 
 capital upon any other. But now comes Senator Cullom with his 
 proposition, and we are advised that we have all been wrong ; 
 that, instead, these naughty railways have been at work not con- 
 necting but CREATING trade-centres ! 
 
 Had anybody but one of the fathers of the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission made this statement, not much attention might have 
 been paid to it. Every railroad man certai nly every shipper over 
 a railway knows that the establishment of a trade-centre is a 
 matter entirely out of the power and beyond the control of rail- 
 way companies not only, but of any known human power ; a matter 
 regulated by the unwritten laws of trade, laws not only unwritten 
 but, except in their operation, entirely unknown ; a result and not 
 
114 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 a process. Let Senator Cullom, for example, try and establish a 
 trade-centre, and he will speedily recognize the impossibility of it. 
 And did Senator Cullom try, it would not be the first attempt. 
 There are plenty of platted cities and towns to-day in the United 
 States which have been laid out to make grass grow in the streets 
 of actual cities in whose favor Nature and geography long ago 
 decreed that they should be, in deed and in truth, trade-centres ; 
 and the platters, their successors and assigns, yet feel the hiatus 
 made in their bank-accounts by payment for the costly honor of 
 making valuable suggestions to the attraction of gravitation. 
 
 I need not, I suppose, refer, for example, to the plethora of 
 " cities " and ".city sites," whose prospects the vast dockage and 
 trade territory of Chicago has superseded. But the force, the un- 
 written law, that has twice built the city of Chicago within the 
 memory of men just entering middle age, was not devised by 
 human brains. Perhaps a better answer to Senator Cullom's 
 remarkable proposition about " trade-centres " could not be devis- 
 ed than a brief tracing of the operations of this law in this 
 very building and rebuilding of a geographical trade-centre of 
 this continent. And if it shall be said " even if human laws did 
 not build Chicago, a lack of exact knowledge of this operation 
 and an interstate jealousy of their inevitable result contributed to 
 the building," yet that ignorance and jealousy, it may be replied, 
 were a part of the result of the working of the law, rather than of 
 the process by which it worked. 
 
 No human foresight placed Lake Michigan where it is. But 
 human foresight did perceive that somewhere near its foot a great 
 commercial centre must some day arise. Various points were 
 selected by shrewd pioneers ; and if the reader will take down his 
 map he will find them still indicated upon it Milwaukee, Racine, 
 Kenosha, Waukegan, and Michigan City were perhaps the most 
 promising of these (the latter especially, since here was the very 
 foot of the great trunk or tongue of navigable water which pen- 
 etrated from the north into the rich central ridge of the nation, 
 along which its integral artery of inland communication must 
 run, and from whose head great navigable wings were spreading 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAIL WA YS. H5 
 
 east and west). Yet, while all these points were selected, some- 
 how, the swamp where Chicago now lies was carefully avoided. 
 But it seems those natural causes which we call laws of trade 
 were in operation ; the heavy settlement of the Ohio Valley 
 sought its outlet on the lakes, and somehow the first practical ex- 
 pression of that search a railroad capped, not Milwaukee, 
 Racine, or Kenosha, but the swamp where rose Chicago. And 
 now occurred a wonderful thing. The jealousy of those lake- 
 ports which the laws of trade had passed aside in favor of Chicago 
 began to operate. Each of these lake-ports saw the increasing 
 prosperity of Chicago, and each and every one of them fell into 
 the very error which Senator Cullom cherishes to-day. In almost 
 his exact language each one said to itself You people who are 
 rushing to Chicago to build your docks and elevators are poor 
 deluded creatures, who " have no means of knowing what are the 
 natural channels of traffic." Those railroads are fooling you. 
 Don't go to Chicago. Here at Racine, at Kenosha, at Milwaukee, 
 is the place for your capital. Here is where the great development 
 is to be. (There was no Interstate Commerce law then, but here 
 was its spirit, and its root was, as perhaps a generation later, 
 jealousy pure and simple). But somehow the capital still poured 
 into Chicago ; its docks and elevators multiplied. What was the 
 next step of the jilted towns ? Each went to work ; each for 
 itself built a railroad of its own, mortgaging the property of its 
 citizens, issuing its bonds, pledging its credit, and multiplying 
 its taxes to pay for it. What was the result ? Simply that the 
 wheat and corn and produce which had come to each of these 
 ports to be loaded into ships thereby making the trade on which 
 the town lived and fattened in moderate prosperity now having 
 a cheaper transit to a larger and therefore better market, went 
 where ? went to Chicago ! In other words, these cities had 
 destroyed themselves impoverished not only their citizens, but 
 loaded their successors with debt not to increase their own 
 prosperity, but that of hated Chicago ! They had tried to fight 
 the inexorable laws of trade and of trade-centres, and had been 
 ruined in the attempt. The West is not free to-day from the 
 
116 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 effects of this lake-side effort to guide and assist the natural laws 
 of trade. Money is yet being paid annually into New York trust 
 companies in the vicinity of Wall Street by these same small lake 
 cities (many of which by the prevailing of better counsels have 
 become manufacturing towns of wealth and importance), as their 
 yet uncompleted penance for believing in their own wisdom as 
 against the unwritten statutes of the univrese ; and if Senator 
 Cullom sincerely believes that trade-centers can be created by 
 human foresight, he can by following up the map in the 
 direction I have indicated find many students in the hard school 
 of experience willing to enlighten him. 
 
 It has been the bulk of criticism against the Interstate Commerce 
 law, not that it was unconstitutional, but that it was an attempt to 
 equalize by statute what Nature and cosmic forces has rendered 
 unequal ; that it was Geography and not the railways which had 
 established sea-ports and lake ports and river-ports; and that 
 since the sea, the lakes, and rivers did not as a rule charge 
 more for a short than for a long haul it was putting the statute- 
 book of the United States into the position of a bull warning off 
 comets, to give a railroad a franchise to live with one hand, and 
 with the other to brandish a sword over it, if in operating its 
 franchise it compete with its competitors ! But the bottom ob- 
 jection on the part of the people to the railway companies which 
 has produced the Interstate Commerce law, lies unconsciously far 
 deeper than that. It lies in the fact that the laws of trade invar- 
 iably select the same points for trade-centres that Nature herself 
 has first selected. New York, Boston, Baltimore, New Orleans, 
 San Francisco were trade-centres before railroads were devised. 
 When a trade-centre was wanted on Lake Michigan, Chicago was 
 selected, not by men, but by the force of natural laws. What the 
 capitalists called a "swamp," and so avoided, was really a business 
 plain. Sand drifted in, and built a bar before Michigan City ; at 
 certain other lake points the bluff, crumbling constantly into 
 the lake, imperiled the harbors ; other natural causes worked 
 away at others. The cosmic forces were at work in favor of Chi- 
 cago, and Chicago was elected trade-centre of the majestic West. 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 117 
 
 In other words, it is simply because it can not dispense with the 
 discriminations of Nature that the people are disappointed with 
 the railway as an institution, and so propose to vent their disap- 
 pointment by enacting laws bristling with penalties, but nowhere 
 promising them protection ; putting their affairs into the hands 
 of non-experts, and calling them to penal and paternal account for 
 every breath they draw. If Senator Cullom seriously believes 
 that the railroads have created the trade-centres of this continent 
 arbitrarily, let him tell us why every railroad company in the 
 country is willing to spend millions of dollars in order to get into 
 such cities as New York and Chicago ? Could a railroad create a 
 trade-centre as easily as Senator Cullom imagines, it would cer- 
 tainly come cheaper to that company to make a trade-centre of 
 their own than to buy their way against every known legal, com- 
 mercial, political, and geographical obstacle into one already 
 established. 
 
 The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was built by Philadel- 
 phia capital ; certainly it did not desire to discriminate against 
 Philadelphia. If railroads can make trade-centres where they 
 like why did not the Pennsylvania Railroad create a trade-centre 
 for itself in its own City of Brotherly Love ? The Lehigh Valley 
 Railroad Company is a loyal Pennsylvania corporation, and its 
 owners are natives there and to the manner born. Why did not 
 the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company make for itself trade-cen- 
 tres on its own line, where land was cheap, instead of crowding 
 into New York City at one end and into Buffalo at the other, 
 at enormous cost ? The Grand Trunk Railway is a British in- 
 stitution built to foster the interests of Great Britain's greatest 
 colony, at the direct expense of its greatest commercial rival in 
 the world's family of nations the United States ; why does not 
 the Grand Trunk road make for itself commercial centres at 
 Montreal or Toronto or Hamilton or Ottawa or Windsor ? 
 Why has it spent millions of good honest British gold in buy- 
 ing its way into Chicago at one end and Boston at the 
 other ? If, the moment railways were organized, they set 
 the laws of Nature and of man alike at defiance, and be- 
 
118 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 gan " to divert trade from its natural channels into artificial 
 ones at the expense of less favored localities," as Senator Cullom 
 boldly charges, why is the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, owned 
 in Baltimore, and largely by that city itself a corporate pet of 
 the State whose securities are a legal investment for trust funds 
 expending its earnings and surplus like water to parallel the 
 Pennsylvania in a territory requiring massive construction, and 
 fighting not only that corporation, but the State of New Jersey, 
 in order to get into the city of New York at one end, as it has 
 succeeded in getting into Chicago at the other ? Why not save 
 your millions, gentlemen managers of the Baltimore and Ohio 
 Railroad Company, and build a few trade-centres for yourselves 
 at small expense ? Senator Cullom says it is simplicity itself to 
 make an artificial trade-centre ; that railways have not only had 
 no difficulty in doing it, but have actually and tortuously there- 
 by diverted trade from natural trade-centres to the artificial ones 
 created by themselves. Why not, then, scatter as many trade- 
 centres as your business requires along the line of your railroad, 
 and grow opulent beyond the dreams of avarice by doing business 
 between them, with no possible competition to intrude and make 
 you afraid? Seriously, is it not common information on the sub- 
 ject that the laws of trade are as inexorable as those of gravita- 
 tion, and that it is simply impossible for human ingenuity to 
 create a trade-centre or to destroy one already made by Nature ? 
 Yea, and, moreover, that not only are human beings unable to 
 shift the trade-centre, but they can not even alter the local com- 
 mercial centres of a trade-centre. When Chicago was wiped out 
 by conflagration it occurred at once to certain clever owners of 
 real estate in the neighborhood of the heart of the city within 
 the city lines, and of easy communication therewith that their 
 opportunity had arisen. Instead of buying land in the old busi- 
 ness centres at ten thousand dollars a foot, and spending a reason- 
 able fortune in carting away debris before beginning to erect new 
 walls let us go to work at once and build on our own lands, they 
 said ; the trade of this vast metropolis can not wait, it will come 
 and transact itself on our premises as soon as completed. What 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 119 
 
 was the fact ? The clever ones built well and richly, and sat 
 within and wooed the commerce of Chicago to change its seat. 
 But they wooed in vain. The commerce of Chicago transacted 
 itself knee-deep in its own ashes, and in tents and hemlock shan- 
 ties, until it could re-rear its own palaces over its own head on 
 the very spot where it had thrived before, and refused to hear 
 the voice of the real-estate charmers, who disappeared in bank- 
 ruptcy and disappointment as the result of trying even to move 
 the sites of the local habitations in which the commerce of a city 
 dwelt. And their successors have not .yet forgotten the experi- 
 ments of their principals. And so it is throughout the continent. 
 The honest farmer in Vermont or in Central Illinois does not per- 
 haps grumble because a few superficial feet of land on the East 
 Eiver in New York City, or on the Chicago Eiver, in Chicago, 
 are worth more for trade purposes than the aforesaid honest far- 
 mer's acres in his interior precincts. But he does complain, and, 
 what is more, makes his complaint a political engine for passing 
 Interstate Commerce and " Granger " laws, when he finds that 
 his produce can not be marketed anywhere except upon these 
 very few square feet, and that the railway will persist in charg- 
 ing him less money to haul his product from Vermont to New 
 York, or from Central Illinois to Chicago, than it does to carry it 
 to the heart of the great American desert, if he shipped it so. Is 
 it not true that the market must be fixed where everybody wants 
 to go and cannot be fixed where nobody wants to go ? Is there, 
 in other words, a condition in the problem of transportation (or 
 in any other mundane affair for that matter) in which the laws of 
 demand do not regulate the laws of supply; and, interchangeably, 
 the laws of supply the laws of demand ? Surely, it seems a kin- 
 dergarten sort of business to even ask the question ; and yet, 
 honestly, is not this the very bottom of the non-railroad public's 
 objection to railroads (their unconscious objection, no doubt, but 
 still their objection and their grievance) ; viz. : that, after all 
 these years of railroads, the business centres are just where they 
 always were New York, Boston, Chicago ; that the railroads have 
 not diverted the business of the continent from the trade-centres 
 
120 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 and planted them elsewhere, and so given other merchants than 
 those of the first commercial centre a chance to grow rich ? Is it 
 not, in other words, not because they have, but because they have 
 not made arbitrary centres and " diverted trade from its natural 
 channels," that they are put under the centralized dictatorship 
 and power of an Interstate Commission ? The Almighty set the 
 bounds within which the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Michigan roll 
 and fret. If Senator Cullom states facts when he says that rail- 
 ways built by human hands can divert trade from its natural 
 channels and create by favoritism natural centres of trade, then 
 it is unjust and monstrous that these railroads should still operate 
 themselves on the Scriptural principle, " that to them that hath 
 shall be given, while from them that hath not shall be taken away 
 even that they hath " ; and still wickedly cater to the Atlantic 
 Ocean and Lake Michigan ports (which were there before the rail- 
 ways were built), instead of equalizing matters and making trade- 
 centres for the interior where there are no Atlantic Oceans and 
 Lakes Michigan. Why should the railroads cruelly carry trade 
 to and from those ports which are already trade-centres by reason 
 of their waterways ? Let the railroad companies be just and fair. 
 To be sure, railways in Europe still despotically carry to Liver- 
 pool, Antwerp, Marseilles, but this is a land of equal rights. Let 
 all its citizens have equal privileges, and equal opportunities of 
 getting rich. The New York merchant and the Chicago mer- 
 chant have grown rich because they have the Atlantic Ocean and 
 Lake Michigan over which to do business. Now let the railways 
 (who have only, according to Senator Cullom, to turn their hands 
 over to oblige us) build some trade-centres for the honest farmer, 
 or the interior merchant. Let us have as many trade-centres as 
 we have watering-places, for example, until this nation, where 
 the people make the laws and own themselves, becomes the land 
 of trade-centres ! And if the coarse and brutal railway company 
 owned by the grasping and bloated capitalist, the heartless 
 Gould, or Vanderbilt, or Huntington, or Garrett will not give 
 us any trade-centres, let us petition the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission, that these men and their soulless companies cease to 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE KAIL}}' AYS. 121 
 
 dominate and despotize over this republic, and build us trade- 
 centres wherever we want them ; and, if they then refuse, let the 
 Commission itself designate the points where our trade-centres 
 shall hereafter erect themselves, and to which our railways shall 
 build their track. 
 
 The simple, honest truth is that railways, like natural persons, 
 must live by doing what is set before them ; that however their 
 tariffs are regulated, whether discriminations by rebates and 
 drawbacks are allowed or disallowed, whether they are ordered 
 to charge more for the long haul or the short, whether passes are 
 given to shippers or refused the railway must do the business 
 the people bring to it, or go into bankruptcy and wind up. If 
 grain seeks Chicago, if beef seeks New York, if cotton seeks New 
 Orleans to Chicago, New York and New Orleans must the rail- 
 way haul these products. It cannot carry them to Milwaukee, to 
 Albany, to Mobile. And, moreover, to pay its fixed charges, the 
 railway company, like any natural person, must take the business 
 it pays it to do, and reject that which will not pay it. Neither a 
 railway company, nor all the railways on this continent, nor yet 
 the Interstate Commerce Commission, nor any merely human 
 agency can make a trade-centre. It is a disappointment, no 
 doubt, that this is so ; that toward points already favored with 
 ample water communication, and to those only, will railroads ex- 
 tend their tracks, and ultimate their systems. But, even though 
 that disappointment be crystallized in penal and prohibitory 
 legislation, such indeed has always been the vital principle of 
 self-preservation in the railway, as in the human system : and 
 such indeed, I fear (especially since Judge Deady has held 
 judicially that railways have a right to live), will always be the 
 rule, whether or no this people's antidote for their disappoint- 
 ment be to place the railroads in charge of changing administra- 
 tions at Washington, or whether tariffs will be more reasonable 
 when left to politicians than to railway experts. 
 
122 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE LOUISVILLE AND NASHVILLE DECISION. 
 
 THE Interstate Commerce Act was the concentration of pop- 
 ular forces, which, had for years fought railway incorporations in 
 our legislatures and in our courts : the crystallized expression of 
 fifty years of popular discontent with railway management 
 throughout this Republic. The people, therefore, looked to the 
 first utterance of a commission created to administer it, for ar- 
 raignment of the wrecked railways for that disregard of popular 
 rights, that high-handed indifference to law, and supercilious 
 contempt for the non-railway element in the community, with 
 which they had been so often charged that should be scathing 
 in its terms, and triumphant in its justification of the govern- 
 ment's constitutional right to assume control of a private interest, 
 and to take the first step toward that centralization which Wash- 
 ington deprecated in prospect, which Jackson scotched in its 
 birth, and from the possibility of which a bloody and costly civil 
 war was supposed to have finally relieved. 
 
 The opportunity for such first utterance came. That oppor- 
 tunity was the presentation of a petition, on the part of one of 
 the corporations brought under the paternal power of the com- 
 mission, the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company, for 
 relief from the operation of so much of the fourth section of the 
 Act as prohibited railway companies from charging more for the 
 "short haul" than the "long haul," a prohibition which was 
 and is the gist of the Interstate Commerce Act, and which opens 
 up the entire question of the right of a railway company to judge 
 for itself as to its right to live, operate its roadway, to pay its 
 fixed charges, or generally conduct the business for which the 
 people had incorporated it. 
 
 The commission heard the petition aforesaid and duly promul- 
 gated its opinion. But upon promulgation, the opinion, so far as 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 123 
 
 any crimination of the railway companies or any indication of the 
 constitutionality or policy of the law was concerned, turned out 
 to be as unsatisfactory to the non-railway public as Balaam's 
 cursing of Israel was to Balak. " What hast thou done unto 
 me ? " cried the disappointed king. " I took thee to curse mine 
 enemies, and behold, thou hast blessed them altogether." The 
 first pronouncement of the Interstate Commerce Commission 
 begins with an apology for not interfering with the railway 
 companies, which, to say the least, was unique in juridical liter 
 ature. It declared (p. 5*), that "if the commission were to 
 perform the inquisitorial duties imposed upon it, it would 
 be compelled to forego the performance of judicial and other func- 
 tions which by the statute were apparently assumed to be of 
 high importance, and even then its authority to grant relief would 
 be performed under such circumstances of embarrassment and 
 delay that it must in a large measure fail to accomplish the bene- 
 ficial purposes which it must suppose the statute had in view." 
 The commission deprecated any performance under its inquisito- 
 rial function, since that function " in a single case might require 
 for its proper determination the taking of evidence all the way 
 from the Pacific to the Atlantic ; and this not merely the evidence 
 of witnesses for the petitioning carrier, but of such other parties 
 as might conceive that their interests or the interest of the pub- 
 lic would be subserved either by granting the relief applied for, 
 or denying it " (p. 5). Certainly, nobody can blame the com- 
 mission for preferring to sit cosily in Washington and exercise 
 judicial functions than to take testimony not only of the parties 
 before the commission, but of any party who might consider him- 
 self aggrieved by any act of a railway company or by any proxi- 
 mate or remote effect of such act or its theory, from Maine to 
 California. And, even should the commission be able to decide 
 the matter before it without the bother of hearing testimony, the 
 commission admits that "an adjudication upon a petition for re- 
 
 *The references are to the official copy of the opinion printed at the 
 Government Printing-Office, Washington, 1887. See post. Appendix. 
 
124 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 lief would in many cases be far from concluding the labors of the 
 commission in respect to the equities involved : for questions of 
 rates assume new forms, and may require to be met differently 
 from day to day : and in those sections of the country in which 
 the reasons or supposed reasons for exceptional rates are most 
 prevalent, the commission would, in effect, be required to act as 
 rate-makers for all the roads, and compelled to adjust the tariffs 
 so as to meet the exigencies of business while at the same time 
 endeavoring to protect relative rights and equities of rival carriers 
 and rival localities." " This [and here is a touch of nature which 
 shows, at any rate, that an interstate commissioner's life threat- 
 ened at the very outset to be no bed of roses] in any considerable 
 state would be an enormous task. In a country so large as ours, 
 and with so vast a mileage, it would be superhuman. A con- 
 struction of the statute which should require its performance 
 would render the due administration of the law altogether im- 
 practicable " (p 5) says the commission finally. And yet if the 
 Interstate Commerce Act means anything, it means just what the 
 commissioners, in their first decision, declared to be impracticable, 
 superhuman and impracticable ! Here are seven commissioners, 
 at a salary of seven thousand five hundred dollars per annum, 
 launched with an appropriation of one hundred thousand dollars 
 from the people's treasury, and on that equipment expected to 
 supervise the hourly business of a continent at present in the hands 
 of perhaps a couple of thousand auditors, with a combined staff of 
 a hundred thousand clerks and agents with salaries ranging from 
 twenty thousand dollars downwards, and overworked at that! 
 But to proceed with examination of the opinion. Having frankly 
 admitted that to endeavor to discharge the functions it was organ- 
 ized to administer would be superhuman and an impossible task, 
 the commission sets to work, as in duty bound, to find something 
 to do. It is legally bound to assume that it was created for a pos- 
 sible purpose, to do something not superhuman. And so the com- 
 mission, groping, as it frankly admits, in the dark, strikes at last 
 upon the clause, " under substantially similar circumstances and 
 conditions," and finds at last a foothold. Surely, it says, " if the 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 125 
 
 carrier . . . shall depart from the general rule, ... if the circum- 
 stances and conditions of the two hauls are dissimilar, the statute 
 is not violated." Clearly, if Congress shall take the grocery trade 
 under its jurisdiction, and declare that the poor man must not be 
 obliged to pay more per pound for his two pounds of sugar than 
 the dealer pays per pound for his two thousand hogsheads, it would 
 put an end to the wholesale grocery business on the instant. But 
 if Congress says that this rule shall only apply to the sugar made 
 u under substantially similar circumstances and conditions," then 
 the sugar trade may go on in peace, as before, relying on the 
 immutable truth that no like transactions are or can be under the 
 same circumstances and conditions, and foregoing to attempt the 
 1 superhuman task ' of taking evidence all over the continent, 
 from the planters, the cultivators, the harvesters of the sugar-crop, 
 the teamsters who carried it to the railroad, the shipper, the book- 
 ing clerk, the carrying company, and so forth and so on, down 
 through the jobber, the wholesaler, to the consumer or the mes- 
 senger sent to pay the twenty or twenty-five cents for the brown 
 paper parcel, in perfect faith that in no two cases can the adjec- 
 tive clause ( substantially similar 7 he predicated to any one trans- 
 action when collated with any other transaction on record. Cer- 
 tainly the commission is right. Indeed, the wonderful part of the 
 opinion is in the exact legal consistency and candor with which it 
 admits that the law is one, which, if logical, is impossible of en- 
 forcement : and, if illogical, can only be administered by leaving 
 matters precisely as they were before the law was passed ! Fol- 
 lowing the above line of reasoning, the commission declares (p. 6) 
 that the statute becomes practical, and may be enforced without 
 serious embarrassment. The commission, having settled this 
 much, now proceeds to collate the two sections of the Act which 
 relate to the long and short haul (Sections 2 and 4), and proceeds. 
 " It is not at all likely that Congress would deliberately in the 
 same act, and when dealing with the same general subject, make 
 use of a phrase which was not only carefully chosen and peculiar, 
 but also controlling, in such different senses that its effect as used 
 in one place upon the conduct of the parties who were to be reg- 
 
126 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 ulated and controlled by it would be essentially different from 
 what it was as used in another " (p. 7). And therefore the com- 
 mission renders its decision in a sentence which I must be par- 
 doned for putting in italics : " Beyond question, the carrier must 
 judge for itself what are the substantially similar circumstances 
 and conditions . . . on peril of the consequences" (p. 7). But 
 is not this what every carrier (nay, every business-man) does, has 
 always done, and always will do to the end of time ? And is not 
 this a pronouncement from the mouth of the Interstate Commis- 
 sion itself, that if the clause ' under substantially similar circum- 
 stances and conditions ' is of the essence of the Act, then the law 
 is a nullity ? 
 
 But after having arrived, by application of every rule of law, 
 and the legal construction of statutes, that is to say, by irresist- 
 ible logic, to its conclusion on p. 7, the commission proceeds for 
 twenty-two pages more to discuss analytically and still logically 
 the situation. What situation ? The case submitted by the 
 petitioner, the Louisville and Nashville Kailway Company, was 
 simply the case which arises every moment of the day to any 
 railroad company which carries freight for hire ; and while con- 
 siderable percentage of these cases are not necessarily { interstate ' 
 in their character, yet every practical railroad man (certainly 
 every student of political economy) knows that such a character, 
 from a commercial standpoint, could be given to almost every one 
 of them without any difficulty. The remaining twenty-two pages 
 of this startling opinion startling in that it is a confession at the 
 outset that the Interstate Commerce Act cannot change the situa- 
 tion without discontinuing the business and commercial trans- 
 actions of the people of the United States is merely an analytical 
 examination of the reciprocal relations which arises between a 
 shipper and a carrier in any contract of transportation. 
 
 The commission proceeds to lay down the following propositions, 
 which it deduces from the case before it and the evidence taken : 
 
 " 1st, That the support and maintenance of a railroad ought 
 properly to be borne by the local traffic for which it is supposed 
 to be built, and the through traffic may justly be carried for any 
 sum not below the costs of its own transportation. 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 127 
 
 " 2d, That the cost of local traffic is greatest, and the charges for 
 carrying it should be in proportion ; and, if they are so, they will 
 often result in the greater charge for the shorter haul. 
 
 " 3d, That traffic carried long distances will much of it become 
 impossible if charged rates corresponding to those which may 
 properly be imposed on local traffic ; and it must therefore be 
 taken in recognition of the principle accepted the world over, that 
 the traffic must be charged only what it will bear. 
 
 "4th, That the long hauls at low rates tend to build up 
 manufactures and other industries without injury to the traffic 
 upon which rates are heaviest. 
 
 " 5th, That charges on long hauls which are less than the charges 
 cn shorter hauls over the same line, in the same direction, are 
 commonly charges which the carriers do not voluntarily fix, but 
 which are forced upon them by a competition from whose com- 
 pulsion there is practically no escape." 
 
 Since the above propositions are axioms in railway management, 
 and since, however immutable, axiomatic, and eternal they are 
 were before there was any Interstate Commerce Act or In- 
 terstate Commerce Commission, and will be after both have 
 been numbered among the figments of the past ; since the 
 commission is not supposed to be organized for the purpose 
 of ruling that black is black, and white is white, what was 
 left for the commission to say to the railroads of the United 
 States except, " Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled, 
 you have done nothing worthy of death or of bonds, you have con- 
 served the best interests of the people, have built up a continent, 
 and are worthy of the highest praise ? " That is precisely what 
 it does say, for it unhesitatingly adds, "On the construction we 
 give to the statute, these several applications need not have been 
 filed, and therefore they might now be withdrawn without further 
 judgment " (p. 8). But the commission remembered the Act upon 
 which it was created, and that it was expected to justify at least 
 the action of Congress in creating it, and so announced its will- 
 ingness to go into the merits of the question (it had just decided 
 that there was no question), making its excuse, "that it is 
 
128 THE PEOPLE AND THE EAILWAYS. 
 
 manifestly important to the public interest, as well as to that of 
 the railways themselves, that mistakes shall be as far as possible 
 avoided " (p. 9), (a proposition to which certainly nobody can 
 demur) ; or to limit these propositions, or discover anywhere a 
 public need or benefit that the management of the railways of the 
 country have overlooked. How should the situation be changed 
 to benefit the people ? How can it be changed without destroy- 
 ing our interstate commerce; nay, without destroying the welfare 
 of the country and paralyzing all business transactions ? "Every 
 railroad company," says the Commission, " ought, when it is 
 practicable, so to arrange its tariffs that the burden upon freights 
 shall be proportionate on all portions of its lines, with a view to 
 revenue sufficient to meet all the items of current expense, in- 
 cluding the costs of keeping up the road, buildings, and equip- 
 ment, and of returning a fair profit to owners." But this is 
 precisely what every railroad does, has always done, and always 
 will do. To attempt to make tariffs other than proportionate 
 would require an increasing of its book-keeping expenses, and of 
 its auditing bureaus, to every railroad company, which would 
 make it cheaper to go out of the business than to continue. In 
 other words (the words of the opinion), " a railroad ought not to 
 neglect any traffic of a kind that will increase its receipts more 
 than its expenses " (p. 22). To state it frankly, therefore, the 
 opinion of the commission, in the case of the Louisville and 
 Nashville Kailroad Company, is a benign approval of the business 
 methods of our railroad companies which certainly merits the 
 exclamation of King Balak over the efforts of the prophet 
 Balaam. 
 
 And then the Commission repeats in detail its already general 
 commendation of the railways of this Republic. It says that they 
 may compete with Canadian railways (p. 22) and with the water- 
 courses (p. 22). And the Commission therefore arrives at its rulings 
 (p. 27), which (except that it interprets the short and long haul 
 clause to mean that a question of fact is thereby substituted for a 
 question of law ; and, inferentially, that to determine it the testi- 
 mony of every individual in the employment of the railway must 
 
OF THE 
 
 (( UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 TUE PEOPLE AMD THE RAILWAYS. 129 
 
 be taken by the court) does not in the slightest degree change the 
 hibitude and method of running a railway ; does not introduce a 
 single innovation, or modify a single rule of railway operation : in 
 other words, Congress has enacted a statute which a commission 
 chartered to enforce it declares enacts that things shall remain 
 as they are, and that, if the statute is ever suspected of inter- 
 fering with things as they are already, the subjects of the statute 
 must interpret it blindly and at their own peril ! 
 
 It would seem, therefore, that the Commission itself has de- 
 cided that the railways of this Republic have been, up to the date 
 of its own appointment, properly managed : certainly there is no 
 disapproval of any particular acts, and only in the sixth ruling 
 does it condemn certain possible acts and differentiations which 
 it is not alleged that any railways have been guilty of, and which 
 certainly, therefore, is mere obiter, or the expression of a general 
 opinion upon a very interesting but entirely gratuitous conundrum 
 of supposititious railway policy. But is not a disturbance of consti- 
 tutional limitations a rather high price to pay, even for so valuable 
 a boon as is a governmental approval of American railway manage- 
 ment ? Once broken, who can say what will pass these barriers ? 
 Perhaps there may yet be established at Washington an interstate 
 theatrical commission which shall review and absorb the early 
 functions of Master of the Revels, stage censor, and Lord 
 Chamberlain ! And, indeed, for such a bill, Congress need not 
 again borrow its policy from an Empire of Blood and Iron. It 
 can get its suggestion this time from a Republic from Mexico 
 where theatres are not only under the espionage of government, 
 but even the migratory Yankee circus is officially coerced into 
 living up to its posters. The theatres of the country have cer- 
 tainly quite as much influence upon the morals of the rising gen- 
 eration as have the railways, and, therefore, their regulation can 
 be very easily construed to be the public policy. Nor are theatres 
 so far removed, in legal status, from the condition occupied by the 
 railways, as may be imagined. Each are licensed by law. Each 
 issues tickets which are limited privileges or (to a certain extent) 
 themselves licenses, extending to certain limits, which are exactly 
 
130 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 defined ; and each is supposed not to discriminate between in- 
 dividuals of the common public. Moreover, each is taxed or as- 
 sessed by way of taxation in a manner dependent upon income, 
 instead of holdings. Clearly, the theatres should come next. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 A YEAR OF INTERSTATE COMMERCE CONTROL. 
 
 But, although the Commission thus hastened to declare that the 
 Interstate Commerce Law, with its pains and penalties and for- 
 feitures with its iron grip to ban and never to bless upon the 
 railway interests of the country, was after all only meant in a 
 Pickwickian sense, that nobody had done wrong, and that everj^- 
 body and everything was comfortable, although the Commission 
 so declared, such was not the spirit in which the act was framed, 
 was very far, as we have seen, from being the spirit of Mr. Hud- 
 son's book. 
 
 When Government laid the iron hand of a Bismarck upon the 
 railways of this nation, the aggregate number of miles of railroad 
 constructed in the United States in 1886 was about 9,000, the ag- 
 gregate mileage for the entire country at the close of the year 
 being 137,986, and the rate of increase during the year 7.8 per 
 cent. In New York State the total number of miles of railroad 
 was 7,649, the increase being but 96. The greatest increase in 
 any one State was in Kansas, where 1,678 miles were constructed, 
 and next to that were some of the states and territories along the 
 line of the Northern Pacific, Dakota leading with 821 miles. 
 Nebraska, however, was only third in the list, with 628 miles, 
 while Minnesota had 492 and Wisconsin 451. Texas built 607 
 miles, Iowa 431, and even Florida had 314 miles to her credit for 
 last year's work. 
 
 Throughout the country the mileage of all the roads from which 
 returns of earnings and traffic operations were received, exclusive 
 of elevated roads, was 137,986 The total capital of all such 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE HAIL WA YS. 131 
 
 roads, including elevated roads, was $ 3,999,508,508, as against 
 $3,817,697,832 for 1885. The funded debt was $3,882,966,330, 
 and the unfunded, $280,673,814, against $3,765,727,066 and 
 $259,108,281 for 3885. The share capital and indebtedness 
 together foot up $8,163,148,652, an increase of $320,615,473, the 
 rate of increase being 4.09 per cent. 
 
 Upon the entire capital invested the gross earnings exceeded 
 10 per cent., and the net earnings almost equalled 3.5 per cent. 
 The interest paid was $189,036,304, and dividends, $81,654,138. 
 Of the funded indebtedness, 4.75 per cent, was paid, being .02 
 per cent, less than the amount two years before. To the whole 
 share capital the percentages of dividends paid was 2.04 against 
 2.02 for 1885. The earnings per mile increased 4.9 per cent, 
 having been $6,265 in 1885, and $6,570 last year. The operating 
 expenses of all the roads were $524,880,334, the net earnings 
 being $297,311,615. The total earnings from freight were $550,- 
 359,054, from passengers $211,929,858, and " from miscellaneous 
 sources," $59,903,038. And the sources from whence these fig- 
 ures are derived showed a constant factor of increase calculated 
 by experts at about 11 per cent., with an almost equally constant 
 decrease of operating expenses of from one half of one to one and 
 one half per cent. 
 
 Now when this Bismarck grip aforesaid descended upon this 
 enormous industry, upon these railways, their procedure, tariffs 
 and particulars, under guise and pretext of a provision of the Con- 
 stitution framed at a time when railways were unconceived of in 
 the brain of man, and when the only possible object of that pro- 
 vision must have been to prevent internecine commercial hostili- 
 ties or discriminations among the States, it was not mere aimless 
 or experimental legislation, no product of mere zeal or temptation 
 to legislate on general principles. The experiment of biennial or 
 even triennial legislatures in some of the States, as tending to de- 
 crease the volume of legislation, has always been found to work 
 well. The volumes of session laws of our States are, as to their 
 bulk, apt to become mostly lumber in a surprisingly short time, 
 the number of statutes whose usefulness will survive the first few 
 
132 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 years of their passage being found a surprisingly small one. And 
 even of our National Legislature it can be fairly said that the more 
 time it wastes, the greater the nation's gain. But while this act 
 is the offshoot of sentimental prejudice and jealousy, no doubt, 
 its fathers and advocates in Congress cannot be suspected of 
 having been actuated by either jealousy of the railways of or 
 mere zeal to give an account of themselves to the people. The 
 vastness of the nation's growth for half a century had rapidly 
 made railroads into systems. The immensity of the plants, the 
 accumulation of costly rolling stock, the huge volume of business, 
 could not fail to impress the people with a sense of power not pro- 
 ceeding, like the power of the government, from the consent of 
 the governed that is, from themselves. The enormous operations 
 carried on daily in the people's eyes suggested enormous profits, 
 and engendered popular discontent. These enormous operations 
 necessitated new channels and feeders ; that is to say, new rail- 
 ways. To save time, the ingenuity of the nineteenth century had 
 devised construction companies, which, by subscribing for the 
 capital of these new roads, should obviate the slow and tortuous 
 collection of money by private solicitation ; and these, central- 
 izing profits as well as subscriptions, massed wealth in localities, 
 and attracted the popular envy. The boundlessness of all these 
 brought great bankruptcies for courts to deal with ; and the re- 
 sult of each was the inevitable wrecking of great corporations, 
 and the private accumulation of wealth in the hands of the win- 
 ners in these legal fights. No sooner was this the situation than 
 a new problem intruded itself upon the already complicated 
 maelstrom. The movement known in Europe indifferently as in- 
 ternationalism, socialism, or nihilism (where it grew originally 
 from the discontent of the constantly enlightening and self-edu- 
 cating masses at the support in opulent idleness of privileged 
 classes, useless courts, and to the people always absolute mon- 
 archies) was utilized to express among us the popular envy, discon- 
 tent, and prejudice against corporations it felt in Europe only 
 against kings ; and the result was felt in strikes, trade-combinations 
 and central labor unions, where one trade supported another, and 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 133 
 
 all, in abandoning work by the thousands and ten thousands 
 at one and the same time. Underlying all this was, of course, the 
 capital fact that the railway industry itself was not at fault ; was 
 not responsible for the shrewdness of the Wall Street operator : 
 for intentional defaults in dividends and interest procured for 
 wrecking purposes : for the huge competition and the closeness 
 of margins which put them at the mercy of a single disastrous 
 season. The president of a great railway recently asserted, in 
 answer to a demand from the company's employees for higher 
 wages, that in twelve years his company had not only not netted 
 a dollar, but had actually mined and distributed 51,000,000 tons 
 of coal at a cost of $51,000,000, and paid $53,000,000 for the priv- 
 ilege ! The margin of profit had disappeared entirely in the 
 giant competition of American railway companies, which yet had 
 given, and was daily giving, support to almost a tenth part of the 
 people of the United States. 
 
 But great economic facts like these, like great investments, lose 
 strength by their very immensity. The laborer working ten hours 
 a day, six days in the week, with a family of ten children, clamor- 
 ing for food, cannot be approached with figures showing, that, 
 out of a hundred millions of income, his employer had not been 
 able to reserve one ten-thousandth per cent ; that the private fort- 
 une amassed by one man in railway wrecking was the crytalliza- 
 tion of ruinous losses to thousands of smaller capitalists not of the 
 working-men ; that the plant of the great corporations had been 
 paid for by the hard-earned savings and small economies of thou- 
 sands more ; and, most of all, that, of the total of all these losses 
 and savings, almost a hundred per cent had gone to pay for labor 
 and for material the cost of which itself was largely the labor of 
 handling it. Such statements as these, few of his betters have the 
 brains to grapple with. The day -laborer may have sundry vague 
 impressions that he should be paid in proportion to the number 
 of his children rather than according to the value of his services ; 
 that the idea of anybody handling a million of money is a per- 
 sonal affront ; and that altogether he is a slave, and that any 
 change and convulsion, and shifting of bases, could not make him 
 
134 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 more wretched, and brought an even chance of betterment. He 
 may not even be equal to these ideas, but simply absorb the sin- 
 gle idea that the master of his local union has money to occasion- 
 ally pay him a, per diem almost as great for not working as he 
 receives from his employer for working. But he knows that he is 
 the slave of somebody. The nearest railway company is to him 
 the most prominent representation of massed wealth, and he ac- 
 cordingly selects it for the slave-driver against whom he is to 
 rebel. Everybody saw the wrong, but the remedy was not so 
 apparent. Everybody sees logically that the railway as an insti- 
 tution is innocent of all this chaos. But logic is one thing, and 
 practical solution, quelling of clamor, amelioration of disasters, 
 are quite another. So it was that when the complicated problem 
 reached the floor of Congress, it was no longer a sentiment, a prej- 
 udice, or a jealousy ; it was a mighty and imperious fact, demand- 
 ing and insisting upon immediate attention. Congress passed the 
 Act to regulate interstate commerce, the President approved it, 
 and it was the law of the land. 
 
 On the first day of January 1888, the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission handed in its first annual Report, for the substan- 
 tial part of a year the government had held in its nominal 
 control this vast interest. Who had been benefited ? The 
 best evidence attainable ought to be the statement of the commis- 
 sion appointed to administer the statute taking control of the 
 railways. In this first annual report the Commission says (the 
 italics are ours), " The Act to regulate commerce has now been 
 in operation nearly eight months. ... It has operated directly 
 to increase railroad earnings, especially in the cutting-off of free 
 passes on interstate passenger traffic. . . . Freight traffic has been 
 exceptionally large in volume, . . . no destructive rate wars have 
 occurred but increased stability in rates has tended in the direc- 
 tion of stability in general business." In fine, then, it was the 
 railway companies which had been benefited. 
 
 But this was not the object of the statute. The railways had 
 not complained of ill treatment. They had, indeed, recognized 
 the immense complications of competing systems, the damage 
 
TUK PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 135 
 
 suffered by the people from the rate wars and unjust recoup- 
 ments for the expenses thereof, and had themselves provided a 
 remedy by the establishment of so called ' pools ' ; which, however, 
 the Act of Interstate Commerce promptly and peremptorily 
 abolished. It is something of a commentary on the words we 
 have put in italics above, that whereas, at the date at which the 
 statute took effect, the situation was tranquil and satisfactory 
 (the ' pools J having lowered rates to a minimum never reached 
 before), the passage of the Act sent tariffs upward at a bound ; and 
 before the report above quoted had left the binder's hands, a rate war 
 began in the West whose bitterness, while it raged, surpassed in 
 violence any ever known. Here was an opportunity for the Commis- 
 sion to step in and vindicate the necessity of its creation. By virtue 
 of Section 13 of the Act, it needed not to wait for a complaint or 
 a complainant. It could step in and of its own motion take 
 jurisdiction and settle everything. Did it take such jurisdiction ? 
 Not at all. It went placidly on, carefully hearing and writing 
 long opinions as to the petty grievances of individual shippers 
 and of local boards of trade ; but its ears were as adders' ears to 
 that din of traffic battle in the West. The companies engaged 
 were daily losing millions, until several of the roads involved 
 ceased to solicit freights, to do no business at all being consider- 
 ably cheaper than to move their trains for unprofitable transport- 
 ation. No doubt by this time all dividends have been adjusted 
 to this rate war, and so the people of the United States will pay 
 all the bills ; and the railways, relieved of their burdens are going 
 on again. But such relief has not obviated the constant prospect 
 of more wars and more bills for the people to pay. What did all 
 this mean ? Did it not mean that the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission had no intention of raising a question between itself 
 and the great Trunk systems of the United States a question 
 which would inevitably reach the Supreme Court of the United 
 States, where a decision declaring both Act and Commission 
 unconstitutional, null and void, would have undoubtedly been 
 rendered ? The Commission was willing enough, it seemed, to hear 
 trivial complaints, but hesitated to argue for its life against eight 
 billions of capital. 
 
136 TUB PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 But waiving that question what has one year of Interstate Com- 
 merce control accomplished ? It has been in operation a year. 
 So far as the people of these United States are concerned, has it 
 changed the situation (existing at its approval, and admittedly 
 clamoring for remedy) in the slightest degree ? Have strikes 
 ceased ? Are rates lower ? Have private fortunes disappeared 
 or ceased to be accumulated ? Have the railways been curtailed in 
 their alleged despotic sway over the lives, fortunes, and liberties of 
 our people ? Had any recipient of a pass over one of our railways, or 
 of a drawback, rebate, or special privilege, complained to Congress 
 that he had been so favored ? (That concessions to the few were 
 injuries to the many, and the ' pass 7 system an unmitigated 
 wrong and nuisance, these were the complaints of the railway 
 companies, not of the people ; and Congress had heard them with 
 ears as deaf as adders' ears for the last quarter of a century.) 
 
 To these questions some of us are still looking for an answer, 
 others the commission itself has answered for us. The Interstate 
 Commerce Commission (to its credit, everlastingly be it said) did 
 not wait for the filing of its first annual report to come boldly for- 
 ward and tell the people of the United States that they were in 
 error : that the railways were not their enemies ; that, although 
 bound to assume that it had been created for some wise purpose, 
 and therefore to hunt around to find that purpose, the commis- 
 sion did not propose to share in the Hudson communistic cry of 
 ' Down with the railways ! ' or even to admit that railways were 
 a menace to the liberties of the people. It seized upon its first 
 opportunity to assume that the statute of Interstate Commerce 
 was of no practical value to anybody, but intended to be under- 
 stood in that purely Pickwickian sense in which, as we have seen, 
 the Commission interpreted the Interstate Commerce Act in the 
 Louisville and Nashville matters ; nay, more, in its first report 
 was careful to point out what advantage it had been to the -vast 
 interests it had been created to control but had carefully avoid- 
 ed interfering with. 
 
 But have the railways been benefited ? In holding that rail- 
 ways may, (nay, must, or get themselves into trouble with the 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE HAIL WAYS. 1,77 
 
 Commission) go on doing just what they always have done, 
 what light has been thrown upon the railway problem in the 
 United States ? To say that a grocer may sell sugar, but that if 
 another grocer across the way also sells sugar, the first grocer may 
 not compete with the second grocer, is clearly to so embargo the 
 first grocer as to close him out. To be sure, the law added a 
 clause limiting the prohibition to " substantially similar circum- 
 stances and conditions; " but the limitation scarcely helped matters, 
 since it merely substituted a question of fact for a question of law 
 and opened an interminable and costly field for the taking of 
 testimony and the examination of witnesses which could easily 
 paralyze any interest forced to enter it. Besides, to recur to the 
 simile of the grocer, it might be said to permit the retail trade in 
 sugar only on condition that no wholesaling was attempted. Our 
 grocer might sell a pound of sugar at any price he could get, but 
 must be careful, if he sold a thousand hogsheads, not to diminish 
 his rate per pound, either by quoting his commodity at less, or by 
 rebating or offsetting for the comparative magnitude of the trans- 
 action, In view of the cheaper average cost of delivery, book-keep- 
 ing, or consideration of interest, or discount, exchange, or the 
 market value of money. 
 
 But- if this is complication worth mentioning, what shall we 
 predicate of the attempt to make the same hard and fast line 
 apply to the railway transportation problem ? Says E. P. Vining, 
 Esq., late Commissioner of the North western Traffic Association: 
 " As a matter of fact, distance, while it is one of the factors in 
 determining both the cost and the value of transportation, is not 
 by any means the only factor, and is frequently of far less im- 
 portance than many other elements in the problem. It often costs 
 a railroad company more to stop a train and unload a package of 
 freight, or set a car out, upon a siding distant only 10 miles from 
 the point of departure, than it would to take the freight through 
 without stop for a distance of 100 miles to the terminus of the 
 train's run. Moreover, many of the most important elements in 
 the cost of transporting property by rail, are wholly independent 
 of the length of the haul. It requires as much work to load and 
 
138 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAIL WA YS. 
 
 unload a car that is to be hauled ten miles as it does when the 
 property is to be forwarded a hundred or a thousand miles, and 
 the use of the car is required for practically the same length of 
 time in one case as in the other ; for it should be remembered 
 that the time during which a car is in motion with a load con- 
 stitutes but a small portion usually not more than one-eighth 
 of the time that the car is used by the shipper. It must often be 
 brought empty from a distance ; one day, or, more frequently, two 
 or three days are allowed for loading it, then at the destination 
 the same length of time is allowed for unloading, then the car 
 may not be needed at the point to which it has been sent, and 
 must be forwarded empty to the other end of the road in order to 
 obtain a load. So it results that a road which can show that its 
 cars are kept in motion with a load of freight for an average of 
 three hours out of the twenty-four, can make an exceptionally 
 favorable showing. Now all these disadvantageous circumstances 
 are even more likely to occur in the case of short hauls than they 
 are in long ones j as the chances are that when a car is stopped to 
 be unloaded at a small local station, it will not find a load at that 
 point, while if it is sent through to the terminus of the division, 
 it probably will find a load there. In this important item of 
 expense it will therefore be seen that the distance run, within 
 reasonable limits, affects the cost but slightly. So too, the station 
 expenses, the cost of keeping the roads, clerk hire, general super- 
 intendence, and many other elements of the cost are practically 
 independent of distance. In fact, almost the only item that can 
 be named as bearing even an approximate ratio to the distance is 
 the cost of fuel for raising the steam by which the train is moved, 
 and this cuts so insignificant a figure among the total expenses as 
 hardly to be worthy of consideration. 
 
 "For many years our western roads have recognized the existence 
 of established trade-centres, and have exercised the greatest care 
 to place them all upon a common footing, and give them all a fair 
 and equal opportunity to compete for business. Where it has 
 been necessary in order to accomplish this result, equalization 
 tariffs, so-called, have been carefully prepared, so that every 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 139 
 
 possibility of inequality and unfair discrimination might be re- 
 moved. The charges for transportation from the Atlantic sea- 
 board to each of these trade-centres, when added to the charges 
 from such points to the ultimate destination of the goods, have 
 been made the same via all routes, no matter at which one of the 
 trade-centres the goods were purchased by the consumers. Thus, 
 if goods imported or manufactured at New York were wanted at 
 a little inland town in Nebraska, they might be purchased at 
 New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Omaha or Kansas City, and the 
 total charge for transportation from New York to destination 
 would be the same in every case ; the charge for transportation 
 from New York to Chicago when added to the rate from Chicago 
 to destination being the same as the total charge for transporta- 
 tion from New York to St. Louis, plus the rate from St. Louis to 
 the destination, and so in every other case. In this manner all 
 unreasonable discrimination has been avoided and all jobbing 
 points have had a fair and equal field throughout the West to ob- 
 tain all the trade that they could command upon even terms. 
 
 Under the Interstate Commerce Law this situation of affairs 
 has been changed, and changed for the worse. The tendency is 
 now to throw all business upon the shortest lines regardless of the 
 business interests that have been built up upon the longer routes. 
 Each centre of trade has a little section of the country surround- 
 ing it in which it has an advantage over all its competitors, but 
 everywhere else it is at a disadvantage as compared with some 
 one or more of the towns with which it has heretofore competed 
 upon even terms. 
 
 " The Interstate Commerce Commissioners have done some- 
 thing towards removing the difficulty so far as through shipments 
 are concerned by ruling that the longer lines may make the same 
 rates that are established by the short lines, and may do this 
 without reducing their rates for hauling a part of the way over 
 the same track. This, however, only emphasizes the injustice 
 that is inflicted upon the jobbing towns that are situated upon 
 the longer routes, as they now see freight carried from New 
 York through their own city to western destinations at a through 
 
140 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 rate materially lower than the sum of the rates from New York 
 to their city plus the charge for transportation therefrom to the 
 ultimate destination. They therefore find it impossible to longer 
 compete for much of the trade that once was theirs, and much of 
 the dullness that is gradually settling down upon our western 
 cities is owing to this cause. It is evident, therefore," continues 
 Mr. Vining, "that the law in this way creates an injustice far 
 greater than any which it was intended to remove ; an injustice 
 far greater than the most reckless of railroad officers would have 
 dared to inflict upon the patrons of his road." When the In- 
 terstate Commerce Commission, therefore, in the Louisville and 
 Nashville case held that the public welfare required railways to 
 be operated subsequently to the Act, precisely as they had been 
 operated before it, and the only public safety was to overlook the 
 Act completely, it kept to the line of truth and soberness, no 
 doubt. But how has it helped the railways ? Clearly they must 
 get together and settle the transportation problem for themselves, 
 or else let it go unsettled. 
 
 It was clearly unfair that this dog-in-the-manger law, this iron- 
 clad statute which forbade them on peril of death to pool their 
 issues, either to discuss or settle them themselves, and at the same 
 time declined to settle their issues for them which compelled 
 them to fight their costly fight at the expense of their stockholders 
 and forbade them to treat for peace it was clearly unfair that 
 this statute should be other than Pickwickianically enforced. So, 
 long ago, the warring railroad companies came together in l confer- 
 ence,' 'committee/ or ( synod,' and terminated the ruinous battle 
 I have above alluded to. Only (in deference to the statutes of 
 united Germany, and the Bismarck policy whose spirit has lately 
 materialized among us in the shape of an interstate commerce 
 law), whatever they called it, they were mighty careful not to call 
 it a "pool." 
 
THE PEO1 'L E . I yD 7 HE RAIL \ VA Yti. 14 1 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE " ACT OF GOD " AND THE RAILWAY COMPANY. 
 
 So far back that memory of man runneth not to the contrary 
 imported into the very earliest English jurisprudence from the 
 Roman Code, was the theory of Nemesis, of the Inevitable, the 
 Unavoidable. When it reached our Motherland and Christian 
 times, and clamored for recognition in the Common Law, our rev- 
 erent Norman-Saxon lawyers, to be sure, called it the " Act of 
 God." But it was the Stoic " Fate " of the Roman his " Neme- 
 sis," his " Adrastea," just the same ; and the earliest English di- 
 gests declared that " the act of God or of the public enemy " dis- 
 charged all legal responsibility. 
 
 The Roman law having always been, as it still is, the law of 
 continental Europe, it was inevitable that such American colonies 
 as were settled from the continent should retain the doctrine of 
 the " act of God," and that when the Spanish brought it to Mexico, 
 and implanted it in a community saturated with superstition, it 
 should have augmented quite as rapidly as its adumbration has 
 waned with us, Religious faith being in Mexico to-day as 
 living and active a force in common personal life with the great 
 body of the people as it was in Europe in the middle ages; we have an 
 illustration of how, while the limitations of the Old-World doctrine 
 have been gradually narrowing in the United States, it still holds 
 its ground in Mexico with proportions which practically make it 
 the leading condition of all contracts, expressed and implied. "As 
 an instance"(writes Mr. W. W. Nevin, Secretary of the Mexican 
 National Construction Company (Science, Dec. 3, 1887), "of 
 how this provision enters into express contracts, in Mexico, let us 
 take the great railway-concessions to the leading American com- 
 panies. In these concessions "fuerza mayor" generally appears 
 in three distinct places. The obligations of the company to build 
 within certain fixed periods are suspended in case of " fuerza 
 
142 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 mayor." The concessions are forfeited by the companies carrying 
 any foreign armed force or goods contraband of war, unless they 
 can show that this was done because they were unable to resist 
 " fuerza mayor." Certain bounties granted to the railways cease 
 during the time that the operation of the lines is suspended, even 
 if the suspension should take place by reason of " fuerza mayor." 
 In the smaller transactions of daily life this doctrine continually 
 appears as an unwritten law, which suspends all other laws, or 
 contracts, or obligations. Superior force, which often in Mexico 
 means what would simply be called disaster in the United States, 
 is to the Mexican mind a good defense against almost any obliga- 
 tion. For instance : should one lease a boat for a month at a 
 fixed sum, and unusual storms prevent using the boat for half the 
 month, that would be ample reason why the lessee should tender 
 only half the rent to the lessor, and he feel constrained to accept 
 the offer. 
 
 ' Fuerza mayor ' is translated as ' superior force/ or ' uncon- 
 trollable circumstances. These circumstances are nowhere, to 
 my knowledge, defined, but the facts of what are uncontrol- 
 lable circumstances are to be decided in each case. The coercion 
 of an armed force is ' fuerza mayor.' The violence of storms 
 is 'fuerza mayor.' The flooding of a river is 'fuerza mayor.' 
 And, as before remarked, very generally what we are apt to con- 
 sider as disaster, in Mexico becomes ' fuerza mayor,' and oper- 
 ates to relieve a contract of its obligations. To the American 
 mind a contract made must be carried out, and disaster, if there 
 is any, falls on the man who has loosely guarded his contract." 
 Mr. Nevin adds : " In the confluence of the American and Mex- 
 ican civilizations now taking place, it becomes an interesting 
 question how this wide difference between the usage of the two 
 countries will adjust itself." My own idea is that as United States 
 capital and energy are speedily civilizing Mexico by build- 
 ing railroads within her territory, doubtless we may expect a 
 very considerable attenuation of the doctrine at no distant day. 
 But in the common law countries of England and the United 
 States the doctrine is oftener laughed at than applied. In our very 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 143 
 
 youthful days, indeed, we may have been taught that railway acci- 
 dents were sent to teach us the shortness and uncertainty of hu- 
 man life. But most of us have survived that view of the matter. 
 Counsel for a railway company, who, in defending an action for 
 damages for haystacks destroyed by fire communicated from the 
 company's locomotive, claimed that his client had no control over 
 the winds of heaven, speedily found himself out of court his 
 client should have used spark-arresters. But until a very recent 
 date, courts of justice habitually saved time and routine labor by 
 assuming accidents far less remote from their proximate causes 
 than the distance between a haystack and a smokestack to be 
 ' Acts of God ; ' though, indeed, a very recent English court, while 
 recognizing the principle, declared that a shipwreck, to be a veri- 
 table act of God, must have happened in extremely bad weather. 
 And yet, possibly a well-known rule of law limiting the responsi- 
 bility of the employer for mental conditions of the employe may 
 not be entirely without bearing upon the question at hand. The 
 common law expressly declares that there are possible conditions 
 of an employe's mind which discharge the employer. An em- 
 ploye who, in ejecting trespassers, becomes vindictive, passionate, 
 or willful, and on that account employs a surplusage of force, so 
 acts at his own and not at his employer's peril. Might there not, 
 for example, be a question whether an entirely unforeseen and 
 instantaneous absence of mind on an employe's part was any 
 more within his employer's control than a burst of passion ? Let 
 us see. Though to-day in the United States the principle has all 
 but disappeared from our digests, its existence is rather suggest- 
 ed by the somewhat startling fact, that, in all our recent chroni- 
 cle of railway casualty (and I confine myself to the United States 
 in this chapter, because our safety appliances are invariably the 
 latest, costliest, and most elaborate in the world, our corps of 
 watchmen and care-takers the most numerous, and our estimates 
 of the value of human life incomparably the largest), as a rule 
 the simplest accident is the deadliest, and the utmost perfection 
 of life-saving appliances (whose adoption saves in nine hundred 
 and ninety -nine cases in the thousand) may yet turn out to be 
 
144 THE PEOPLE AND THE HAIL WATS. 
 
 helplessness itself in the thousandth case when the calamity 
 arrives : in other words, the disaster, when it comes, will be found 
 to consist in the operation of some perfectly familiar law of 
 nature (as of gravitation or inertia), set in motion by the simple 
 oversight of some trained and trustworthy subordinate ; which 
 would have resulted from identical causes thirty centuries ago to 
 the most primitive of convej^ances equally as well as to our own 
 limited expresses, with their air-brakes, vestibules and coupler- 
 buffers. 
 
 In examination of the history of railway accidents in the United 
 States, the physical conformation of the country should not be 
 overlooked. As railways were first constructed among us, and 
 had their formative days of operation, in the Eastern States rather 
 than among the flat lands and ordinarily easy grades of the Ohio 
 valley, it was only natural that the bulk of experiment, misman- 
 agement, error, and fatality, should have been expended on our 
 Atlantic slopes. The period of the railway in the United States 
 is yet one very insignificant in point of years. To-day, the maps 
 of our territory of greatest railway development have Lake Mich- 
 igan and the Mississippi, instead of the Atlantic Ocean, for their 
 east. But by the time that railway construction had begun to 
 extend vvestwardly from those boundaries, those greatest insur- 
 ances of safety the air-brake, the coupler-buffer, the steel-rail, 
 the improved means of communication between the engineer, con- 
 ductor, and his crew, which had been slowly wrought out in the 
 East had come into practical use. Hence it is that the Pacific 
 railroads, though spanning gorges, climbing summits, and sur- 
 mounting problems of construction to which the achievements of 
 our Atlantic slope railroads are moderate, have no such records of 
 manslaughter and destruction as we find in the records of Eastern 
 rail-transportation. At present every American railway is 
 equipped is obliged by law to be equipped with the last im- 
 provement in safety-insuring devices, not only for the convenience 
 of the passenger, but for the safety of the employe against his 
 employer as well as against fellow-employe. And it is an amenity 
 to the credit of the railway system (which ought not to be lost 
 
'I HE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 145 
 
 sight of in these days when wage-workers are taught to look upon 
 anything incorporated as their deadliest foe) that it has intro- 
 duced into the common law of the land the principle that an em- 
 ployer's duty to his employe is only discharged by furnishing 
 him the safest tools for his work which the strides of science have 
 devised. 
 
 For a long period of years, these strides of science seemed to 
 have happily abolished in the United States- the great railroad 
 disasters of the past. Since the frightful catastrophe at Carr's 
 Rock on the Erie Railway of twenty years ago, science and ex- 
 perience have rendered the giddy curves and bold escarpments of 
 its Delaware division as safe as the tangents crossing an Iowa 
 prairie. The Angola and Ashtabula terrors on the Lake Shore 
 Railway wound up practically the list for that line ; while, had it 
 not been for a phenomenal piece of silly and unaccountable care- 
 lessness at Spuyten Duyvel (when Mr. Wagner, an inventor of 
 parlor-car conveniences, was crushed to death in one of his own 
 coaches), the New York Central wonld have closed up its own 
 perspective of great calamities at New Hamburgh, something in 
 the neighborhood of fifteen years ago, six or seven years later than 
 Carr's Rock. But this fifteen years of succeeding and wonderful 
 immunity from great railway-disaster most wonderful when we 
 consider that it corresponds with an era of railway-building in the 
 United States unparalleled in the history of human industry 
 was brought to a termination by a rapid succession of calamities, 
 grouped into a period of ten months of the year 1887, which, in 
 point of loss of human lives (and no other point is worth con- 
 sidering), were, if not the most terrible in railway annals, yet fall 
 little in horror below the Wigan slaughter, or the annihilation at 
 Tay Bridge, of the multiple horrors of which (analogous to those 
 of shipwreck and railwreck combined) no living tongue shall ever 
 tell the story. These five occurred during the first ten months of 
 that year, (1) on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad at Republic, 
 Jan. 4, 1887 ; (2) on the Central Vermont Railroad at White 
 River, Vt., Feb. 11 ; (3) on the Boston and Providence Railroad 
 at Forest Hills, March 14 ; (4) on the Toledo, Peoria, and Western 
 
146 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 Railroad at Chatsworth, Aug. 10 ; and (5) at Kout's Station on 
 the Chicago and Atlantic Railway, Sept. 12 of the present year. 
 These being remarkable not only as breaking the long immu- 
 nity, but as illustrating (what has come to be a truth in the 
 relations of the railway to the people, viz. :) that most accidents 
 are occasioned by lapses, not of the company, but of represen- 
 tatives of that very class from which criticisms upon railway 
 companies and managements is always found to spring I 
 think warrant examination here. It will, I think, be found 
 that they were each and all due, not to any defect of machinery, 
 signals, or other mechanical appliances which the corporation could 
 have supplied, or to any defective or careless management, but to 
 those unaccountable omissions of trained minor servants to per- 
 form a perfunctory detail of their routine work a detail which it 
 was their second nature to perform which it would have ordi- 
 narily required a physical effort for them not to perform, or to have 
 kept them from performing ; that is to say (for it is difficult to 
 exactly formulate it in words), an instantaneous mental incapacity 
 on the part of a trained workman or care-taker, over which laws, 
 rules and incorporations have no control, and against the possi- 
 bility of which neither hope of reward nor fear of loss or punish- 
 ments can afford any defense or protection whatever. They all 
 occurred on perfectly equipped roads, and from the simplest nat- 
 ural causes. Each of the accidents might have happened to the 
 rudest contrivance of primeval or prehistoric man, to the cart 
 which used the section of a tree-trunk for a central wheel, or to 
 the hollowed tree-trunk which itself formed a means of water- 
 transportation as will appear from their recapitulation. 
 
 The Republic accident was in this wise : a freight-train, which 
 had ample time to make a run of some dozen miles to get out of 
 the way of a through express coining in an opposite direction, 
 which had made that run easily every night for years, for once 
 failed to accomplish it. All the mechanical appliances and motive 
 power of the train were in perfect order ; its crew were old serv- 
 ants of the company. But the weather was exceptional^ cold, the 
 water in the tank of the engines was all but congealed, and the 
 
THE PEOPLE ANU THE RAILWAYS. 147 
 
 crew of the freight-train found themselves encroaching on the time 
 of the express. Here was not only no novel situation, but, on the 
 contrary, perhaps the simplest which can occur in any railway 
 management. There was no emergency to meet. Probably not 
 an hour passes in a day but that, somewhere in the vast railroad 
 operations of the country, the case is paralleled. But here at 
 Republic, on the night of the fourth day of January, 1887, the 
 hand sent ahead with tl.e signal failed to carry it : two trains met. 
 The old catch problem of the irresistible force meeting the immov- 
 able body demonstrated itself ; namely, the trains were destroyed, 
 and twenty human beings lost their lives. 
 
 Just a month later, Feb. 5, came the disaster at White River. 
 A night express thundered upon a bridge, which was supposed to 
 be properly inspected. Every mechanical portion of the train was 
 working as it should ; every servant of the company was at his 
 post ; nevertheless, the locomotive left the rails instead of following 
 them ; the express-train was plunged to the frozen surface of the 
 river fifty feet below ; and, of its three hundred passengers, thirty- 
 two never breathed again, or were roasted in slow agony from 
 burning debris upon a floor of ice. Every bridge on every railroad- 
 line in the nation is ordered to be watched. A corporation must 
 act by its agents. This bridge had probably been hourly inspected 
 for years, but somebody had failed to inspect it on the fifth day of 
 February, 1887. Another month went by, and on the morning of 
 the 14th of March a packed train on the Boston and Providence 
 Railroad of three hundred mechanics and working-women was 
 moved into Boston for the day's business. Somebody had failed to 
 report or to discover a flaw in the iron-work of a bridge at a point 
 called Forest Hills. The locomotive followed the rails. Every- 
 thing upon the train was in perfect order ; no appliance in the 
 company's power to provide was lacking ; but the bridge sank. 
 The entire train except two rear cars was piled up in kindling-wood 
 in a defile made by a passing road below ; and from the undistin- 
 guished mass forty persons were drawn out dead. Four months of 
 absence of great calamity by rail was then to succeed. But on the 
 evening of the 10th of August an excursion party, gathered at 
 
148 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 Peoria and other points in Illinois, was to be carried to Niagara 
 Falls. There were sixteen cars loaded with excursionists, and two 
 engines were needed to draw them. The ordinary rules were ob- 
 served, and due notice of the extra movements of such an unusual 
 train was duly wired ahead for the guidance of watchmen and 
 track-walkers. All went regularly ; but it seems that a side-fire 
 had been kindled on the right of way for clearing-up purposes, and 
 that some track-walker whose duty it was to watch it had allowed 
 it to communicate to the beams of the wooden bridge at or near 
 Chatsworth. The train reached the bridge, but the bridge was al- 
 ready disabled by fire. It sank as did the one at Forest Hills, and 
 eighty-five passengers were killed, a most unprecedented death- 
 list for an American railway accident. Compared to the above, 
 the fifth of these fast-recurring disasters seems almost dwarfed, 
 and yet it was the most wonderful from the standpoint of our 
 present examination of all. An engine drawing an express pas- 
 senger-train on the Chicago and Atlantic Railway became disabled 
 by the breaking of an eccentric strap. The engineer hauled up at 
 a water-tank for repairs. A freight-train which followed, relying 
 upon the schedule which the first train should ordinarily make, ran 
 into the rear of the train with the disabled engine. Nine persons 
 only were killed, a small list compared with those we have pre- 
 viously noted. But doubtless it is as terrible to the victim to be 
 killed in a list of nine as in a list of eighty. It was the story of the 
 Republic disaster over again. Some brain had failed to do the 
 regular act which it had performed for years as regularly as clock- 
 work. 
 
 Now here, in less than nine months, one hundred and eigthy-six 
 lives, all precious to their owners if to nobody else, are sacrificed. 
 Nobody but the claim agents of the corporations can ever know 
 the number of wounded and maimed (nor even they, since many of 
 those who escape do not care to press their undoubted claims), and 
 the stockholders of the unfortunate corporation do not care to ad- 
 vertise the dead loss of material, or what it costs in cash to replace 
 its ruined rolling-stock and transported material, lest the news- 
 papers of the country dilate upon the preference shown for income 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS* 149 
 
 over flesh and blood, and lash the popular dislike of corporations 
 into fury with the stereotype with which every railway-accident fills 
 our admirable press. But allowing four to one, a minimum al- 
 lowance, nearly eight hundred more human beings have suffered 
 a loss of limb or extreme physical pain, and several hundred thou- 
 sands of dollars of direct expenses were incurred, for every one of 
 these accidents which should never, in the ordinary course of 
 human procedure, have happened at all. 
 
 I say, should never have happened ; but where shall the respon- 
 sibility be placed ? By law it is placed, and rightly, so far as hu- 
 man laws go, upon the railway companies. But every railway- 
 officer knows that the penalty his company suffers for such acci- 
 dents as the five above described is exemplary, is vindictive only, 
 so far as the companies themselves are concerned. That they 
 have done were doing at the time the accident happened all 
 that experience and science had taught them how to do, or that 
 their professional or expert brethren employed in the same indus- 
 try could have done under like circumstances, they know, and 
 every railroad-man in the country knows, perfectly well. But the 
 railway-official also knows very well, however, and realizes very 
 submissively, that for these accidents he will be held to answer, 
 and not before a jury of experts, or of his peers. The news- 
 papers in no one of the above instances fail to ascribe these acci- 
 dents to the ( greed of corporations.' The ( greed of corporations/ 
 to be sure, is only another name for the duty of every corporation 
 to pay dividends, if it can ; and doubtless,were there no such duty or 
 no such chance of payment, there would be no railroads, from the 
 simple disinclination of ordinary mortals to invest money in costly 
 enterprises without hope of return or increment. But waiving that 
 consideration, certainly it is hedging on the superfluous and the 
 elementary to say that no railway company courts accidents ; that,, 
 no matter how large any individual loss by reason of the casualty 
 may be, the company (that is to say, its stockholders collectively) 
 must be the largest losers of all. When Sir James Coke said 
 that corporations had no souls, he did not utter an epigram ; he- 
 simply stated a fact. A corporation has no sentiments ; it is aim- 
 
150 THE PEOPLE ANT) THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 ply put together for business purposes, because a number of indi- 
 viduals see in association the means of investing in a lawful in- 
 dustry too heavy for any one of them to singly handle. An at- 
 tempt to earn dividends is properly described as ' greed/ of course. 
 But what reader of newspaper denunciation pauses to subtract 
 from any particular year's l greed/ of any particular corporation, 
 the million of dollars or less that a great disaster like that at 
 Chatsworth or Forest Hills draws out of a company's treasury ? 
 Whatever the present state of clamor against corporations may 
 develop, it is at least apparent, from considerations of pure 
 ( greed/ that a railway corporation is not a Moloch, or a contriv- 
 ance incorporated for the purpose of burning or mutilating human 
 beings, or crushing their bones, or mangling their limbs. Philares 
 is said to have built a hollow bronze ox in which to roast his sub- 
 jects for fun, and the Druids to have made wicker cages in which 
 to burn as many living babies as possible for economy's sake. But 
 bronze oxen and wicker cages are comparatively inexpensive, and 
 there were no courts handy in which damages could be recovered 
 by the survivors. Locomotive engines and Pullman coaches are, 
 however, rather costly receptacles in which to holocaust passen- 
 gers. In spite of newspaper declamation, is it not self-evident 
 that no railway company gloats over the ruin caused by an acci- 
 dent upon its line ? 
 
 To return to the five accidents above mentioned. In not one of 
 them does it appear from the reports to the company the news- 
 paper accounts, or even the findings of the local coroner's jury (a 
 class of valuable material which is not apt to be over complimen- 
 tary to the railway-company) that any of the mechanical agen- 
 cies operating-gear, engines, couplings, air-brakes, signals, wheels 
 of the trains wrecked were old, superannuated, or in bad repair ; 
 that the track was in bad condition, or that ordinary wear and tear 
 had been allowed to remain unmet or exceeded. The utmost that 
 can be said was, that, out of some three millions of men employed 
 in the service of the railway companies of the United States, five 
 seem, for some utterly unaccountable reason, to have each failed in 
 their duty of a moment, and that the moment in which each failed 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 151 
 
 happened in the course of chance to be the supreme and crucial 
 moment respectively in the lives of some two hundred human 
 beings. It is too late in the day to call these failures, per- 
 haps, " acts of God," but what else are they ? They are not 
 the fault of the company. The company has no control over 
 the minds of their servants. It could, indeed, negatively con- 
 trol their minds by so overworking them that nature refused 
 longer to perform its functions. (And for the safety of the 
 community we think the law ought to take cognizance of a 
 company which overworked its employes, and hold it to the same 
 responsibility in that case as in cases where the company fur- 
 nishes dangerous conveyances to its patrons, or old, worn and 
 imperfect machinery to its servants.) But in the five cases 
 above selected there was no such allegation. The men sent out to 
 warn an approaching train at Eepublic and at Kout's Station for 
 once omitted their routine duty. The track- walker at Chatsworth 
 forgot the bonfire kindled on the right of way. The bridge 
 inspector at White Eiver and at Forest Hills failed to discover, 
 or, discovering, to report, a flaw in a girder or a brace. To say 
 that the companies failed to provide proper persons to perform 
 these duties, is to say that they were willing to take the risk of 
 losses running into millions rather than spend from five to a 
 hundred dollars in cash : and most people who know anything, 
 know that (newspaper reporters and leader-writers, even, to the 
 contrary) that is not the way railroads are managed in the United 
 States, at all events. And we may add, that, had it been, the 
 above enumerated accidents would not have waited until the year 
 of grace, 1887, to have transpired. The railroad company, then, 
 is at the mercy of its employes. I will not cite figures, because 
 figures can be " cooked." But if anybody will sit down and com- 
 pute the millions spent annually not on public grounds, but for 
 the purely selfish purpose of avoiding expensive accidents (that 
 is, in self-preservation) by the railways of the United States, in 
 premiums for new inventions, in training-schools and shops for 
 the education of its servants and the development of improve- 
 ments, for the purchase of the latest devices for the saving of life 
 
152 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAY*. 
 
 and property, he will find his command of figures taxed to express 
 the aggregate result. And if he will remember the number of 
 courts and lawyers in this great country of ours, and the general 
 gusto with which juries mulct railway companies, he will not 
 wonder, I think, that science cannot move fast enough in devising 
 improvements to be utilized in the physical management of rail- 
 ways. The presumptive margin of profit in. railway operation is 
 small enough as it is ; but when the recurrence of such accidents 
 as those at Republic, at White River, at Forest Hills, at Chats- 
 worth, and at Kout's Station are admitted into the forecast, it is 
 apt to produce a rather considerable shrinkage in the prospect, or 
 in the temptation of stockholders to build more railroads. 
 
 Congress has established a bureau at Washington for the filing 
 of railway schedules, and for discovering what, if any, "long 
 hauls " and " short hauls " can possibly be " under substantially 
 similar circumstances and conditions." What public benefit this 
 bureau may become to the public, it remains to be demonstrated. 
 But, if the establishment of another bureau or commission to de- 
 vise a means for supplying railway companies with infallible em- 
 ployes were contemplated by the government, the government's 
 good intentions, at least, could not well be questioned. Of the 
 three millions of railway employes in this nation, the percentage 
 who do not do their duty is too microscopical for expression in 
 decimals ; but the railway industry happens to be one in which an 
 invisible percentage of carelessness produces enormously visible 
 calamitous results ; that is the price we pay for being carried 
 back and forth to our business at five miles in ten minutes in- 
 stead of five miles in an hour. But before the absolutely infalli- 
 ble employe is found, some eminent counsel of a railway com- 
 pany may yet be bold enough to claim, that, since railway com- 
 panies cannot take their brakemen and track-walkers from the 
 class of the community which produces Sumners, Websters, and 
 Conklings, the unknown mental processes which sometimes lead 
 a brakeman or a track-walker, from causes entirely and subject- 
 ively mental, to happen to think of something else than his 
 routine duty, ought to discharge a corporation which has no 
 
77/7? PEOPLE AND 77/7? RAILWAYS. 153 
 
 soul if not from pecuniary damages for loss of life, limb, or 
 property it has no agency in procuring, at least from newspaper 
 declamation, and charges of sacrificing its passengers and patrons 
 to mere " greed." Since, (however we may explain it), it happens to 
 be one of the most persistent of truths that accidents are of more 
 frequent occurrence upon bankrupt or non-dividend paying than 
 upon solvent and dividend paying railroads, one might say, logi- 
 cally speaking, that the " greed " of a railway company was a 
 public security rather than a danger. 
 
 There is an apparent moral to be drawn from these records of 
 casualty, which, from one point of view, perhaps, is safe enough. 
 We may say, and say with great truth, that no achievement of 
 applied science can be substituted for human watchfulness and 
 care. But to this there would be exceptions. The automatic 
 hay-press, which rams and packs and binds, not only, but de- 
 bouches the completed bale in time to pack another in the place 
 from which that bale is debouched ; the Hoe printing-press, 
 which counts the sheets it prints ; and hundreds of others, are 
 watchfulness personified (and I am told there are mechanisms 
 employed in the most delicate processes of watch-making which 
 are said even to correct a chance misplacement of the material to 
 be worked upon) ; but, since the operation of none of these is 
 occupied with the transportation of human beings, should these 
 automata fail, no lives are lost, and no public outcry awakened. 
 The better statement is, I think, that no machine can counteract 
 human willfulness or neglect. The machine can only do the share 
 of work allotted it. If the man fails in his, no accuracy of in- 
 vention can suffice. A dial may register the failure of a watch- 
 man to visit a certain point so many times a night, and tell its 
 unalterable tale in the morning. But, where a train of human 
 freight rushes on to death and disaster, death and disaster tell 
 the tale, upon the instant of the dereliction, and when it is too 
 late to correct the fault or supply the omission. And the public 
 scarifies with its denunciation the owners of the machine, and 
 not the man or men who ought to have cleared its track but did 
 not. 
 
154 THE PEOPLE AND THE HAIL \VA YS. 
 
 Everybody must trust somebody, corporations must trust 
 everybody they employ : nay, more, the railway company must 
 not only trust everybody, but it is at the mercy of every track- 
 walker on its line ; and, worse than that, every passenger that 
 railway transports, every pound of freight it moves, is at his 
 mercy too. Should that track-walker's eye be turned from an 
 obstruction or overlook a detail, the eternal vigilance of every 
 other servant of the company is worse than useless. The crash 
 must come, and all the sooner because the machinery which 
 moves the train is of the latest and best, and the coaches the 
 completest and most luxurious that human ingenuity has de- 
 vised. Penalties, threats, the prospect of rewards, alike fail to 
 make the man do his duty, or to prevent his forgetfulness or 
 willful absence of mind or body at a crucial point, or the intel- 
 lectual hiatus of a moment which causes his hand to forget once 
 in a half a million of times the required act which it is quite his 
 second nature to do at all the other times. What is it ? Is it 
 an " act of God ? " Is it inevitable necessity, or is it Nemesis ? 
 
 The physical perils of the sea appear to have been already 
 overcome. But the peril of panic remains, that no human in- 
 genuity can prevent, and no human discipline, however it may 
 foresee, control. The wheelsman of the "Ville de Havre" had 
 watched a vessel steering towards them for hours in a clear 
 night; but when that vessel was about to crush the great 
 steamer, the very thought of the monumental magnitude of the 
 approaching peril paralyzed that wheelsman's brain, and the 
 brain-paralysis steeled his hand, and he could not turn his wheel 
 the few points that meant safety to a priceless human freight. 
 What is there to provide against here ? Shall we still preserve 
 the antique phrase " act of God/' or merely say that it is fate or 
 luck ? Call it what we will, there is yet, it would seem, an ele- 
 ment in all mundane affairs for which nothing human can invent 
 an antidote or remedy, and which possibly should relieve, under 
 our human laws, of the responsibility. Whether or not mere 
 human framers of human laws ever devise a statute for an 
 emergency, of one thing, however, we can, I think, be sure 
 
TJIE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 155 
 
 enough ; namely, if a relief from this " act of God " should ever 
 come, it will be because science, and not the reporters, nor yet 
 the leader-writers of our daily newspapers, have grappled with 
 the problem. Everything except the human brain, the human 
 brain appears to have conquered, or to be in a fair way to con- 
 quer. But to go outside of itself to control itself that, it seems, 
 so far to have been unable to do. All that a soulless corporation 
 can do, it will do and does do. But soullessness brings its dis- 
 advantages; One of the disadvantages of soullessness is that it 
 has nothing to do with ethical questions. Another is that it 
 cannot consult its own convenience, but must do every thing by 
 established routine. It cannot say, "This claim is so trifling 
 that we will save our auditors, our bookkeepers, our accountants, 
 and pay it." If it be twelve and a half cents it must take its 
 course equally as if it were twelve and a half thousand dollars. 
 Nor can the soulless corporation sympathize with distress or 
 honest deserving, nor with the best of good intentions take into 
 account the number of an employe's children, or estimate the 
 value of his services upon the number of persons dependent upon 
 him for support. On one of the largest railways on the conti- 
 nent there is a rule that conductors whose trains arri ve at a 
 bridge which has been rendered unsafe by accident, or carried 
 away, shall side-track, or haul up, and telegraph back for in- 
 structions. It happened once that a through express pas- 
 senger-train, one of the heaviest and most important on 
 the line, on arriving at a small bridge, found that it 
 had been partially carried away. The conductor, an old 
 and experienced servant of the company, duly brought his train 
 to a standstill, sent out his signals, and wired for instructions. 
 He wired and wired again ; but, no instructions coming, he him- 
 self inspected the wrecked bridge, and saw how it could be ren- 
 dered secure. With such aid as was at hand, he repaired it, 
 crossed his train, and, on arriving at the end of his run, was 
 promptly discharged from the company's service. A soulless 
 corporation can only think at its head, cannot sentimentalize over 
 circumstances, cannot reward zeal. There must be in each mem- 
 
156 THE PEOPLE AND THE EAILWA F,S. 
 
 her a dependence on the rigid rules to which every other member 
 is subject; and, moreover, each member must assume the implicit 
 obedience of every other member to those rules. The conductor's 
 zeal, although it saved his train, might have paralyzed the time- 
 tables of the entire line. But instead of assuming, as bound to 
 do, that his fellow employes were doing their duty, possibly ex- 
 pecting the approval of his passengers, he disobeyed orders. The 
 company having no soul, could not appreciate or reward his zeal. 
 It only knew that orders had been disobeyed. The passengers, I 
 believe, took due care that the newspapers heard of his skill and 
 courage, may even have voted him a series of engrossed resolu- 
 tions, or presented him with a gold watch, or a blazoned badge. 
 Indeed, I think I remember that the conduct of the company on 
 this occasion was generally displeasing to the newspapers of the 
 locality, and that the company came in for an abundance of caus- 
 tic criticism and invective. By imperiously demanding obedience 
 to its rules, however, that railway is still carrying passengers in 
 safety over its thousand miles of track. I do not know what has 
 become of those local newspapers. In other words, if railway 
 companies are understood, among other crimes, to be arbitrary, 
 cruel, and remorseless, it is because of this rigid exaction of duty 
 unthinking, unreflecting duty from its every servant, from 
 president to track-walker ; whence only is the public safety and 
 the public convenience conserved. The pawnbroker who lowers his 
 dole, and increases his security in proportion to the necessity of 
 the client ; the seller of furniture on instalments who bides his 
 time and collects the prices of his goods, and then for a last in- 
 stalment rapines them back, these may be industries that fatten 
 on the poor seamstress and the burdened workman who toils for 
 less than bread. But pawnbrokers and instalment vendors do not 
 spring from the capitalist class (they usually come, on the con- 
 trary, from the very class of the poor seamstress and the poorer 
 day-laborer), nor do they operate our railways. So far from 
 grinding their employes, I would like to be advised of employers 
 who do more for the employed than the railway corporations of 
 the United States. The railroad company is more apt, I think, 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE HAIL WAYS. 157 
 
 to build lyceums, to stock libraries, to provide gymnasiums and 
 reading-rooms for its servants, than to crush and tyrannize over 
 them. But what the railway company can do, it does do. It will 
 instantly adopt nay, stimulate by rewards the latest improve- 
 ments in safety securing appliances. Up to the date of the latest of 
 the five accidents above specified, no practicable means of heating 
 cars had been invented except car-stoves. Steam-pipes from the 
 engine had, indeed, been proposed for twenty years, but no coup- 
 ler-joint had been perfected, and no means of keeping the 
 steam from cooling, sufficient to overcome the extreme coolable 
 surface of a pipe serving long trains in the severe weather of the 
 mountains, or the low temperatures of the North and North-west, 
 devised. At present, however (stimulated, in fact, by the very 
 casualties specified at Republic and White River), there are cer- 
 tainly three or four of these contrivances which have been tested 
 and found practicable. Therefore, a passenger hereafter over- 
 turned and partially roasted by a stove in a railway car in the 
 United States, would certainly be deprived of the opportunity 
 of asserting that he had been roasted by an e act of God/ since 
 the company could have availed itself of that particular progress 
 of applied science which had invented a heating apparatus which 
 in case of accidents would not induce combustion of the train.* 
 
 *Two New York City newspapers, the Evening Post and the Railroad 
 Gazette find large fault with the above analysis of the five great railway 
 accidents of the year 1887. Says the Evening Post, u Mr. Appleton Morgan 
 tries to palliate or even to deny the responsibility of the corporations for 
 most of the serious railroad accidents of the past year. We have of late 
 become quite accustomed to such pleas on behalf of the Anarchists; but 
 when the same line of argument is invoked in favor of a railway company, 
 by a lawyer of Mr. Morgan's standing, it is a surprise, and by no means a 
 welcome one." I myself do not see what I have to do with the Anarchists, 
 or the Anarchists with me. An Anarchist is one who intrudes upon the 
 still unsettled problem of labor versus capital, and proposes solving it by 
 eliminating the element of labor, and substituting cataclysm therefor. The 
 idea of cataclysm may have suggested a railway accident, otherwise the 
 Post's correspondence of ideas does not impress me as of much importance : 
 the Post is astonished that I should have given an account of the 
 Forest Hill disaster at variance with the official report of the Massa- 
 
158 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 There appears to be one other thing, however, up to date, that 
 a railway company cannot do. It cannot satisfy the newspapers 
 
 chusetts Board of Kailway Commissioners who investigated it, saying, 
 " We do not understand how it was possible for a writer of good standing 
 to disregard these facts. Either he must have presumed on the ignorance 
 of his readers, or else he never took the trouhle to look into the matter 
 itself. The latter is perhaps the more charitable supposition. But it need 
 hardly be said that for a writer in a scientific periodical either excuse is 
 equally weak." Doubtless the Post did not, at that writing, understand 
 how anybody could prefer the report of experts to the officiai reports of 
 non-experts upon so complicated an affair as a railway accident. But it 
 ought to have had some glimmering of an idea as to how such a preference 
 was possible, a day or so later, when itself printed prominently, and with- 
 out comment, the following item: " After a number of weeks spent in the 
 investigation of the Chatsworth train-wreck, the Illinois Railroad and 
 Warehouse Commission has submitted to Governor Oglesby a report 
 stating, that, in their opinion, the ' train would not have been destroyed if 
 the bridge had not burned before the train reached it.'" Before so mas- 
 terly an analysis of the casuistry of proximate causes, no wonder the 
 Evening Post was speechless. "If so be that the ship is not sunk," said 
 Captain Busby " Why, so then so. If so be that the ship is not sunk, why 
 so then so, also." 
 
 That the average newspaper should experience a difficulty in conceiving 
 that every railway accident was beyond the company's control does not 
 amaze me; but I admit to some surprise at the following criticism upon 
 iny paper, in the Railroad Gazette, a most valuable and intelligent com- 
 mentator, usually, upon railway affairs: viz., " At Republic, he [myself] 
 says the man sent with the red light failed to carry it; no mention is made 
 of the fact that two men failed in their duty to send him. Concerning 
 Forest Hill, Mr. Morgan makes the original assertion that no appliance in 
 the company's power to provide was lacking; which, perhaps, must be ad- 
 mitted as true, as a competent bridge-engineer (which the company 
 neglected to provide) could not be called an 'appliance.' " So far from 
 exploding, this appears to me a much stronger putting of my point than I 
 was equal to on the facts as they reached me. According to the Gazette, 
 the fault at Republic was not that the one red-light man did not go ahead } 
 but that two officials did not send him. So, not one human brain, but 
 two, failed to do their duty. If, as I argued, a corporation cannot control 
 the deflections of .even one human brain, how can it control the deflections, 
 independent and coincident, of two ? The fact that one man was absent- 
 minded, I held to be beyond the power of a corporation to prevent. But 
 the utterly unprecedented coincidence of two brains at the same moment, 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 159 
 
 of its good faith. Different investigators, tribunals, or commis- 
 sions may receive different reports of the causes directly forward- 
 in the same spot, and under the same circumstances, forgetting their duty, 
 and that duty their identical duty to do the same thing, does really 
 seem to me to be about as nearly an absolute act of God as any case of 
 which most experts could conceive. And, again, supposing that the 
 inspector of bridges of the Boston and Providence Railroad was incom- 
 petent: here, again, a human brain was at fault. If it can be shown that 
 the Boston and Providence Company knew him to be incompetent, or had 
 discharged a competent bridge-inspector to deliberately install an incom- 
 petent one, that would have been another matter. But it does not so 
 appear, neither does it appear that any bridge inspected by this particular 
 bridge-engineer had previously fallen. Speaking of this unfortunate 
 bridge-engineer of the Boston and Providence Railway Company, the 
 Massachusetts Board of Railway Commissioners says, " This man had been 
 in the employment of the corporation for a long series of years, his trade 
 was that of a machinist, he had not been educated as a civil engineer, 
 and the management had abundant reason to know that he was not 
 qualified, and had had no opportunity to qualify himself, to do the work 
 assigned to him with reference to this bridge." Ergo, had he been dis- 
 charged prior to the accident, the accident would not have happened. 
 Perhaps not. If a railway company could only foresee accidents, could 
 know in advance just exactly when one of its bridges was going to collapse, 
 doubtless it could avert the disaster by discharging the bridge-inspector, so 
 that he could not report that bridge secure, so that no train would try to 
 cross it (which would resemble, indeed, the intrepid mariner who warded 
 off a cyclone by collaring the barometer and holding it upside down). 
 But, seriously, should our railway companies every now and then discharge 
 their old, tried, and faithful employees men "who had been in the em- 
 ployment of the corporation for a long series of years" lest they should 
 at some time or other in the future become unfortunate, unfaithful or 
 careless? Perhaps a man not "educated as a civil engineer " could not 
 possibly, after having been "in the employment of the corporation for a 
 long series of years," come to know as much about railway-bridges as if in 
 his youth he had spent a couple of years with a tutor, or in a polytechnic 
 college. Does not the Railroad Gazette's statement of the causes of the 
 Forest Hill accident exactly carry out my own criticism; namely, that a 
 human brain, trusted and unusually accurate, for once failed to do its 
 work? The Illinois Commission found that the Chatsworth disaster 
 would not have happened had the bridge fallen before the fated train 
 reached it. Their Massachusetts contemporaries reported, that, had the 
 bridge-inspector been discharged before he reported the bridge safe, the 
 
160 T11E PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 ing a casualty. A question of precedence between parallel proxi- 
 mate causes is always an exceedingly nice one. Indeed, the only 
 report of a railway accident likely to be substantially unreliable 
 is the newspaper report ; and this not necessarily because the 
 newspaper is biassed against the company, but simply because 
 newspapers are at the mercy of their reporters, precisely as rail- 
 way companies are at the mercy of their employes. The reporter 
 first on the ground takes the impressions of the bystanders, and 
 reconciles them somehow out of his inner consciousness. The 
 only persons present who possess the slightest actual knowl- 
 edge as to the why and wherefore of the catastrophe are the 
 employees of the company, and they are silent. They have their 
 duties, none the less rigid in case of accident than when all goes 
 well, and are at their posts, saving life and property, and prevent- 
 ing further destruction by signals, and have neither the time nor 
 the jright to instruct reporters ; though, I may add, their silence 
 is always taken as a final confession of guilt on the part of the 
 company. Indeed, on reading the average American newspaper 
 accounts of railway disasters, I have repeatedly found myself ex- 
 claiming, " Why did not this dastardly and murderous company 
 complete the catalogue of its crimes by braining the survivors 
 with crowbars, and adding to its ill-gotten wealth by impartially 
 pillaging the dead bodies of all its victims ? " I once had occa- 
 sion to investigate an accident which derailed a way-train, throw- 
 ing it over the double track and immediately before an express- 
 fated train would never have attempted to run over it. I do not, upon 
 the whole, see much to choose between them. As I write, word comes 
 that the Minnesota Board of Kailway Commissioners, as if emulous to 
 compete in usefulness with its compeers of Illinois and Massachusetts, had 
 decreed that no upper berths in Pullman sleeping-coaches must be made 
 up until actually sold to passengers : which would oblige sleepy passengers 
 either to sit up during transit through that intelligent commonwealth, or 
 else sleep with entire indifference to the dusky porter and the possible new- 
 comer, and sundry joint operations not (as most of us know) over-condu- 
 cive to balmy and seductive repose. But the rule may be trusted, as may 
 most extra non-expert regulations, to disappear as gently as it is per- 
 emptorily suggested, 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAIL WA YS. 161 
 
 train coming in the opposite direction, almost exactly upon the 
 time when the express-train was due at the point where the 
 derailment occurred. Upon the trial of a resulting lawsuit, the 
 crew of the wrecked train testified unanimously to the fact : the 
 company's time-table and the registers of the train-despatchers 
 at both ends of the division (which could not have been disturbed 
 without throwing the whole business of the road into chaos) 
 proved it. But some passengers whom the unusual sensation of 
 escaping from destruction had unnerved, and to whom a series of 
 crowded and unique experiences had made a few moments seem 
 like hours, testified that there had been ample time to flag the 
 express-train (some of them putting the interval at several hours) ; 
 and the jury unanimously believed the passengers, as against the 
 company's witnesses, and thus morally convicted the employees 
 of perjuring themselves under orders, in order to mulct a corpo- 
 ration in damages. Juries from the interior do these things as 
 regularly as the opportunities present themselves ; and the excuse 
 lies, not in the opportunity, but in the nature of things, and in 
 the axiom that ' bigotry " and" ignorance " are synonymous terms. 
 But unfortunately there is no such palliation or excuse for the 
 ready writers and composers of leaders on the staff of our great 
 newspapers : for these are cultivated gentlemen, who know perfect- 
 ly well that railway corporations avoid accidents as they avoid 
 bankruptcy, and enforce a ceaseless and enlightened vigilance to 
 prevent them ; that railway companies do not practise small econ- 
 omies, do not risk bankruptcy (for a single great accident, like 
 that at Revere, may bankrupt, as that one actually bankrupted, 
 an entire corporation) for the sake of a few dollars : yet, knowing 
 this, persist in telling the public that railways are careless of 
 public rights, and indifferent to human life. To be sure, these 
 gentlemen do not second the religious press in advising that loco- 
 motive-engineers and East River pilots read their Bibles when 
 on duty, a habit which would doubtless largely increase the 
 perils of steam-transportation ; but they often, as we shall see, 
 make suggestions quite as invaluable. 
 
 On the evening of Tuesday, Dec. 20, 1887, there was not a 
 
162 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 bloody and terrible disaster on the Elevated Railroad in this city. 
 A train packed with human beings was not precipitated into a 
 narrow street below, crowded with men, women, and children; 
 horses, trucks, and vans. The wheels of a particular train, upon 
 that occasion, left the track, but the prudence and skill of the 
 builders of the elevated structure vindicated themselves; the jar 
 never deflected it an atom, the stout sleepers held the train, and 
 nobody was scratched. But no one, on reading the leaders print- 
 ed in the daily newspapers of this city, would have supposed that 
 a terrible calamity had been averted. Had that entire train, full 
 of human beings, been precipitated upon these passing men and 
 women, hordes, trucks, and vans, the daily newspapers could not 
 have censured the Manhattan Elevated Railway Company more 
 emphatically than they did ; or drawn for the occasion more vigor- 
 ous and virtuous lessons of the greed of railway corporations, 
 and of the woes of a long-suffering public. While every practical 
 railway man in the country must have admired the perfect and 
 almost automatic construction which saved so much waste of life 
 and property on that occasion, not a newspaper commended the 
 management, but rather took an additional opportunity of villify- 
 ing railroads in general, and the Manhattan Railway Company in 
 particular. I did not read all the eloquent leaders with which the 
 press improved the occasion of the non-occurrence of an appalling 
 disaster on the New York Elevated Railroad ; but I remember 
 one, that after feelingly dilating on the ghastly picture of gore 
 and agony which was not presented on that occasion, exclaimed, 
 " We must require of those who undertake such responsibilities 
 absolute security, not a pretty tolerable degree of safety. It is 
 not enough that accidents shall not be frequent ; they must be im- 
 possible. The system must be managed on the principle that there 
 are no railroad accidents ; that what are called such are due to 
 some species of neglect, which truly competent management could 
 and would have prevented " ( Commercial Advertiser, Dec. 22, 
 1887). If the gentleman who wrote those words will continue to 
 walk uprightly and piously before men unto his life's end, will 
 read his catechism and endeavor to reflect its precepts in his daily 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 163 
 
 gait and conversation, he will doubtless eventually proceed to a 
 vicinage beyond this fitful fever of life where accidents are " im- 
 possible." I doubt if he finds it upon this poor planet. But, 
 although perfectly innocuous to those as clever as himself, is it 
 not manufacturing a dangerous public sentiment and one as un- 
 patriotic as it is dangerous to constantly kindle and fan the im- 
 pression, that, of all the necessary industries which civilization 
 requires, the industry of maintaining a railway, or anything that 
 runs by steam, is a greedy arid despotic power, that lives by 
 crushing not only the bones of passengers, but the civil liberties 
 of the people ? If it is, and if it is wrong to do dangerous and un- 
 patriotic deeds, then the gentlemen who write these feverish and 
 furious leaders unless they repent will certainly never behold 
 the land where no accidents happen. I may add, perhaps, as ger- 
 mane to my text, that the newspapers all appear to agree, that if 
 nobody was killed on that occasion at Franklin Street it was 
 not the fault of the Manhattan Elevated Kailway Company, but 
 a genuine "a ct of God," for which the railway was in no ways 
 responsible. 
 
 What, then, we really require is not a new law, or a new cus- 
 tom, or a new statute, but an infallible foresight and judgment. 
 Our newspaper leader-writers are not, unfortunately, the only 
 gentlemen in the country who can prophesy things after they 
 come to pass. There are plenty of gentlemen, equally competent 
 in that regard, now employed upon the railway lines of this con- 
 tinent. If, however, a gentleman could be found with the much 
 rarer gift of prophecy as to things to come before they actually 
 transpire, I imagine that it would be difficult to name a salary he 
 could not command from a railway company. Indeed, neglect by 
 a railway company to secure the services of such advance prophet 
 ought certainly to be such a negligence as would settle the com- 
 pany's liability entirely beyond all possible legal interference. 
 There is nothing upon which newspaper comment is more familiar 
 than the well-worn theme of the fallibility of human testimony ; 
 even four inspired Evangelists, they tell us, could not agree upon 
 a given state of facts. They press this fallibility against railroad 
 companies. Do they ever press it in their favor ? 
 
164 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 CAN RAILWAY STRIKES BE PREVENTED ? 
 
 SEVERAL years ago I was the attorney of a leading railway com- 
 pany operating about a thousand miles of trackage in those days 
 a good deal of a road. A newly-inaugurated president, deter- 
 mined, among other reforms, to do away with labor difficulties, 
 happened at about the same time to begin his administration. His 
 plan for meeting all labor problems, and to abolish the possibility 
 of strikes, he contrived as follows : He sent out a general order to 
 "all concerned," stating that, thereafter: A new department of 
 the administration was constituted to be called the " Department 
 of Honor," with headquarters in the general offices. The func- 
 tion of this department of honor was the keeping of a " Roll of 
 Honor," in which, to begin with, the name of every official and 
 employe of the road, from highest to lowest, was to be enrolled. 
 Then "an intelligent system of promotions" was to be inaugu- 
 rated. Every one employed in any capacity was to be assured 
 that once filled the pay roll of the road should only be re- 
 cruited at the lowest grade in each function ; that vacancies in 
 each succeeding grade were to be filled by succession from the 
 grade below ; that, except for cause, there should be no dismissals ; 
 and that, moreover, any creditable action or particularly efficient 
 discharge of one's duty, or notable act of faithfulness, was to be 
 entered on the books such entries to distinguish the employe 
 opposite whose name they were made, for peculiar preferment if 
 opportunity came. 
 
 I have no doubt many of my then colleagues are alive who will 
 remember this " Roll of Honor." They will recall that it came 
 to grief very suddenly indeed from a great variety of causes. In 
 the first place the requisitions of the " Chief for the Roll of 
 Honor " for names were not largely honored. A division super- 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 intendent would report the names of his staff ; but a " walking 
 boss," even if he happened to be able to write, hardly knew how 
 to go about collecting the names of his gang and, if he did, 
 some of his gang were pretty sure not to know their own names, 
 or, if they did, how to spell them. Again, the constant vigilance 
 of the signal department, the night forces, the train dispatcher's 
 alertness, seriously precluded much attention to a -new detail, 
 which was looked upon as a "frill," a fancy, a whim; while 
 the responsible officials rather resented additional calls upon their 
 crowded hours of labor. Not to particularize, the thing was a 
 rapidly developed failure. At the end of six months the names 
 enrolled were ridiculously few in number compared to the pay 
 rolls ; the clerical forces were about all that appeared on the books, 
 and the single entry of meritorious action was an item that a cer- 
 tain clerk in the legal department had got married and gone off 
 on his wedding tour ! 
 
 It also happened to this same railroad company, during my 
 term in its service, that a general strike of railway employes 
 (such as are commoner than almost anything else to-day) spread 
 over the East. Our road got the full benefit of it ; and, on every 
 division except one, engines were stalled, freight trains side- 
 tracked, passenger services discontinued and business was entirely 
 at a standstill. But on that single division it happened that the 
 paymaster had not been seen for three months ! The fact was 
 that everybody's pay was in arrears, and the men simply could 
 not afford to strike ! 
 
 I have often pondered over this coincidence ; namely that, 
 whereas an elaborate system logically devised had utterly failed 
 to prevent the occurrence of strikes, the mere accident of a failure 
 to pay off a remote division had effectually prevented them. And 
 it has often seemed to me (and seems, to me still) that possibly 
 out of this coincidence and the hint it gives, a sort of scheme 
 not willful but logical might be devised. We certainly need 
 something in the way of a hint on the railways of this continent. 
 The only remedies for strikes that have ever been proposed, to 
 my knowledge, are co-operation, arbitration and that by judicial 
 
166 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 compulsion. But so far as railways are concerned, all of these 
 have dismally failed. 
 
 We cannot run a co-operative railroad where the employes 
 share in the profits (as long, at least, as there are such things as 
 fixed charges, and the profits, if any, belong to the stockholders). 
 Arbitration is a monumental failure for many great reasons ; 
 such as, for example, that arbitration implies two things ; first, 
 an equality of the arbitrating parties ; and, secondly, willingness 
 to be bound by the decision of the arbitrator. But the arbitrat- 
 ing parties are precluded by their numbers from meeting in specie 
 or en masse / and a committee of railroad officers and of track 
 walkers cannot be equal either in station, confidence or intelli- 
 gence. The one must necessarily despise or patronize, the other 
 fear or hate, the opposite side. The president or general counsel 
 of the company may recognize the hand that surfaces up the track 
 or sweeps out the station-house as an equal on paper. But they 
 will hardly come together on the same floor to exchange views. 
 And the result or award of an arbitration between two such in- 
 congruous and antagonistic or mutually suspicious elements 
 since it must be submitted to the good sense of each can hardly 
 impress the two parties alike. The concession of the stronger in- 
 variably excites the suspicion of the weaker intelligence. It fears 
 a trap, a ruse ; the concession of the weaker intelligence invokes 
 always the contempt of the stronger. 
 
 The other remedy, the judicial one (namely that since railway 
 companies are quasi-public, their employes are ^w^m-public 
 servants, and so criminally liable for neglect of their duties, for 
 refusing to work, etc.), while perfectly logical, I believe to be en- 
 tirely impracticable. It might do in Germany. But in the 
 United States an attempt to force men to work by legal or equit- 
 able process enforceable by the posse comitatus, by the sheriff or 
 the militia or the United States troops, or writs of assistance, 
 would be resented by an uprising which would imperil life as well 
 as property, and be pretty sure to be settled at the polls, if not 
 sooner. Mr. Simon Sterne is undoubtedly right when he says 
 that, " When, as recent experience seems to indicate, the commu- 
 
TILE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 167 
 
 nity is in danger of a stoppage of a service upon which its wel- 
 fare depends, the community has the right to step in and to at- 
 tach such conditions to the service as to ensure its performance 
 and its continuance, precisely for the same reason that it ensures 
 the regularity and continuance of the service of its soldiers on 
 the frontier and of its navies on the seas, by terms of service 
 made independent of caprice and conspiracy." But even were it 
 possible to practically enforce compulsory labor on the part of 
 railway employees, so long as legislators are elected by votes, it 
 is pretty safe to say that no statute embodying Mr. Sterne's sug- 
 gestion will ever be enacted in these United States ; while statutes 
 to meet and dispose of any such construction of common law as 
 Mr. Sterne implies would very soon be as " plenty as "blackberries." 
 There must be some other way than coercion found to make the 
 employed as well as the employer recognize the mutuality of a 
 contract. 
 
 And so the problem is constant, and the problem of strikes, is 
 one (as the late Charles Lever said of the " Irish Question ") in 
 which " every attempt at its solution is a new factor of irreconcila- 
 bility." Where are we to look for a solution ? Some of us have 
 pinned our faith to an Interstate Commission, which most clearly 
 lias the right, under the statute establishing it, to deal with any 
 matter that involves or affects the moving of freight between two 
 States. But the principal business of our present Interstate Com- 
 mission appears to be to keep the question of the constitutionality 
 of the act creating it away from any competent judicial tribunal. 
 It sits in regulation of trivial incidents between small shippers 
 and individual roads ; but where great public interests clash (as 
 in the late traffic war in the West) although clearly authorized 
 to take jurisdiction it as clearly and carefully overlooks its 
 prerogative. Practically, then, strikes must go on, and the rail- 
 ways must fight them as best they can, and the stockholders must 
 pay the expenses of these fights with what appetite they can. 
 
 Now, taking the experience of the railway company I have 
 spoken of the fact that its elaborate system for the prevention of 
 strikes was abortive, while a casual deficit in its treasury was 
 
168 THE PEOPLE AND THE BAIL WAYS. 
 
 effective to that end it seems to me that a plan something like 
 this might work well : 
 
 Let every employe of a railroad company sign for a definite 
 period (say one year), he to be retained by the company for a 
 year, barring incompetencey, disobedience, willful negligence or 
 incapacity. Let his pay begin at the beginning of the second 
 month of his term of employment. And let him fully under- 
 stand that this first month's pay will be added to his twelfth 
 month's pay, but be forfeited if by his own fault or willfulness 
 he leaves the company's service. The matter cannot be a hard- 
 ship if understood by the employe in advance so that he can pro- 
 vide for it. It is not considered a hardship when we withold a 
 percentage of the contractor's monthly estimate as guarantee for 
 performance of his contract. Why not try the same plan with 
 the employe ? It seems to me after considerable reflection 
 that the result must work good on both sides. To the company, 
 because it ensures permanence, effort and vigilance from the em- 
 ploye ; to the employe, because it gives him something to look 
 ahead for. It would be immaterial to this plan whether the pay 
 was rendered otherwise adequate by making the second month's 
 pay equal to a month and a half's service or not, the result would 
 always be that the employe would have something coming to him 
 at the end of the year ; which he was certain of if faithful, and 
 which he would certainly lose if he " struck " or boycotted, or 
 grew dissatisfied and left. (If disabled, he should be allowed it, 
 perhaps ; and in case of death it should go to his family or rep- 
 resentatives.) Above all, this delayed payment (or delayed per- 
 centage, if we so assessed it) would be an effectual check upon 
 " the walking delegate." That modern convenience could then 
 charm never so wisely, but the laborer would refuse to hear the voice 
 of the charmer. He would say : " You draw $30 a month for work- 
 ing. We will pay you $20 a month for not working." But the fly 
 would keep outside the web and retort, " Ah, but how about my 
 deferred wages ! " At any rate, I offer the suggestion respect- 
 fully, as one to which, in the midst of all the others current, it 
 might not be amiss to award a trial. 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 169 
 
 In other words my suggestion is : That the employ^ be led to 
 understand that his employment is a contract made in good faith 
 and for consideration on his part as well as on the part of the com- 
 pany. And that not the company alone, but each party thereto, 
 is equally bound by, and liable for non-fulfillment of, such con- 
 tract. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 A GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF RAILWAYS WHAT IT WOULD 
 
 MEAN. 
 
 The passenger reclining among his Pullman cushions as his 
 train moves out of the yard, will observe, upon divers and sundry 
 box cars standing idly about, the legends Wt. 40,000, Load 20 
 tons, or Wt. 45,000, Load 23 tons. This is because our pas- 
 senger happens to be travelling within the limits of the United 
 States. Were he travelling in Germany, the legends he would 
 read on the box cars would be 40 Mann, 8 Pferde ; or 30 Mann, 6 
 Pferde. Tho first named legends mean that the railways belong 
 to the men who built them, and are used for the inter-traffic of 
 freight ; the latter, that the Empire of blood and iron decrees its 
 own paramount denomination, over the railways as over every- 
 thing else, and has marked these cars with their capacity, not of 
 merchandise, but with the exact number of men and horses each 
 will hold, in case the Imperial pleasure may desire to move its 
 troops from place to place. That five men to one horse can be 
 crowded into the same space is owing to the circumstance that 
 horses are bulkier than men, not to any governmental considera- 
 tion for the horse. Neither horses nor men, per se, are of much 
 weight with the Imperial conscience, except for military purposes. 
 
 As the United States is not a military nation, is not in fear of 
 foreign wars (is protected by a surplus in the treasury in fact, 
 which is a considerably more powerful notice to ambitious alien 
 nations to sheer off than the strongest turtle back coast defences, 
 
170 THE PEOPLE AND THE E AIL WAY 8. 
 
 or the longest ranged guns would or could ever be) and as in- 
 ternecine embattlement is equally out of the question : there ap- 
 pears to be no present reason why the general Government should 
 take control of the railways of this Republic. But, nevertheless, 
 it appears to be considered essential to a discussion of railway 
 problems in the United States to contemplate the acquirement 
 and operation of our railroad lines by the general Government. 
 
 In the daily press in the review and the monthly maga- 
 zine on the floor of Congress in the convention and the 
 caucus the proposition is made and mooted, and the large 
 majority of easily-considered and suddenly formed opinions 
 appear to regard some plan for the purpose as desirable, con- 
 stitutional and feasible. Those publicists and political econo- 
 mists who encounter no difficulties in the way of practical 
 development of any theory they may happen to adopt, seem to 
 be agreed upon a desirability or public necessity of something of 
 the sort, and that the proposition may yet take definite form is 
 in no way unlikely. A certain step, indeed, in the general trend 
 of such proposition has actually been taken in the passage of the 
 Interstate Commerce Law. And the fact that that law has worked 
 no harm as yet to the public it having fallen into the innocuous 
 dissuetude of many better conceived statutes for regulating what 
 must either regulate itself or cease to exist is, with the general 
 public, perhaps, an inducement to look kindly at some further step 
 of the sort. But I have yet to discover that anybody has seri- 
 ously set himself down to realize what the absolute control of the 
 railways of this country by the Government would really and 
 practically mean; what it would mean, not on paper, but in actual 
 practical working to the citizen, to the individual, and to the 
 masses. 
 
 One can live endurably with his tailor who is behind hand with 
 his deliveries, or with his bootmaker who is derelict with the 
 boots he has agreed to furnish upon occasion. Our green-grocer 
 or our butcher may disappoint our tables, but at least we can re- 
 monstrate with him, and, if need be, carry our custom elsewhere. 
 But where our tailor, our bootmaker, our green-grocer and our 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE HAIL \\'A YS. 17J 
 
 butcher are, at the same time, our Government clothed with the 
 same majesty of the law, were they the State incarnate, to protest, 
 to remove our custom, or even to very gently request better service 
 in the future, might not be a privilege that remained to us. All 
 this seems to go without preachment. But it seems to occur to 
 nobody that in the case of our railways the consideration applies 
 in the slightest. The railroads are tyrants, they dominate this 
 public, they purchase legislators, corrupt judiciaries, rule us with 
 a rod of iron ! is the popular cry. What is the remedy ? Why, 
 make them still stronger, make them the very Government itself ! 
 These railways abrogate too much already, treat us as if they 
 were rulers indeed, and as if we, the people, were slaves ! Well, 
 then, make them our rulers indeed, make them the State itself ! 
 They take too much upon themselves ! Well then, give them more ! 
 They are tyrants already ! Make them dictators ! As it is, our 
 government is divided into the Executive, the Legislative, the 
 Judicial functions ! Let us incarnate the State into a fourth func- 
 tion the transportational. This would be a feat in the way of 
 making " the punishment fit the crime " worthy of the Gilbert- 
 Sullivan Mikado himself ; the great difficulty would be that it 
 might return in time to plague the inventor. 
 
 For, that which the Government monopolizes and operates, is a 
 part of the government, and must be clothed with its authority. 
 The post office is benign to us if we study its regulations and 
 conform ourselves to them, but if it miscarries our letters and 
 loses our money packages, what redress have we, except to com- 
 plain ? To be sure, the Government will send a searcher or de- 
 coy after our precious estrays, and the particular post offices in- 
 volved will possibly be more careful in the future. But we have 
 no grievances, no action, no remedy. 
 
 But, supposing the Government were a railway as well as a 
 post office. Beyond a pleasant uncertainty as to whether our griev- 
 ances were pigeon-holed at New York or Chicago, at Baltimore or 
 Washington, what would it avail to complain then ? Its officials 
 will perhaps politely listen to our grievances, but how if its preci- 
 ous balms break our head ? But for all this, the proposition that 
 
172 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS, 
 
 the Government control all the rail and telegraph transportation 
 facilities, (and we doubt not it would follow practically as it 
 already does logically), our water courses and our telephones, pos- 
 sibly our horse cars and livery stables, (certainly our theatres, 
 ought to be controlled long before our railways ; they are institu- 
 tions specially taxed upon receipts, they issue permits which are 
 construed sometimes to be licenses, sometimes leases, and some- 
 times mere privileges, and it is conceded that they may have some- 
 thing to do with the public interest if public morality is a pub- 
 lic interest, at least ) the proposition, we say, finds an abundance 
 always of proposers. As it is now, when a railway sets fire to 
 our barns or kills our stock, or smashes our freights, we can 
 couple it into any court in the land, and the jury will be "agin 
 the corporation " every time. The cattle the railway has killed 
 will always be found to have been the costliest of their species ; 
 our barns the richest and our freights the most priceless. But if 
 we are to be compelled to complain to a defendant sitting as a 
 court of claims, against the acts of this same defendant operating 
 as a railway company, possibly its assessment of the flagrancy of 
 its own trespass might lean as largely the other way. 
 
 Would it not be well for every one of those who clamor so 
 loudly for the government control of railways to spend a year in 
 inquiring into the practical effect of a government's control of the 
 railway facilities of its people ? I do not mean an enquiry among 
 the bureaux to find but just how the thing is done ; who appoints, 
 or reports to who ; to absorb the system of responsibility by which 
 a train man is officially moved by wires pulled in the Prime Min- 
 ister's Cabinet conducting such investigation under courtesy of 
 an escort from the same Prime Minister. Let them take up 
 their residence among the people who are permitted to use their 
 Government's railways for their daily wants, and let the enquirers 
 gather the facts unofficially from station master to door man, 
 from guard to ticket-taker, the passenger, the shipper, the abat- 
 ing proprietor let one of them send a telegram and pay for the 
 response and wait until he gets that response, if it please God he 
 gets it at all, until his mauuais quart cVheure has grown into 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 173 
 
 twenty-four mauvais quarts d'heure, and then let these gentlemen 
 come back and urge upon our voters that they send representatives 
 to Congress to put our railways into the hands of the Govern- 
 ment. At present, utterly depraved as our railways are, and 
 skillful as the high priced legal talent they monopolize, they do, 
 sometimes, pay for our baggage when they smash it, our cattle 
 when they kill them, our freight when they destroy or mislay it, 
 for our legs and arms and eyes when they maim us. I do not know 
 whether all this would be done with a greater or less alacrity 
 under a system of governmental controlled railways. But I 
 think I do know, that the more paternal a government becomes, 
 it is apt to take rather less than more care of the individual sub- 
 ject. The paternal relation in this case, as in most others, rather 
 reaching out to grasp the money bag and accumulations of per- 
 sonal capital, than to smooth the aching brow of hard handed toil 
 or visit the widow and the fatherless in their affliction. And I 
 am of the opinion, that when reversed conditions operate and the 
 paternal Government becomes parentally severe, the severity would 
 fall just in the reverse order upon the poor and the fatherless 
 rather than upon the billionaire and the capitalist. 
 
 I have nothing to offer as to the vast addition to the civil list, 
 the aggregation of patronage, with its tremendous opportunities 
 for favoritism, speculation and every possible form of dishonesty, 
 which would follow the operation of our railways employing five 
 or six million of people, and indirectly about as many more ; for 
 that is merely a matter for dilation, the suggestion has been 
 made often enough, and as often attempted to be laid. Still less 
 is this paper a discussion of nuthods. There are plenty of ex- 
 haustive dissertations, as to what the Government might, could, 
 or would do with their railways. What I propose to discuss in 
 this chapter is, the marked difficulty and hardship which would ac- 
 crue, supposing we were resolved upon the policy of govern- 
 mental absorbition of railways, from the realization of even the 
 fairest, most generous and most liberal, plan the government could 
 select for the purchase. Of course, the quickest plan would be to 
 just seize upon the railways and run them. But objection would 
 
174 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 be, that some of the more absurd among the high priced lawyers 
 might object that this was unconstitutional ; even that it was un- 
 constitutional for the government to go into the railway business 
 at all. And, by the time these interesting objections were heard 
 at the court of last resort, a new party might have obtained the 
 ascendancy in national counsel and the railroading craze of 
 the government diverted from its purpose. On the whole, per- 
 haps, it would be as well to recognize the organic grant of power, 
 known as the constitution, and under subdivision of Section 8, 
 which gives Congress power to regulate commerce between the 
 States, enact a statute which should provide for purchasing the 
 railways from their owners. But at what valuation ? At actual 
 cost or at such an appreciation thereof as would return a fair 
 bonus to the projectors ? The question of " stock watering " 
 often the street slang for our capitalization and capitalization of 
 increments or betterments, which are perfectly legitimate and 
 often even patriotic as where, for example, a trackless forest is 
 added to the civilized and revenue gathering domain of the nation 
 by a line of railways which by no course of possibility could pay 
 its builders even their money back, and where over capitalization 
 was the only possible inducement not only, but the only possible 
 method of raising the money necessary to build would confront 
 the national purchaser just here. All these have been discussed 
 to satiety. The fairest plan would seem to be, if the railwa} T s 
 were to be purchased at all, to enact that, when any railroad 
 company had paid its stockholders a certain agreed dividend for a 
 certain number of years, then the government should purchase its 
 entire line and plant, at a valuation of its stock based upon the 
 payment of such dividends. If any plan were practicable I think 
 this plan would be. And if any plan of Governmental railway 
 purchase could ever be just and honest to the involuntary vendors 
 I think this one might be made so. But even here the question 
 would arise : At what price should the government buy the sub- 
 ject ? To buy an investment at its actual value is no benefit to the 
 purchaser ; and to buy it at less would be oppression to the seller. 
 And, this question decided,, how could the government, being 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 175 
 
 the purchaser, ascertain the value of what it purchased, and pro- 
 tect itself against the middlemen and brokers, the valuers and of- 
 ficials through whom the sale was made ? And how could it pre- 
 vent as many repetitions of what would be the most monumental 
 of jobs from being repeated as often as would-be sellers of rail- 
 roads could scent a profit, and so build to sell and build and 
 build again ; as, even without the glittering government pur- 
 chaser in prospect, has been often enough done under our pres- 
 ent circumstances ? 
 
 But how could this justest of all the possible plans be carried 
 out ? Let us see. In the first place, the government could not 
 purchase one railway without purchasing all. It might built or 
 buy a line for employment in some one of its functions, of course, 
 but what we are now discussing is the thing apart from this. 
 And the railways in the United States, all told number about four 
 or five hundred, perhaps two tenths of which number are directly 
 paralleling or competing roads, which the Government, in justice 
 to itself, would have to reduce by taking up the tracks and 
 otherwise obliterating since the Government, could only buy 
 to operate, and it would be senseless to operate paralleling 
 roads. But to take up these roads would be one of the minor of 
 the hardships of which I have spoken. In the second place there 
 are only a minimum number of railroads in the country that pay 
 any dividend at all, and still fewer that have paid dividends for 
 any great length of time. Supposing, therefore, that the statute 
 for acquiring the railways should enact that the Government 
 should purchase any railroad whose company's stock has paid a 
 dividend of four per cent per annum for five or six or twenty 
 years : and that, as fast as any railroad company arrived at that 
 point of consecutive prosperity, the Government should so pur- 
 chase that railroad ; would not one of two things be certain, viz : 
 Either the Government would find itself the owner of a railroad 
 compelled to compete with a railroad in private hands, or the 
 private owners of every railroad in the United States could turn 
 the tables on the General Government, so that instead of forcing 
 the railways companies to sell to the government, the railways 
 
176 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 could force the government to buy, by simply "doctoring " their 
 dividends ? In either case, what greater hardship can be ima- 
 gined ? The government, with limitless resources, competing with 
 its own citizens with their modest capital. How long would it be 
 before the citizens were ruined ? But, great as it would be, what 
 would the ruin of a handful of citizens amount to beside the ability 
 of another handful of citizen to " cook " a lot of consecutive di- 
 vidends and so force the general government to buy railroads as 
 fast as the^ pleased. We clamor somewhat about Jay Gouldism 
 as it is, when we have but the one Jay Gould. How many Jay 
 Goulds and opportunities for him, would we make by passing 
 the most reasonable of statutes permitting the government to obtain 
 control of our railways ? Even government cannot make laws 
 fast enough to meet, let alone to anticipate, the inventive genius 
 of this people in money getting ; and to abolish the general rail- 
 way laws of every state in the Union, would not take away from 
 a single state its railway chartering power. 
 
 This is a free country, and legislation is quite as free as every- 
 thing else. But the very exuberance of personal liberty may tend 
 to its curtailment. We have seen the policy of free public schools 
 develop into the policy of a compulsory education : general railway 
 law into an Interstate Commerce Act. And a right to prohibit the 
 drinking of beer may not be radically so very far removed from the 
 right to compel the drinking of rum, or to enforce attendance at 
 Church or Sunday School, or to support the theatres, or to ride on 
 government railways. Stranger things have happened than that a 
 people whose forefathers refused to drink tea because it was taxed, 
 should be willing to send their telegrams only on government wires, 
 or ship their products only on government wheels a century and a 
 quarter later. Indeed, I think it will be found that the European 
 governments, which control their railways, do not always stop 
 there, but take other of their subject's necessities and conveniences 
 (such as tobacco, etc.) under their paternal wing. And if we 
 borrow the principle, we will all the more be apt to borrow its pro- 
 ductions. 
 
 It is not pretended that, in the relations of the public to the 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAIL WAYS. 177 
 
 railways it has chartered, there are no frictions to be overcome, no 
 inequalities to be adjusted: no wrongs to be righted in their cor- 
 respondence with all those other great corporate interests, whether 
 municipal or private, with which they must come in contact, so 
 long as the general prosperity of the continent continues. The 
 tendency of every well conceived and carefully nourished commer- 
 cial and municipal interest is, and always will and must be to en- 
 large and magnify itself. The fisherman in the Arabian Nights 
 unbottled a giant that he was quite aware of the impossibil- 
 ity of ever bottling again. But giants are apt to be good 
 natured, and that fisherman, as I remember the legend, suffered 
 no harm. The alarmist and the timid man is apt, no doubt, to 
 associate size with a disposition to tyrannize ; but, in nature, the 
 rule works quite the other way. Size and spite are entirely in- 
 compatible in nature, and a little reflection will convince that they 
 do not amalgamate in commercial matters. But, even if the rail- 
 way is a giant which uses its giant's strength tyrannously, the 
 remedy is not to amote, to stamp out, to suppress or " gobble " or 
 confiscate the railway. If there is any private grief, it should be 
 taken to the courts which are always open, (and, we may add, 
 are none to kind to the giant railway) and, as to the public in* 
 terest, that must be taken to the forum where all public in- 
 terests must ultimately go to the calm, patriotic, earnest, peace- 
 loving, and law-abiding convention of common sense and not to 
 the clamor of the rabble or the mob of the Market Place. The 
 remedy is not yet formulative, but in the future, and must be 
 worked out concurrently with the working of the Institution 
 sought to be remedied from within that Institution, and not fro in 
 without it ; not by arraigning it against all the other institutions of 
 Commerce and Trade which it was created to serve, and by whose 
 prosperity it lives, but by amalgamating them with it and treating 
 them as they are as identical. The railway system had been a 
 growth ; -the growth concurrently with and inseparable from, the 
 growth of Commerce and Trade ; the goodly share of the world's 
 wealth it has created, has also created it. Compare the prosperity 
 of any territory in the United States with the prosperity of the 
 
178 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 Kail way System which forms its artery ; and the question, which 
 created which ? is like the question debated in the Limekiln 
 Club, as to whether the hen was the mother of the egg or the egg 
 the mother of the hen. It is impossible to imagine the one except 
 as both the cause and effect of the other. The growth of each 
 synchronizes with that of the other. First the railway, then com- 
 merce, wealth, civilization : first commerce, wealth, civilization, then 
 the railway; state the formula as you please. From the beginning 
 of the railway, the railway interest and the interests of trade have 
 been inseparable : each has been prostrated when the other was pro- 
 strated, buoyant when the other was buoyant, supreme when the 
 other was supreme. And the railway system of this nation can no 
 more be isolated from the commercial and financial interests than 
 could the blood circulate in the arterial system of a human being 
 whose heart has been plucked out, or that the heart could receive and 
 propel blood through the arterial system of a dead man. But this 
 does not prevent our erudite Mr. Hudson, for convenience of treat- 
 ment, no doubt, from separating them separately and distinctly as 
 follows : " The rights of the thousands of millions of railway 
 property are important, but not more so than those of the ten of 
 thousands of millions of private property and business capital that 
 suffer for want of such legislation." (p. 316.) 
 
 Growing up, then, with the wealth and convenience of the 
 nation, with, and out of its trade, its civilization and its commer- 
 cial and financial necessities it was impossible that friction, 
 hardship and loss should not somewhere result in the operation of 
 the railway interest as regards the people. It takes a long time 
 for complex systems to adjust themselves to each other; and 
 having the greater share of the complexities, the Railway was the 
 proximate cause, no doubt, of the greater shares of these frictions, 
 hardships and losses. Sometimes the railway has outrun the de- 
 velopment of the territory ; sometimes the development of its ter- 
 ritory has outrun the railway ; sometimes a railway has been 
 unable to move its trains ; sometimes it has stalled them for want 
 of freights to move. But in neither case has the remedy, correc- 
 tion and adjustment been found by antagonizing the railway with 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAIL WA YS. 179 
 
 its territory, and making law and rules and regulations by each 
 for the corruption of the other. Personal and sectional jealousies, 
 too, have crept in to complicate the situation. In the countless 
 myriads of details, from collecting for a sixpence worth to the 
 thousand dollars worth of transportation, somebody, no doubt, has 
 been charged more for a short haul than for a long one. Here was 
 the parable of the laborer in the vineyard, who was perfectly satis- 
 fied with his penny a day until his fellow laborer received a penny 
 also for somewhat less work : or, as Mr. Hudson puts it, " For 
 while the rate of 16 cents for hauling one hundred pounds of 
 freight 56 miles may be reasonable enough in itself, it stands side 
 by side with the rate of 10 cents for hauling the same goods 172 
 miles. If one rate is fair, what must the other be ? " (p. 161) 
 It does not occur to Mr. Hudson that the simple fact may have 
 been that the circumstances and conditions under which these two 
 rates were made, might have been different. If Mr. Hudson sup- 
 poses that a railway company 172 miles long is in the habit of 
 suspending its business and bringing its books into a single office 
 in order to discriminate between two individual shippers out of 
 personal favoritism, he has a very crude conception of the volume 
 of trade necessary to enable a railroad to exist, or of the details of 
 railroad book-keeping. But this sentence is not more crude and 
 artless than any other I am able to find in his volume, though in- 
 deed, it gives as good an idea as any other I could select there- 
 from of his whole intellectual process, viz : The, by this time, 
 familiar profession of collecting real or rumored items of discrim- 
 inations on individual railroads, and hurling the mass of them at 
 the public as an indictment against the entire railway system of 
 the United States, and demanding that under that indictment 
 that system be instantly pronounced guilty without benefit of 
 clergy. Such matter of fact, of daily and hourly occurrence, as the 
 fact that when individual hardships have occurred in the service 
 of the public by the railways, they have either been too trivial to 
 be redressed, or, if important enough to carry to the courts, have 
 been carried there and there have been speedily and properly re- 
 dressed^-such a fact as this, we say has no effect upon such 
 
180 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 railway reformers as Mr. Hudson's. Nothing less than placing the 
 entire E/ail way system of the nation under penal laws, will satisfy, 
 in his eyes, a single, solitary, inequality in the freight inadvert- 
 ently or purposely charged, to shippers for an identical service. 
 In every other walk of human life the intention governs ; but Mr. 
 Hudson never stops to enquire whether discrimination is inten- 
 tional or unintentional ; it is enough for him that it exists. Doubt- 
 less in Railway history cases of discrimination have been counted 
 by the millions. I know of no walk in life in which our poor 
 human nature has been able to resist or to avoid them. The 
 fakir from his stall, the grocer behind his counter, the very judge 
 on the bench has dealt in them. " Who hath died for this fault ? 
 There's many have committed it ! " But whatever others have 
 done, the Railway Companies of the United States saw themselves, 
 first of all, the evils of discrimination and themselves set to work 
 to find the remedy. There never has been a day in the history of 
 America railroading when somebody in the service of a Railway 
 Company has not been employed at a liberal salary to grapple with 
 " The Railway Problem." The combined wisdom and experience 
 of the shrewd and trained men who operate our railways at last 
 developed the " Pooling System " ; inaugurated it, employed the 
 best and most expert men they could find anywhere to administer 
 it, and abided themselves by their arbitraments. The Companies 
 themselves paid these accomplished gentlemen their liberal salaries 
 to adjust these public matters. They did not call upon the public 
 to pay them. What was the result ? The public was satisfied, 
 rates went down, everything was moving smoothly, when the In- 
 terstate Commerce act stepped in and set everything at odds 
 again. For dispersion of the Pool Commissioners, gentlemen of 
 lifelong study and experience, for whom every question of differen- 
 tiation involved the most intricate calculations of price, wages, 
 markets, trade, even first costs of railway plants, there came a 
 hostile Act of Congress like a bull in a china shop. The delicate 
 calculations were tumbled together into the scrap heap the Com- 
 missioners were sent home, and politics and political patronage 
 are hereafter charged with solving the Railway Problem in the 
 
THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 181 
 
 United States ! I admit that, so far, the interstate commerce com- 
 mission has not changed a single item in our Kailway Procedure 
 that our daily newspapers still devote the same unnumbered 
 pages to railway " strikes," " cuts " and " wars." I admit that it 
 has been officially decided in bane, that the railways must go on 
 doing just as they have always done, and that the railways have 
 obeyed their mandates. But, all the same, I find in the text of 
 the Interstate Commerce Law doctrines and enactment which if 
 inforced would be dangerous to the liberty of this people, and 
 since we may not always have a perfect commission I think it 
 dangerous to leave the law upon our statute books. 
 
 It may all be for the best. But, for my part, it seems to me 
 that it would have been better to allow the Railway Companies to 
 continue to work out the salvation of the people, for experience 
 had taught them that it was their own salvation as well ! ! 
 
 The centralization of industrial corporations known as " Trusts/ 7 
 are popularly supposed, somehow or other, to be inimical to the 
 public weal. Yet any stockholder of an en-Trusted company can 
 (and, dividends not forthcoming and probably would) complain. 
 But, should the government of the United States resolve itself 
 into one huge Railway Trust, and maintain as Mr. Hudson and 
 his congeners demand all the railroad trackage on this continent 
 as public highways over which every citizen could run his own 
 conveyances ; no matter what this Trust might see fit to do, there 
 could be no complainant and no courts in which to complain. 
 And, most serious of all (not to mention certain minor inconven- 
 iences, such as that the Trust could not constitutionally lay itself 
 up treasures in heaven by transporting ministers of the gospel at 
 half rates), it is possible that constant problems of terminals, car- 
 storage, misunderstandings between locomotives as to right of 
 way, etc., would render any other than a Railway President inel- 
 igible for President of the United States. 
 
 The modernization of methods which accompanies civilization 
 the telephone, the telegraph, the railway require quite other 
 rules than those imposed upon society by the Middle Ages. In 
 these matters rules must keep up with circumstances, not circum- 
 
182 THE PEOPLE AND THE KAIL WAYS. 
 
 stances bend to rules. Time was when the expenses of a war 
 were limited to the men withdrawn from useful employments and 
 the properties destroyed. But, to-day, commercial effects in the 
 antipodes of the battle : field the single discharge of a gun or the 
 touch of an electric button, cannot be removed from a computation 
 of first cost, until the very facilities for making war have rendered 
 wars themselves improbable. And, similarly, to subject the pulses 
 and arteries of commerce to rigid and Procrustean edicts framed 
 in mob or market place, in labor-union or in cabinet, is and must 
 be commercial suicide and nothing less. Nay more, they can only 
 recoil upon the people, the nation, the power which utters them. 
 Thus it is estimated that the Interstate Commerce Act has inflict- 
 ed upon this people in a single year in increased freights paid to 
 the Railway companies since the abolition of pools a burden of 
 sixty millions of dollars, (thus justifying the Interstate Com- 
 merce commission in declaring in its first annual report that 
 the Act " has operated directly to increase railroad earnings.") 
 But, as this estimate would only be about a cent apiece for our 
 great population (little enough to pay for an experiment), I have 
 preferred, in these pages, to speak of the Interstate Commerce 
 Act as simply null and void in practical benefit or damage at pres- 
 ent, and to confine the discussion to its portent as a menace and 
 a peril to possible political emergencies of the future. We cannot 
 now, if we would, go back to the days of the nomad and the 
 Shepherd Kings in order to dodge the Corporation, the Railway 
 Company, and the Trade Centre ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 
 AN ACT TO KEGtJLATE COMMERCE. 
 
 [For a careful annotation of this Act see Mr. Dos Passes' little volume 
 published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1887; also, Mr. Harper's 
 Commentary published by Robert Clarke & Co., Cincinnati, 1887. I can 
 add nothing to these exhaustive annotations.] 
 
 BE it enacted by the Senate and House of Kepresentatives of 
 the United States of America in Congress assembled : That the 
 provisions of this Act shall apply to any common carrier or car- 
 riers engaged in the transportation of passengers or property 
 wholly by railroad or partly by railroad and partly by water when 
 both are used, under common control, management or arrange- 
 ment for a continuous carriage or shipment from one State or 
 Territory of the United States, or the District of Columbia to 
 any other State or Territory of the United States or the District 
 of Columbia or from any place in the United States to an adjacent 
 foreign country, or from any place in the United States through a 
 foreign country to any other place in the United States, and also 
 to the transportation in like manner of property shipped from any 
 place in the United States to a foreign country and carried from 
 such place to a port of transshipment, or shipped from a foreign 
 country to any place in the United States, and carried to such 
 place from a port of entry either in the United States or an adja- 
 cent foreign country. Provided, however, that the provisions of 
 this Act shall not apply to the transportation of passengers or 
 property or to the receiving, delivering, storage or handling of 
 property wholly within one State, and not shipped to or from a 
 foreign country from any State or Territory as aforesaid. 
 
184 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 The term " railroad " as used in this Act shall include all 
 bridges and ferries used or operated in connection with any rail- 
 road, and also all the road in use by any corporation operating a 
 railroad, whether owned or operated under a contract, agreement, 
 or lease ; and the term " transportation " shall include all instru- 
 mentalities of shipment or carriage. 
 
 All charges made for any service rendered or to be rendered in 
 the transportation of passengers or property as aforesaid, or in 
 connection therewith, or for the receiving, delivering, storage, or 
 handling of such property, shall be reasonable and just ; and every 
 unjust and unreasonable charge for such service is prohibited and 
 declared to be unlawful. 
 
 SEC. 2. That if any common carrier subject to the provisions 
 of this Act shall, directly or indirectly, by any special rate, re- 
 bate, drawback, or other device, charge, demand, collect, or re- 
 ceive from any person or persons a greater or less compensation for 
 any service rendered, or to be rendered, in the transportation of 
 passengers or property, subject to the provisions of this Act, 
 than it charges, demands, collects, or receives from any other per- 
 son or persons for doing for him or them a like and contempo- 
 raneous service in the transportation of a like kind of traffic under 
 substantially similar circumstances and conditions, such common 
 carrier shall be deemed guilty of unjust discrimination, which is 
 hereby prohibited and declared to be unlawful. 
 
 SEC. 3. That it shall be unlawful for any common carrier sub- 
 ject to the provisions of this Act to make or give any undue or 
 unreasonable preference or advantage to any particular person, 
 company, firm, corporation, or locality, or any particular descrip- 
 tion of traffic, in any respect whatsoever, or to subject any par- 
 ticular person, company, firm, corporation, or locality, or any 
 particular description of traffic, to any undue or unreasonable 
 prejudice or disadvantage in any respect whatsoever. 
 
 Every common carrier subject to the provisions of this Act 
 shall, according to their respective powers, afford all reasonable, 
 proper, and equal facilities for the interchange of traffic between 
 their respective lines, and for the receiving, forwarding, and de- 
 
APPENDIX. 185 
 
 livering of passengers and property to and from their several 
 lines and those connecting therewith, and shall not discriminate 
 in their rates and charges between such connecting lines ; but 
 this shall not be construed as requiring any such common carrier 
 to give the use of its tracks or terminal facilities to another car- 
 rier engaged in like business. 
 
 SEC. 4. That it shall be unlawful for any common carrier sub- 
 ject to the provisions of this act to charge or receive any greater 
 compensation in the aggregate for the transportation of passen- 
 gers or of like kind of property, under substantially similar cir- 
 cumstances and conditions, for a shorter than for a longer distance 
 over the same line, in the same direction, the shorter being in- 
 cluded within the longer distance ; but this shall not be construed 
 as authorizing any common carrier within the terms of this act to 
 charge and receive as great compensation for a shorter as for a 
 longer distance : Provided, however ', That upon application to the 
 Commission appointed under the provisions of this act, such com- 
 mon carrier may, in special cases, after investigation by the Com- 
 mission, be authorized to charge less for longer than for shorter 
 distances for the transportation of passengers or property ; and the 
 Commission may from time to time prescribe the extent to which 
 such designated common carrier may be relieved from the opera- 
 tion of this section of this act. 
 
 SEC. 5. That it shall be unlawful for any common carrier sub- 
 ject to the provisions of this act to enter into any contract, agree- 
 ment, or combination with any other common carrier or carriers 
 for the pooling of freights of different and competing railroads, or 
 to divide between them the aggregate or net proceeds of the earn- 
 ings of such railroads, or any portion thereof ; and in any case of 
 an agreement for the pooling of freights as aforesaid, each day of 
 its continuance shall be deemed a separate offense. 
 
 SEC. 6. That every common carrier subject to the provisions of 
 this act shall print and keep for public inspection schedules show- 
 ing the rates and fares and charges for the transportation of passen- 
 gers and property which any such common carrier has established 
 and which are in force at the time upon its railroads, as defined by 
 
186 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 the first section of this act. The schedules printed as aforesaid by 
 any such common carrier .shall plainly state the places upon its 
 railroad between which property and passengers will be carried, 
 and shall contain the classification of freight in force upon such 
 railroad, and shall also state separately the terminal charges and 
 any rules or regulations which in any wise change, affect, or de- 
 termine any part or the aggregate of such aforesaid rates and fares 
 and charges. Such schedules shall be plainly printed in large 
 type, of at least the size of ordinary pica, and copies for the use 
 of the public shall be kept in every depot or station upon any such 
 railroad, in such places and in such form that they can be conven- 
 iently inspected. 
 
 Any common carrier subject to the provisions of this act receiv- 
 ing freight in the United States to be carried through a foreign 
 country to any place in the United States shall also in like man- 
 ner print and keep for public inspection, at every depot where 
 such freight is received for shipment, schedules showing the 
 through rates established and charged by such common carrier to 
 all points in the United States beyond the foreign country to 
 which it accepts freight for shipment ; and any freight shipped 
 from the United States through a foreign country into the United 
 States, the through rate on which shall not have been made public 
 as required by this act, shall, before it is admitted into the United 
 States from said foreign country, be subject to customs duties as 
 if said freight were of foreign production ; and any law in conflict 
 with this section is hereby repealed. 
 
 No advance shall be made in the rates, fares, and charges which 
 have been established and published as aforesaid by any common 
 currier in compliance with the requirements of this section, except 
 after ten days' public notice, which shall plainly state the changes 
 proposed to be made in the schedule then in force, and the time 
 when the increased rates, fares, or charges will go to into effect ; 
 and the proposed changes shall be shown by printing new sched- 
 ules, or shall be plainly indicated upon the schedules in force at 
 the time and kept for public inspection. Reductions in such 
 published rates, fares, or charges may be made without previous 
 
APPENDIX. 187 
 
 public notice ; but whenever any such reduction is made, notice 
 of the same shall immediately be publicly posted, and the changes 
 made shall immediately be made public by printing new schedules, 
 or shall immediately be plainly indicated upon the schedules at 
 the time in force and kept for public inspection. 
 
 And when any such common carrier shall have established and 
 published its rates, fares, and charges, in compliance with the 
 provisions of this section, it shall be unlawful for such common 
 carrier to charge, demand, collect, or receive from any person or 
 persons a greater or less compensation for the transportation of 
 passengers or property, or for any services in connection there- 
 with, than is specified in such published schedule of rates, fares, 
 and charges as may at the time be in force. 
 
 Every common carrier subject to the provisions of this act shall 
 file with the Commission hereinafter provided for copies of its 
 schedules of rates, fares, and charges which have been established 
 and published in compliance with the requirements of this sec- 
 tion, and shall promptly notify said Commission of all changes 
 made in the same. Every such common carrier shall also file 
 with said Commission copies of all contracts, agreements, or ar^ 
 rarigements with other common carriers in relation to any traffic 
 affected by the provisions of this act to which it may be a party. 
 And- in cases where passengers and freight pass over continuous 
 lines or routes operated by more than one common carrier, and 
 the several common carriers operating such lines on routes estab- 
 lish joint tariffs of rates or fares or charges for such continuous 
 lines or routes, copies of such joint tariffs shall also, in like man- 
 ner, be filed with said Commission. Such joint rates, fares, and 
 charges on such continuous lines so filed as aforesaid shall be 
 made public by such common carriers when directed by said 
 Commission, in so far as may, in the judgment of the Commis- 
 sion, be deemed practicable ; and said Commission shall from time 
 to time prescribe the measure of publicity which shall be given to 
 such rates, fares, and charges, or to such part of them as it may 
 deem it practicable for such common carriers to publish, and the 
 place in which they shall be published ; but no common carrier 
 
188 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 part}'' to any such joint tariff shall be liable for the failure of 
 any other common carrier party thereto to observe and adhere 
 to the rates, fares, or charges thus made and published. 
 
 If any such common carrier shall neglect or refuse to file or pub- 
 lish its schedules or tariffs of rates, fares and charges as provided in 
 this section, or any part of the same, such common carrier shall, in 
 addition to other penalties herein prescribed, be subject to a writ 
 of mandamus, to be issued by any circuit court of the United 
 States in the judicial district wherein the principal office of said 
 common carrier is situated or wherein such offense may be com- 
 mitted, and if such common carrier be a foreign corporation, in 
 the judicial circuit wherein such common carrier accepts traffic 
 and has an agent to perform such service, to compel compliance 
 with the aforesaid provisions of this section ; and such writ shall 
 issue in the name of the people of the United States, at the rela- 
 tion of the Commissioners appointed under the provisions of this 
 act ; and failure to comply with its requirements shall be punish- 
 able as and for a contempt ; and the said Commissioners, as com- 
 plainants, may also apply, in any such circuit court of the United 
 States, for a writ of injunction against such common carrier, to 
 restrain such common carrier from receiving or transporting prop- 
 erty among the several States and Territories of the United 
 States, or between the United States and adjacent foreign coun- 
 tries, or between ports of transhipment and of entry and the 
 several States and Territories of the United States, as men- 
 tioned in the first section of this act, until such common car- 
 rier shall have complied with the aforesaid provisions of this sec- 
 tion of this act. 
 
 SEC. 7. That it shall be unlawful for any common carrier sub- 
 ject to the provisions of this act to enter into any combination, 
 contract, or agreement, expressed or implied, to prevent, by 
 change of time schedule, carriage in different cars, or by other 
 means or devices, the carriage of freights from being continuous 
 from the place of shipment to the place of destination ; and no 
 break of bulk, stoppage, or interruption made by such common 
 carrier shall prevent the carriage of freights from being and 
 
APPENDIX. 189 
 
 being treated as one continuous carriage from the place of ship- 
 ment to the place of destination, unless such break, stoppage, or 
 interruption was made in good faith for some necessary purpose, 
 and without any intent to avoid or unnecessarily interrupt such 
 continuous carriage or to evade any of the provisions of this act. 
 
 SEC. 8 That in case any common carrier subject to the provis- 
 ions of this act shall do, cause to be done, or permit to be done 
 any act, matter, or thing in this act prohibited or declared to be 
 unlawful, or shall omit to do any act, matter, or thing in this act 
 required to be done, such common carrier shall be liable to the 
 person or persons injured thereby for the full amount of damages 
 sustained in consequence of any such violation of the provisions 
 of this act, together with a reasonable counsel or attorney's fee, 
 to be fixed by the court in every case of recovery, which attor- 
 ney's fee shall be taxed and collected as part of the costs in the 
 case. 
 
 SEC. 9 That any person or persons claiming to be damaged by 
 any common carrier subject to the provisions of this act may 
 either make complaint to the Commission as hereinafter provided 
 for, or may bring suit in his or their own behalf for the recovery 
 of the damages for which such common carrier may be liable un- 
 der the provisions of this act, in any district or circuit court of 
 the United States of competent jurisdiction ; but such person or 
 persons shall not have the right to pursue both of said remedies, 
 and must in each case elect which one of the two methods of pro- 
 cedure herein provided for he or they will adopt. In any such 
 action brought for the recovery of damages the court before which 
 the same shall be pending may compel any director, officer, re- 
 ceiver, trustee or agent of the corporation or company defendant 
 in such suit to attend, appear, and testify in such case, and may 
 compel the production of the books and papers of such corpora- 
 tion or company party to any such suit ; the claim that any such 
 testimony or evidence may tend to criminate the person giving 
 such evidence shall not excuse such witness from testifying, but 
 such evidence or testimony shall not be used against such person 
 on the trial of any criminal proceeding. 
 
190 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 SEC. 10. That any common carrier subject to the provisions of 
 this act, or, whenever such common carrier is a corporation, any 
 director or officer thereof, or any receiver, trustee, lessee, agent, or 
 person acting for or employed by such corporation, who, alone or 
 with any other corporation, company, person, or party, shall will- 
 fully do or cause to be done, or shall willingly suffer or permit to 
 be done, any act, matter, or thing in this act prohibited or declared 
 to be unlawful, or who shall aid or abet therein, or shall willfully 
 omit or fail to do any act, matter, or thing in this act required 
 to be done, or shall cause or willingly suffer or permit any act, 
 matter, or thing so directed or required by this act to be done not 
 to be so done, or shall aid or abet any such omission or failure, or 
 shall be guilty of any infraction of this act, or shall aid or abet 
 therein, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall, upon 
 conviction thereof in any district court of the United States 
 within the jurisdiction of which such offense was committed, be 
 subject to a fine of not to exceed five thousand dollars for each 
 offense. 
 
 SEC. 11. That a Commission is hereby created and established, 
 to be known as the Inter-State Commerce Commission, which 
 shall be composed of five Commissioners, who shall be appointed 
 by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. 
 The Commissioners first appointed under this act shall continue 
 in office for the term of two, three, four, five, and six years, re- 
 spectively, from the first day of January, anno Domini eighteen, 
 hundred and eighty-seven, the term of each to be designated by 
 the President ; but their successors shall be appointed for terms 
 of six years, except that any person chosen to fill a vacancy shall 
 be appointed only for the unexpired time of the Commissioner 
 whom he shall succeed. Any Commissioner may be removed by 
 the President for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in 
 office. Not more than three of the Commissioners shall be appoint- 
 ed from the same political party. No person in the employ of or 
 holding any official relation to any common carrier subject to the 
 provisions of this act, or owning stock or bonds thereof, or who is 
 in any manner pecuniarily interested therein, shall enter upon 
 
APPENDIX. 191 
 
 the duties of or hold such office. Said Commissioners shall not 
 engage in any other business, vocation, or employment. No vacan- 
 cy in the Commission shall impair the right of the remaining 
 Commissioners to exercise all the powers of the Commission. 
 
 SEC. 12. That the Commission hereby created shall have author- 
 ity to inquire into the management of the business of all com- 
 mon carriers subject to the provisions of this act, and shall keep 
 itself informed as to the manner and method in which the same 
 is conducted, and shall have the right to obtain from such com- 
 mon carriers full and complete information necessary to enable 
 the Commission to perform the duties and carry out the objects 
 for which it was created ; and for the purposes of this act the 
 Commission shall have power to require the attendance, and testi- 
 mony of witnesses and the production of all books, papers, tariffs, 
 contracts agreements, and documents relating to any matter under 
 investigation, and to that end may invoke the aid of any court of 
 the United States in requiring the attendance and testimony of 
 witnesses and the production of books, papers, and documents 
 under the provisions of this section. 
 
 And any of the circuit courts of the United States within the 
 jurisdiction of which such inquiry is carried on may, in case of 
 contumacy or refusal to obey a subpoena issued to any common 
 carrier subject to the provisions of this act, or other person, issue 
 an order requiring such common carrier or other person to appear 
 before said Commission (and produce books and papers if so 
 ordered) and give evidence touching the matter in question ; and 
 any failure to obey such order of the court may be punished by 
 such court as a contempt thereof. The claim that any such tes- 
 timony or evidence may tend to criminate the person giving such 
 evidence shall not excuse such witness from testifying ; but such 
 evidence or testimony shall not be used against such person on 
 the trial of any criminal proceeding. 
 
 SEC. 13. That any person, firm, corporation, or association, or 
 any mercantile, agricultural, or manufacturing society, or any 
 body politic or municipal organization complaining of anything 
 done or omitted to be done by any common carrier subject to 
 
192 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 the provisions of this act in contravention of the provisions there- 
 of, may apply to said Commission by petition, which shall briefly 
 state the facts ; whereupon a statement of the charges thus made 
 shall be forwarded by the Commission to such common carrier, 
 who shall be called upon to satisfy the complaint or to answer the 
 same in writing within a reasonable time, to be specified by the 
 Commission. If such common carrier, within the time specified, 
 shall make reparation for the injury alleged to have been done, 
 said carrier shall be relieved of liability to the complainant only 
 for the particular violation of law thus complained of. If such 
 carrier shall not satisfy the complaint within the time specified, 
 or there shall appear to be any reasonable ground for investigating 
 said complaint, it shall be the duty of the Commission to investi- 
 gate the matters complained of in such manner and by such means 
 as it shall deem proper. 
 
 Said Commission shall in like manner investigate any complaint 
 forwarded by the railroad commissioner or railroad commission of 
 any State or Territory, at the request of such commissioner or com- 
 mission, and may institute any inquiry on its own motion in the 
 same manner and to the same effect as though complaint had been 
 made. 
 
 No complaint shall at any time be dismissed because of the ab- 
 sence of direct damage to the complainant. 
 
 SEC. 14. That whenever an investigation shall be made by said 
 Commission, it shall be its duty to make a report in writing in 
 respect thereto, which shall include the findings of fact upon which 
 the conclusions of the Commission are based, together with its 
 recommendation as to what reparation, if any, should be made by 
 the common carrier to any part} r or parties who may be found to 
 have been injured ; and such findings so made shall thereafter, in 
 all judicial proceedings, be deemed prima facie evidence as to 
 each and every fact found. 
 
 All reports of investigations made by the Commission shall be 
 entered of record, and a copy thereof shall be furnished to the 
 party who may have complained, and to any common carrier that 
 may have been complained of, 
 
APPENDIX. 193 
 
 SEC. 15. That if in any case in which an investigation shall be 
 made by said Commission it shall be made to appear to the satis- 
 faction of the Commission, either by the testimony of witnesses or 
 other evidence, that anything has been done or omitted to be 
 done in violation of the provisions of this act, or of any law cog- 
 nizable by said Commission, by any common carrier, or that any 
 injury or damage has been sustained by the party or parties com- 
 plaining, or by other parties aggrieved in consequence of any such 
 violation, it shall be the duty of the Commission to forthwith 
 cause a copy of its report in respect thereto to be delivered to 
 such common carrier, together with a notice to said common car- 
 rier to cease and desist from such violation, or to make reparation 
 for the injury so found to have been done, or both, within a rea- 
 sonable time, to be specified by the Commission ; and if, within 
 the time specified, it shall be made to appear to the Commission 
 that such common carrier has ceased from such violation of law, 
 and has made reparation for the injury found to have been done, 
 in compliance with the report and notice of the commission, or to 
 the satisfaction of the party complaining, a statement to that effect 
 shall be entered of record by the Commission, and the said 
 common carrier shall thereupon be relieved from further liability 
 or penalty for such particular violation of law. 
 
 SEC. 16. That whenever any common carrier, as defined in and 
 subject to the provisions of this act, shall violate or refuse or 
 neglect to obey any lawful order or requirement of the Commis- 
 sion in this act named, it shall be the duty of the Commission, 
 and lawful for any company or person interested in such order or 
 requirement, to reply, in a summary way, by petition, to the 
 circuit court of the United States sitting in equity in the judicial 
 district in which the common carrier complained of has its prin- 
 cipal office, or in which the violation or disobedience of such order 
 or requirement shall happen, alleging such violation or disobedi- 
 ence, as the case may be ; and the said court shall have power to 
 hear and determine the matter, on such short notice to the com- 
 mon carrier complained of as the court shall deem reasonable ; 
 and such notice may be served on such common carrier, his or its 
 
194 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 officers, agents, or servants, in such manner as the court shall 
 direct ; and said court shall proceed to hear and determine the 
 matter speedily as a court of equity, and without the formal 
 pleadings and proceedings applicable to ordinary suits in equity, 
 hut in such manner as to do justice in the premises ; and to this 
 end such court shall have power, if it think fit, to direct and pros- 
 ecute, in such mode and by such persons as it may appoint, all 
 such inquiries as the court may think needful to enable it to form 
 a just judgment in the matter of such petition ; and on such hear- 
 ing the report of said Commission shall be prima facie evidence 
 of the matters therein stated ; and if it be made to appear to such 
 court, on such hearing or on report of any such person or persons, 
 that the lawful order or requirement of said Commission drawn 
 in question has been violated or disobeyed, it shall be lawful for 
 such court to issue a writ of injunction or other proper process, 
 mandatory or otherwise, to restrain such common carrier from 
 further continuing such violation or disobedience of such order or 
 requirement of said Commission, and enjoining obedience to the 
 same ; and in case of any disobedience of any such writ of in- 
 junction or other proper process, mandatory or otherwise, it shall 
 be lawful for such court to issue writs of attachment, or any 
 other process of said court incident or applicable to writs of in- 
 junction or other proper process, mandatory or otherwise, against 
 such common carrier, and if a corporation, against one or more of 
 the directors, officers, or agents of the same, or against any owner, 
 lessee, trustee, receiver, or other person failing to obey such writ 
 of injunction or other proper process, mandatory or otherwise ; 
 and said court may, if it shall think fit, make an order directing 
 such common carrier or other person so disobeying such writ of 
 injunction or other proper process, mandatory or otherwise, to pay 
 such sum of money not exceeding for each carrier or person in 
 default the sum of five hundred dollars for every day after a day 
 to be named in the order that such carrier or other person shall 
 fail to obey such injunction or other proper process, mandatory 
 or otherwise; and such moneys shall be payable as the court shall 
 direct, either to the party complaining, or into court to abide the 
 
APPENDIX. 195 
 
 ultimate decision of the court, or into the Treasury ; and payment 
 thereof may, without prejudice to any other mode of recovering 
 the same, be enforced by attachment or order in the nature of a 
 writ of execution, in like manner as if the same had been recovered 
 by a final decree in personam in such court. When the subject 
 in dispute shall be of the value of two thousand dollars or more, 
 either party to such proceeding before said court may appeal to 
 the Supreme Court of the United States, under the same regula- 
 tions now provided by law in respect of security for such appeal ; 
 but such appeal shall not operate to stay or supersede the order 
 of the court or the execution of any writ or process thereon ; and 
 such court may, in every such matter, order the payment of such 
 costs and counsel fees as shall be deemed reasonable. Whenever 
 any such petition shall be filed or presented by the Commission 
 it shall be the duty of the district attorney, under the direction 
 of the Attorney-General of the United States, to prosecute the 
 same ; and the costs and expenses of such prosecution shall be 
 paid out of the appropriation for the expenses of the courts of the 
 United States. For the purposes of this act, excepting its penal 
 provisions, the circuit courts of the United States shall be deemed 
 to be always in session. 
 
 SEC. 17. That the Commission may conduct its proceedings in 
 such manner as will best conduce to the proper dispatch of busi- 
 ness and to the ends of justice. A majority of the Commission 
 shall constitute a quorum for the transaction of business, but no 
 Commissioner shall participate in any hearing or proceeding in 
 which he has any pecuniary interest. Said Commission may, 
 from time to time, make or amend such general rules or orders as 
 may be requisite for the order and regulation of proceedings be- 
 fore it, including forms of notices and the service thereof, which 
 shall conform, as nearly as may be, to those in use in the courts 
 of the United States. Any party may appear before said Com- 
 mission and be heard, in person or by attorney. Every vote and 
 official act of the Commission shall be entered of record, and its 
 proceedings shall be public upon the request of either party in- 
 terested. Said Commission shall have an official seal, which shall 
 
196 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 be judicially noticed. Either of the members of the Commission 
 may administer oaths and affirmations. 
 
 SEC. 18. That each Commissioner shall receive an annual sal- 
 ary of seven thousand five hundred dollars, payable in the same 
 manner as the salaries of judges of the courts of the United States. 
 The Commission shall appoint a secretar}^ who shall receive an 
 annual salary of three thousand five hundred dollars, payable in 
 like manner. The Commission shall have authority to employ 
 and fix the compensation of such other employes as it may find 
 necessary to the proper performance of its duties, subject to the 
 approval of the Secretary of the Interior. 
 
 The Commission shall be furnished by the Secretary of the In- 
 terior with suitable offices and all necessary office supplies. Wit- 
 nesses summoned before the Commission shall be paid the same 
 fees and mileage that are paid witnesses in the courts of the 
 United States. 
 
 All of the expenses of the Commission, including all necessary 
 expenses for transportation incurred by the Commissioners, or by 
 their employes under their orders, in making any investigation in 
 any other places than in the city of Washington, shall be allowed 
 and paid, on the presentation of itemized vouchers therefor ap- 
 proved by the chairman of the Commission and the Secretary of 
 the Interior. 
 
 SEC. 19. That the principal office of the Commission shall be in 
 the city of Washington, where its general sessions shall be held; 
 but whenever the convenience of the public or of the parties may 
 be promoted or delay or expense prevented thereby, the Commis- 
 sion may hold special sessions in any part of the United States. 
 It may, by one or more of the Commissioners, prosecute any in- 
 quiry necessary to its duties, in any part of the United States, 
 into any matter or question of fact pertaining to the business of 
 any common carrier subject to the provisions of this act. 
 
 Sec. 20. That the Commission is hereby authorized to require 
 annual reports from all common carriers subject to the provisions 
 of this act, to fix the time and prescribe the manner in which such 
 reports shall be made, and to require from such carriers specific 
 
APPENDIX. 197 
 
 answers to all questions upon which the Commission may need in- 
 formation. Such annual reports shall show in detail the amount 
 of capital stock issued, the amounts paid therefor, and the manner 
 of payment for the same j the dividends paid, the surplus fund, if 
 any, and the number of stock-holders ; the funded and floating 
 debts and the interest paid thereon ; the cost and value of the 
 carrier's property, franchises, and equipment ; the number of em- 
 ployes and the salaries paid each class ; the amounts expended 
 for improvements each year, how expended, and the character of 
 such improvements ; the earnings and receipts from each branch 
 of business and from all sources ; the operating and other ex- 
 penses ; the balances of profit and loss ; and a complete exhibit of 
 the financial operations of the carrier each year, including an an- 
 nual balance-sheet. Such reports shall also contain such informa- 
 tion in relation to rates or regulations concerning fares or freights, 
 or agreements, arrangements, or contracts with other common 
 carriers as the Commission may require ; and the said Commission 
 may, within its discretion, for the purpose of enabling it the bet- 
 ter to carry out the purposes of this act, prescribe (if in the opin- 
 ion of the Commission it is practicable to prescribe such uni- 
 formity and methods of keeping accounts) a period of time within 
 which all common carriers subject to the provisions of this act 
 shall have, as near as may be, a uniform system of accounts, and 
 the manner in which such accounts shall be kept. 
 
 Sec. 21. That the Commission shall, on or before the first day 
 of December in each year, make a report to the Secretary of the 
 Interior, which shall be by him transmitted to Congress, and copies 
 of which shall be distributed as are the other reports issued from 
 the Interior Department. This report shall contain such informa- 
 tion and data collected by the Commission as may be considered 
 of value in the determination of questions connected with the reg- 
 ulation of commerce, together with such recommendations as to 
 additional legislation relating thereto as the Commission may 
 deem necessary. 
 
 Sec. 22. That nothing in this act shall apply to the carriage, 
 storage, or handling of property free or at reduced rates for the 
 
198 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 United States, State, or municipal governments, or for charitable 
 purposes, or to or from fairs and expositions for exhibition there- 
 at, or the issuance of mileage, excursion, or commutation pas- 
 senger tickets ; nothing in this act shall be construed to prohibi.t 
 any common carrier from giving reduced rates to ministers of re- 
 ligion ; nothing in this act shall be construed to prevent railroads 
 from giving free carriage to their own officers and employes, or 
 to prevent the principal officers of any railroad company or com- 
 panies from exchanging passes or tickets with other railroad com- 
 panies for their officers and employes ; and nothing in this act 
 contained shall in any way abridge or alter the remedies now 
 existing at common law or by statute, but the provisions of this 
 act are in addition to such remedies : Provided, That no pend- 
 ing litigation shall in any way be affected by this act. 
 
 Sec. 23. That the sum of one hundred thousand dollars is here- 
 by appropriated for the use and purposes of this act for the fiscal 
 year ending June thirtieth, anno Domini eighteen hundred and 
 eighty-eight, and the intervening time anterior thereto. 
 
 Sec. 24. That the provisions of sections eleven and eighteen of 
 this act, relating to the appointment and organization of the Com- 
 mission herein provided for, shall take effect immediately, and the 
 remaining provisions of this act shall take effect sixty days after 
 its passage. 
 
 Approved, February 4, 1887. 
 
APPENDIX. 199 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 The decision in He Louisville & Nashville, Interstate Commerce 
 Commission, Washington, June 15, 1887, in the matter of the 
 petitions of The Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company 
 and others. 
 
 OPINION OP THE COMMISSION. 
 
 COOLEY, Chairman. 
 
 The Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company was one of 
 the first to apply for relief under the fourth section of the Act to 
 regulate commerce, which, after declaring the general rule that 
 more shall not be charged or received in the aggregate by a com- 
 mon carrier subject to the law, for the transportation of passen- 
 gers or of the like kind of property, under substantially similar 
 circumstances and conditions for a shorter than for a longer dis- 
 tance over the same line in the same direction, the shorter being 
 included in the longer, proceeds then to authorize exceptions, 
 and confers upon the Commission certain powers in respect 
 thereto. 
 
 From the first there have been two opinions regarding the 
 proper construction of this provision for exceptions ; one view 
 being that no exception can be lawful unless made with the 
 sanction of the Commission ; and the other, apparently better 
 supported on the words of the statute, that an order of relief is 
 not required when the circumstances and conditions are substan- 
 tially dissimilar, since the carrier, in acting upon them, would 
 commit no breach of law, though it would be responsible in 
 
200 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 case it were found that the circumstances and conditions were 
 misconceived or misjudged. Under this last view the order for 
 relief would be needful only when the case was not one of plainly 
 dissimilar circumstances and conditions, but in which, neverthe- 
 less, there might be reasons and equities that would sanction such 
 greater charge. 
 
 The Commission is informed that the interstate roads north of 
 the Potomac and the Ohio and east of the Missouri, with sub- 
 stantial unanimity, have conformed to the requirements of the 
 fourth section by putting in force tariffs re-arranged accordingly. 
 Some friction was manifested for a time, arising largely from the 
 discontinuance of special rates, favors, and privileges, and from 
 the adoption of new classifications ; but where the fourth section 
 has been thus made operative very few instances have come to our 
 attention of injury thereby occasioned. 
 
 The roads which anticipated especial injury to commerce from 
 the strict enforcement of the law were principally those situated 
 in the Southern States and the transcontinental lines. After a 
 little time some of the north and south roads in the territory first 
 mentioned found themselves excluded to a certain extent from 
 business which they had previously handled, but these instances 
 were not numerous, so far as the Commission is at present 
 advised. 
 
 In the cases where loss of revenue to the roads and injury to 
 the business of the country was most seriously anticipated, the 
 railroad companies, although some of them took the ground that 
 the statute contemplated they would determine for themselves the 
 exceptional cases in which they might make a lower charge for a 
 longer haul, nevertheless were unwilling to incur the peril of so 
 arranging their tariffs that they would in any instance conflict 
 with the general rule which the act prescribed, apparently deem- 
 ing it more prudent to suffer temporary loss of traffic until the 
 act could receive authoritative construction than to subject them- 
 selves to heavy penalties in case it should finally be held that the 
 general rule must be applied in every case until the authority of 
 the Commission for making exceptions had been given. The 
 
APPENDIX, 201 
 
 Louisville and Nashville Company was one of those which took 
 this position, and upon its application a temporary order of relief 
 was made. Following the making of that and of other like orders, 
 the Commission proceeded to take a great amount of testimony 
 bearing upon the question whether the several carriers relieved 
 were warranted in making rates on their lines which were not in 
 conformity to the statutory rule, and in doing so it invited light 
 from all sources, arid was glad to have the assistance, not only of 
 the railroad companies, but of competing steamboat owners, of 
 boards of trade, and of citizens generally, whatever might be their 
 line of business. The fullest opportunity has been afforded to 
 any citizen of the United States who desired to be heard upon 
 the matter, to present facts personally or by affidavit, and argu- 
 ments viva voce, in writing, or in print. The invitation has been 
 quite largely accepted ; the subject has been laid fully before us, 
 and we have endeavored to give to it the consideration its import- 
 ance demands. 
 
 In making the orders of temporary relief no opinion was 
 expressed upon the question whether they were necessary for the 
 protection of the carriers in case the circumstances and conditions 
 were found to be in fact dissimilar. The railroad companies did 
 not raise that question, but, as has been said, elected as a matter 
 of prudence to apply for the preliminary order. No objection 
 could well be taken to this course provided it should prove to be 
 practicable for the Commission to take up and in a reasonable 
 time dispose of the several applications made to it ; but it was 
 almost immediately perceived that the number was to be so great 
 that this would be quite out of the question. Each order for 
 relief would necessarily be preceded by investigation into the 
 facts, on evidence which in most cases would be best obtained 
 along the line of the road itself. A single case might therefore 
 require for its proper determination the taking of evidence all the 
 way from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and this not merely the 
 evidence of witnesses for the petitioning carrier, but of such other 
 parties as might conceive that their interests or the interests of 
 the public would be subserved either by granting the relief 
 applied for or by denying it. 
 
202 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 If the Commission were to give to the petitions the time needed 
 for their proper determination, it would be compelled to forego 
 the performance of judicial and other functions which by the 
 statute were apparently assumed to be of high importance, and 
 even then its authority to grant relief would be performed under 
 such circumstances of embarrassment and delay that it must in 
 large measure fail to accomplish the beneficial purposes which we 
 must suppose the statute had in view. Assuming as we must 
 when the law provides for it that it is important to the public 
 interest that a privilege to charge more for the shorter haul than 
 for the longer over the same line in the same direction, should be 
 admitted in some cases, as had been the custom, the interruption 
 of the privilege when the case was proper for it would presump- 
 tively cause mischief, and should not, therefore, be compulsory 
 while the slow processes of an investigation were going on, 
 especially as the particular investigation might itself be com- 
 pelled to await the determination of many others. Moreover, an 
 adjudication upon a petition for relief would in many cases be far 
 from concluding the labors of the Commission in respect to the 
 equities involved, for questions of rates assume new forms, and 
 may require to be met differently from day to day ; and in those 
 sections of the country in which the reasons or supposed reasons 
 for exceptional rates are most prevalent, the Commission would, 
 in effect, be required to act as rate makers for all the roads and 
 compelled to adjust the tariffs so as to meet the exigencies of 
 business while at the same time endeavoring to protect relative 
 rights and equities of rival carriers and rival localities. This in 
 any considerable State would be an enormous task. In a country 
 so large as ours, and with so vast a mileage of roads, it would be 
 superhuman. A construction of the statute which should require 
 its performance would render the due administration of the law 
 altogether impracticable, and that fact tends strongly to show 
 that such a construction could not have been intended. 
 
 We have listened, with an earnest desire to reach a just con- 
 clusion, to all the arguments presented on the construction of the 
 statute, by those appearing either to advocate or to oppose the 
 
APPENDIX. 203 
 
 applications, and after mature consideration we are satisfied that 
 the statute does not require that the Commission shall prescribe 
 in every instance the exceptional case and grant its order for 
 relief before the carrier is at liberty in its tariffs to depart from 
 the general rule. The terms of the statute clearly lead to the 
 opposite conclusion. It declares : 
 
 " It shall be unlawful for any common carrier subject to the provisions 
 of this act to charge or receive any greater compensation in the aggregate 
 for the transportation of passengers or of the like kind of property under 
 substantially similar circumstances and conditions for a shorter than for a 
 longer distance over the same line in the same direction, the shorter being 
 included in the longer distance." 
 
 Here we have clearly stated what is unlawful and forbidden ; 
 and for doing the unlawful and forbidden act penalties are then 
 provided. But that which the act does not declare unlawful must 
 remain lawful if it was so before, and that which it fails to forbid 
 the carrier is left at liberty to do without permission of any one. 
 The charging or receiving the greater compensation for the shorter 
 than for the longer haul is seen to be forbidden only when both 
 are under substantially similar circumstances and conditions ; and 
 therefore if in any case the carrier, without first obtaining an 
 order of relief, shall depart from the general rule, its doing so will 
 not alone convict it of illegality, since if the circumstances and 
 conditions of the two hauls are dissimilar the statute is not 
 violated. Should an interested party dispute that the action of 
 the carrier was warranted, an issue would be presented for adju- 
 dication, and the risks of that adjudication the carrier would 
 necessarily assume. The later clause in the same section, which 
 empowers the Commission to make orders for relief in its discre- 
 tion, does not in doing so restrict it to a finding of circumstances 
 and conditions strictly dissimilar, but seems intended to give a 
 discretionary authority for cases that could not well be indicated 
 in advance by general designation, while the cases which upon 
 their facts should be acted upon as clearly exceptional would be 
 left for adjudication when the action of the carrier was challenged. 
 The statute becomes on this construction practical, and this sec- 
 tion may be enforced without serious embarrassment. 
 
204 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 From the recital of the history of the framing of this section 
 (which is given further on) it appears among other things that 
 the proviso respecting orders for relief was devised by the Senate 
 committee which originally drafted the section, and that it was 
 an essential part of it as first proposed j the prohibitory part of 
 the section being then quite stringent, but a discretion being con- 
 ferred upon the Commission to relieve against its operation. 
 Afterwards the words " under substantially similar circumstances 
 and conditions " were inserted in the first sentence of the section. 
 The proviso was perfectly intelligible so long as the leading clause 
 contained a hard and fast rule against charging more for the 
 shorter than for the longer haul. It was then obvious that a 
 discretion was left to the Commission in the matter of relaxing 
 the rule when different circumstances and conditions rendered 
 such relaxation in its judgment proper. Had the section passed 
 as it then stood, the exercise of such a discretion might have been 
 entered upon by the Commission with a distinct understanding 
 of the task imposed, even though its adequate performance might 
 have been out of the question ; but modified as it now stands, the 
 necessity for a relieving order is greatly narrowed, it being obvious 
 that no order is needed to relieve against the operation of the 
 statute when nothing is done or proposed which it makes unlaw- 
 ful. 
 
 If any serious doubt of the proper construction of the clause 
 of the statute now under review should, after careful consideration 
 of its terms, still remain, it would seem that it must be removed 
 when section 2, in which the same controlling words are made 
 use of, is examined in connection. That section provides : 
 
 ' ' That if any common carrier subject to the provisions of this act shall, 
 directly or indirectly, by any special rate, rebate, drawback, or other de- 
 vice, charge, demand, collect, or receive from any person or persons a 
 greater or less compensation for any service rendered, or to be rendered, 
 in the transportation of passengers or property, subject to the provisions 
 of this act, than it charges, demands, collects or receives from any other 
 person or persons for doing for him or them a like and contemporaneous 
 service in the transportation of a like kind of traffic under substantially sim- 
 ilar circumstances and conditions, such common carrier shall be deemed 
 guilty of unjust discrimination, which is hereby prohibited and declared 
 to be unlawful." 
 
APPENDIX. 205 
 
 Here it will be observed that the phrase is precisely the same ; 
 and there can be no doubt that the words were carefully chosen, 
 probably because they were believed to express more accurately 
 and precisely than would any others the exact thought which 
 was in the legislative mind. And in this section, as well as in 
 section 4, the phrase is employed to mark the limit of the car- 
 rier's privilege ; its privilege, too, in respect to the very subject- 
 matter with which section 4, where it is employed, has to do, 
 namely, the charges for transportation service. It is not at all 
 likely that Congress would deliberately, in the same act and when 
 dealing with the same general subject, make use of a phrase which 
 was not only carefully chosen and peculiar, but also controlling, 
 in such different senses that its effect as used in one place upon 
 the conduct of the parties who were to be regulated and controlled 
 by it would be essentially different from what it was as used in 
 another. But beyond question the carrier must judge for itself 
 what are the " substantially similar circumstances and condi- 
 tions' 7 which preclude the special rate, rebate, or drawback, which 
 is made unlawful by the second section, since no tribunal is em- 
 powered to judge for it until after the carrier has acted, and then 
 only for the purpose of determining whether its action constitutes 
 a violation of law. The carrier judges on peril of the con- 
 sequences ; but the special rate, rebate, or drawback which it 
 grants is not illegal when it turns out that the circumstances and 
 conditions were not such as to forbid it ; and as Congress clearly 
 intended this, it must also when using the same words in the 
 fourth section have intended that the carrier whose privilege was 
 in the same way limited by them, should in the same way act 
 upon its judgment of the limiting circumstances and conditions. 
 Most of the applications made to the Commission for relief may 
 be said to be based upon a showing of dissimilar circumstances 
 and conditions claimed to justify the larger charge for the shorter 
 haul. The Commission was asked to find that such dissimilar 
 circumstances and conditions existed, and the question was pre- 
 sented in a great variety of forms. Upon this question it was be- 
 lieved that investigation into the conditions of railroad service in 
 
206 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 the States south of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi would be 
 particularly useful. In the system of rate-making practiced in 
 that section, the making of a greater charge on interstate business 
 to and from intermediate stations than to and from competitive 
 points requiring a longer haul had been, it appears, substantially 
 universal, and business men in the larger towns united with the 
 carriers in asserting that the cessation of the practice would force 
 a stoppage of trade to an extent that would be destructive of many 
 considerable interests. That section, therefore, seemed to afford 
 a proper field for an inquiry into the reasons supposed to justify 
 the practice. When the investigation was concluded the reasons 
 which had been advanced appeared to be substantially the fol- 
 lowing: 
 
 That the support and maintenance of a railroad ought properly 
 to be borne by the local traffic for which it is supposed to be built, 
 and the through traffic may justly be carried for any sum not 
 below the actual cost of its own transportation. 
 
 That the cost of local traffic is greatest, and the charges for 
 carrying it should be in proportion, and if they are so they will 
 often result in the greater charge for the shorter haul. 
 
 That traffic carried long distances will much of it become im- 
 possible if charged rates corresponding to those which may pro- 
 perly be imposed on local traffic ; and it must therefore be taken 
 in recognition of the principle, accepted the world over, that 
 traffic must be charged only what it will bear. 
 
 That the long hauls at low rates tend to build up manufactures 
 and other industries without injury to the traffic upon which the 
 rates are heaviest. 
 
 That charges on long hauls, which are less than the charges on 
 shorter hauls over the same line in the same direction, are com- 
 monly charges which the carriers do not voluntarily fix, but which 
 are forced upon them by a competition from whose compulsion 
 there is practically no escape. 
 
 On some one or more of these reasons each of the applications 
 was planted. 
 
 On the construction which we give to the statute these several 
 
APPENDIX. 207 
 
 applications need not have been filed, and therefore they might 
 now be withdrawn without further judgment. But though the 
 carrier might have acted on the judgment of its managers, it 
 would have been at the peril of the consequences, and as it elected 
 not to assume the responsibility, but to apply to the Commission 
 for a relieving order, it may be proper to consider the application 
 on its merits, especially as the question, What is a case of dis- 
 similar circumstances and conditions within the meaning of the 
 law ? must in general be a mixed question of law and fact, upon 
 which differences of opinion would be expected to arise. It is 
 manifestly important to the public interest, as well as to that of 
 the railroads themselves, that mistakes shall as far as possible be 
 avoided. It is also important that the general rule laid dowi by 
 the statute be strictly complied with whenever compliance appears 
 to be fairly practicable, and that carriers direct their attention 
 more to the feasibility of coming into conformity with it, than to 
 the possibility of finding reasons upon which to ground excep- 
 tions. They are therefore entitled to the benefit of such conclu- 
 sions as we have already reached upon the general merits of their 
 applications, that they may be guided thereby in the preparation 
 of their tariffs respectively. In giving these conclusions we limit 
 ourselves strictly to the cases presented, and leave out of view 
 such other grounds of relief, if any, as are not yet formally 
 brought forward. 
 
 I. The fact that the shorter haul is of local traffic and the longer 
 is not we cannot accept as making out a case of dissimilar circum- 
 stances and conditions within the meaning of the statute. The 
 claim to that effect which was advanced in support of one of the 
 applications rests upon a theory that railroads are constructed for 
 the special accommodation of the traffic along their lines respect- 
 ively, and that consequently that traffic may be relied upon for 
 their support, and may fairly be charged with all the items of cost 
 and maintenance. Traffic originating at a distance and taken 
 over the line may on this theory be justly transported at any rates 
 the carrier may consent to accept not below the actual cost of 
 movement, and the local shippers are not in position to complain 
 
208 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAIL WA YS. 
 
 that such rates, as compared with what they must pay, seem to 
 discriminate unjustly. But this theory has very little foundation 
 in fact. It is not true, as a general rule, that railroads are con- 
 structed in exclusive reliance upon local traffic ; on the contrary, 
 through traffic is also contemplated, and is sometimes expected to 
 yield returns even greater than that which the local traffic is likely 
 to give. And whenever a road is constructed with special regard 
 to local traffic, it is very likely to be the case that the local com- 
 munities take upon themselves especial burdens in aid of the con- 
 struction. When they do so they may justly claim that their 
 traffic should be favored if discrimination of any sort is to be ad- 
 mitted. There are cases also in which roads have been constructed 
 with special regard to long-haul traffic, some of them with the aid 
 of Government grants, and in such cases the theory lacks all plau- 
 sibility. Indeed it may be said to become plausible in any case 
 only when, after a road has been constructed, some new and un- 
 anticipated business is offered it for long-haul, but at rates rela- 
 tively lower than the local traffic is charged. It may be neither 
 unreasonable nor unjust to accept the lower rates for the long 
 haul traffic in some cases on grounds stated further on ; but it will 
 not be because of any such inherent difference between long and 
 short haul traffic as can make the latter chargeable with heavier 
 burdens. 
 
 II. That the cost to the carrier of handling and transporting 
 local traffic is greater than that of traffic carried long distances is 
 a fact which may with greater reason, when the difference is con- 
 siderable and clearly shown, be claimed to make out a case of dis- 
 similar circumstances and conditions under the statute. Cost of 
 the service is always an important element in the fixing of rates ; 
 and the evidence taken by the Commission tends to show what 
 indeed is well known and understood that in proportion to 
 amount and to the distance it is transported, the cost of the local 
 traffic to the carrier is considerably the greater. This fact fairly 
 establishes in favor of the carrier an equity entitling it to make 
 for the more onerous service a greater proportionate charge. But 
 it does not follow that the difference may be so great as to make 
 
APPENDIX. 209 
 
 the case an exception to the general rule the statute has prescribed. 
 It is obvious that the statute intends that the greater charge 
 for the shorter haul shall only be made in cases which on their 
 facts are exceptional ; and when the carrier shows the general fact 
 that the local traffic is most expensive he thereby proves not the 
 exception, but the rule. To establish the exception it would be 
 necessary to go further and make proof that in case of the par- 
 ticular traffic the difference in cost would be exceptionally great. 
 Such cases sometimes arise. They occur on water as well as on 
 land, and vessel owners on the rivers make the greater charge for 
 the shorter haul in the same direction in many cases, defending 
 their doing so with good reason on this very ground of greater 
 cost, in making landings, &c. The carriers by laud may some- 
 times justify the like charges with equal reason. 
 
 There is in the case, however, an inherent difficulty of no small 
 moment. While cost, as has been said, is an element to be taken 
 into account in the fixing of rates, and one of the very highest 
 importance, it cannot, for reasons well understood, be made the sole 
 basis, but it must in any case be used with caution and reserve. 
 This is not merely because the word " cost " is made use of in dif- 
 ferent senses when applied to railroad traffic ; it being often used 
 to cover merely the expense of loading, moving, and unloading 
 trains, but also because, in whatever sense the word may be used, 
 it is quite impossible to apportion with accuracy the cost of serv- 
 ice among the items of traffic. First of all when it is undertaken 
 there must be an apportionment between the passenger traffic and 
 the freight traffic ; and if we suppose this to be made with rea- 
 sonable accuracy there must then be alike apportionment between 
 the different kinds and classes of freight. Freight comes to a road 
 in infinite variety ; some heavy, some light, some in large pack- 
 ages, some in small ; some perishable or of special value and re- 
 quiring peculiar accommodations and care ; it is picked up in 
 varying quantities at numerous stations, to be carried differing 
 distances, sometimes on fast trains and sometimes on slow; the 
 service is performed by men whose compensation differs, but the 
 most of whom have something to do with all branches of the traf- 
 
210 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 fie, so that all assist in carrying it on over a road and by means 
 of buildings, appliances, and equipment which have been provided 
 for the whole. Any attempt to apportion the cost therefore would 
 at the best and under the most favorable circumstances only reach 
 an approximation. This is so well understood the world over that 
 the propositions which from time to time have been made in other 
 countries to measure the charges of the carrier by the cost of the 
 carriage solely have always been abandoned after investigation. 
 
 We may well believe, therefore, that the statute, in its provis- 
 ion against the greater charge for the shorter haul, did not in- 
 tend that a difference in cost which is practically universal, and 
 could not possibly be arrived at with accuracy, should as a general 
 fact be a governing consideration, to the extent that would sup- 
 port the greater charge for the shorter haul m the cases in which 
 such greater charge was in general prohibited. Where there are 
 no circumstances to make the short haul exceptionally expensive 
 to the carrier, or the long haul relatively inexpensive, a difference 
 in rates which reason and fairness will justify may still be made 
 within the limitation of the statute ; but to make out the excep- 
 tional case, in which the general rule of the statute may be dis- 
 regarded on the ground that the circumstances and conditions are 
 not substantially similar, the difference in cost should itself 
 be exceptional, and be capable of proof amounting to practical 
 demonstration. 
 
 In support of one of the applications presented to us the carrier 
 was able to make a showing of lower cost on long-haul freight 
 more clear and distinct than is commonly possible. The showing 
 was that the through business on its 450 miles of road was tran. 
 sacted by different trains from the local ; that these moved much 
 more rapidly and carried vastly the most freight to the train ; that 
 the number of men required was much less in proportion, not 
 only upon the trains, but for the station and terminal service, and 
 consequently all the items of expense were much smaller. These 
 facts, which were apparent to the customers of the road, together 
 with the peculiarly effective water competition, which Affected 
 principally the through traffic, influenced intelligent men doing 
 
APPENDIX. 211 
 
 business at local stations to admit, in giving evidence, that it 
 might be just, and even necessary in some cases, that the charge 
 for the shorter haul should be the greater. The disproportion, it 
 was insisted, had been too great ; but when the question is one of 
 degree, regulation rather than prohibition must be admitted to be 
 the appropriate remedy; and the carrier must keep in mind that 
 if the right be established in any case to make the greater charge 
 for the shorter haul, it is not a right to make a charge not just or 
 reasonable in itself, or one which will work unjust preference be- 
 tween individuals, localities, or commodities. It is, on the other 
 hand, a right grounded in justice, and must be so exercised that 
 the result shall be equitable. 
 
 III. We have next the case of dissimilar circumstances and 
 conditions supposed to be made out by a showing that property 
 now transported long distances at very low rates could not be 
 transported at all unless concessions in rates were made to it. 
 This is a common fact in railroad transportation; the cases are to 
 be met with in the traffic of all the long lines. The necessity 
 for making concessions to long-haul traffic in the case of articles 
 whose value in proportion to bulk or weight is small, and espe- 
 cially in that of the necessaries of life, which are handled in large 
 quantities, and in the supply of which the most distant countries 
 compete, has long been conceded wherever railroads exist. The 
 household goods of immigrants to the West have been carried for 
 them at very low rates, and the results of their agriculture have 
 afterwards been taken for seaboard and European markets in rec- 
 ognition of the general principle that the traffic must not be 
 charged rates beyond what it can bear. This is a just and sound 
 principle when justly applied ; and the country may be said not 
 only to have acquiesced in its recognition, but to have desired 
 and urged its application in a great variety of cases. Any sug- 
 gestion that it was meant by the statute to abrogate it would 
 scarcely be plausible, especially since, when not misapplied, it can 
 harm no one, but may be, and often is, of great and manifest ad- 
 vantage, in enabling distant sections of the country to come into 
 closer commercial relations, and to exchange to their mutual ben- 
 
212 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 efit their dissimilar productions, or to compete with each other in 
 those which are similar. 
 
 But the cases must he very rare in which the larger charge in 
 the aggregate for the shorter haul of the same kind of property 
 over the same line in the same direction could be justified, when 
 no other reason supported it than the fact that the traffic for the 
 longer haul would bear no more. Manifestly such a discrimina- 
 tion when not imperative on other grounds is unjust ; and the 
 injustice becomes oppression when the effect is to increase the 
 burden upon the traffic which has the shorter haul. There is a 
 plain limit to the application of the principle that property is to 
 be carried at rates it will bear ; and the limit is reached when the 
 rates charged are so low that further reduction would necessitate 
 an increase of the charges upon other traffic in order to make up 
 to the carrier such loss as the reduction causes. If some common 
 vegetable, worth but five cents a hundred pounds more at a mar- 
 ket a thousand miles distant than it is where it is grown, were to 
 be transported that distance for the sum named, the producer 
 nearer the market if subjected to a higher charge would have a 
 right to complain that not only did the discrimination reduce the 
 market value of his produce, but that the acceptance of the un- 
 reasonably low rates from the distant producer had a tendency to 
 increase the charge for the shorter haul, so as to make it not only 
 relatively, but, when considered by itself, unreasonably high. 
 
 It is a matter of public notoriety that a belief has prevailed to 
 a considerable extent that long haul traffic was in many cases 
 carried at a loss ; that the carriers were enabled to take it by 
 making the charges for short haul traffic greater than would other- 
 wise be necessary or reasonable, and that this constituted an abuse 
 that ought to be corrected by law. Persons who did not hold to 
 this belief have, on the other hand, taken low charges on long 
 haul traffic as a proper measure for all charges, and have insisted 
 that if the railroads could accept the low charges for one class of 
 business they could and ought to do so for all classes. And this, 
 as a rule, would be quite true if the railroads had it in their power 
 to make the rates for all ; which, however, is far from being the 
 
APPENDIX. 213 
 
 fact. There are many cases in which they have the option only 
 to take the traffic at rates prescribed by its owners, or not to take 
 it at all. But in respect to such cases, we must repeat, by way 
 of emphasis, that a successful appeal cannot be made to the equity 
 of the statute on the mere ground that long-haul traffic will not 
 bear higher rates, if in fact those it can bear, if accepted, will 
 cause a loss to the carrier which must be made up on short-haul 
 traffic. To have one's property carried at a loss would not be 
 matter of right, but of favor ; and favors in transportation are not 
 to be granted to any one class at the expense of any other. 
 
 IV. The greater charge for the shorter haul has been in some 
 cases defended, on the ground that manufactures and other 
 industries were thereby favored and built up. But a question 
 likely to arise in such cases is whether that which is done for 
 some is not at the expense or to the unjust prejudice of others. 
 The statutes of some of the Southern States seek to encourage 
 manufactures by permitting special rates to be made in their 
 favor ; and railroad companies, in some cases which were brought 
 to our notice, have entered into contracts with parties proposing 
 to establish large manufactories or otherwise engage extensively 
 in business, whereby, in consideration of the investment of some 
 named sum in the proposed enterprise, they agree that favorable 
 rates, whfch are specified, shall be given on its traffic for a term 
 of years. The purpose of such laws and such contracts is no 
 doubt commendable, but the practical difficulty of giving them 
 effect without prejudice to the interest of others is always found 
 to be serious. Very often they tend to the benefit of large estab- 
 lishments and to the prejudice of small. Manufactures are infinite 
 in variety and extent, and while it might be easy for those whose 
 transactions were large to obtain the benefit of an impartial law 
 made for the encouragement of all, the small establishments, 
 sending out their goods in small lots and irregularly, might find 
 the law practically of little or no value. The railroad companies 
 not unwilling to make long-time contracts for rates which con- 
 template a large business, would scarcely be expected to stipulate 
 for them with the small establishments, which exist in variety in 
 every town and hamlet. 
 
214 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 As a matter of fact the laws and the contracts which are made 
 for the benefit of manufactures usually contemplate not all kinds 
 of manufactures, but only those leading and most prominent kinds 
 which require large capital, and whose operations are on an ex- 
 tensive scale. Encouragement to these is of public advantage 
 when it wrongs no one ; but it is just as much the duty of the 
 common carrier in making its low rates on long hauls to consider 
 whom they may ruin as whom they may build up; and while the 
 carrier cannot be held responsible for the consequences which flow 
 legitimately from tariffs impartially arranged, it cannot justify on 
 the ground of public benefit the unequal rates which, however 
 beneficial to some, maybe equally mischievous to others. A great 
 establishment, strengthened by the favor of the public carriers 
 until it acquires the power to crush competition and actually ex- 
 ercises that power, may by that very fact become an enemy to the 
 civil state ; and no benefit it can give to the public in the low 
 prices of its commodities or otherwise can compensate for the 
 general sense of wrong which those must feel who are injured by 
 it, or for the sentiment which grows up in view of its operations, 
 that the laws fails to give the equality of right and privilege which 
 it nominally promises. That some such great establishments 
 have been fostered by the aid of the railroad companies is com- 
 monly believed ; and provisions against unjust discriminations in 
 this statute had for their object, among other things, to bring this 
 mischief to an end. The plausible excuse of public benefit, if it 
 ever had force in such cases, has none now, for the statute forbids 
 what public sentiment had already condemned. 
 
 It was shown by the evidence that the rates upon long hauls 
 were such as would admit of the pine lumber of Mississippi being 
 sold in Wisconsin in competition with lumber there cut, and of 
 the iron of Alabama being carried through Pittsburgh to Eastern 
 manufactories. If the lines originating in Wisconsin and Penn- 
 sylvania give to the producers of those States corresponding rates 
 for the traffic in the other direction under similar circumstances, 
 this will prejudice no one ; but, on the contrary, may operate to 
 the public advantage, provided always that the rates actually 
 
APPENDIX. 215 
 
 charged are compensatory. The petitioner in this case claims that 
 in no case does it carry such long-haul traffic at rates which fall 
 below cost. By this, however, is meant only the cost of move- 
 ment of the particular traffic, leaving out of view the fixed charges 
 of the road, which must, in any event, be provided for, whether 
 the long-haul traffic is or is not taken. This distinction between 
 the cost of movement and the fixed charges often becomes of im- 
 portance in such cases as that of the lumber trade just mentioned. 
 That trade is new; the roads which take it were built without an- 
 ticipating its springing up, and their managers made their calcu- 
 lation for business to meet the whole cost of operation in reliance 
 upon such traffic as was then apparent or probable. The fixed 
 charges of the road may, for purposes of illustration, be assumed 
 to equal one-half of the whole, the cost of movement of freight 
 the other half. The rates laid were doubtless calculated to cover 
 the whole, with a margin for profit, and were so laid that all 
 traffic would contribute towards both fixed charges and cost of 
 movement. But now comes this new business, and from the nat- 
 ure of the case low rates are a necessity to it ; it can pay perhaps 
 little if anytning more than half what is paid by other traffic. 
 But taking it will not increase perceptibly the fixed charges of 
 the road, because those are made up of items that must be paid 
 whether the traffic is large or small. What is added to the cost 
 by taking it is simply the expense of its own handling and move- 
 ment ; and upon the supposition made, there might perhaps be 
 gain to the road instead of loss in taking it at anything above 
 half the rates which are levied upon other traffic corresponding to 
 it in classification. It might therefore be carried at sucli rates 
 without wrong to any one. But if it were carried at lower rates 
 still, not only would the other traffic be left to pay the fixed 
 charges and the cost of its own movement, but it would also, to 
 some extent, be burdened with the cost of movement of the long- 
 haul traffic thus added to the business of the road. 
 
 The injustice of this would be very apparent, and it would be- 
 come intolerable if some portion of the short-haul traffic was 
 competitive to the long-haul traffic, and was so heavily taxed by 
 
216 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 higher rates as to make continuance impossible. It is very plain 
 that an unrestricted power to make such rates is liable to infinite 
 abuses, and that it may as easily be made use of to injure one 
 enterprise as to build up another. In the earnest and sometimes 
 unreasoning rivalry of railroad companies, it has no doubt often 
 been employed as much to give mere volume to business as for 
 any anticipated net revenue; and the wrongs have in such cases 
 far exceeded any possible advantages that could accrue either to 
 the roads themselves or to the public. It cannot be supposed 
 that in any case the true interest of a road will be prejudiced by 
 its being held strictly to the rule that excessively low rates on 
 some traffic are not to be compensated for by excessively high 
 rates on other traffic. And if rates are so graded as to violate the 
 statutory general rule, it cannot be accepted as justification for 
 the higher rates on the shorter haul that the lower rates on the 
 longer haul had encouragement to manufacturers or other indus- 
 tries for their motive. 
 
 V. The chief ground on which the applicants pressed for relief 
 from the long and short haul clause of the statute was that com- 
 petition forced the' railroad companies to make rates to and from 
 connecting points to the level of which it was not possible to 
 bring the charges at non-competitive points, because the doing so 
 would cause such reduction of revenues as would force roads into 
 bankruptcy and ultimately into suspension. It was, therefore, as 
 was said, inevitable that in a great number of cases the greater 
 charge should be made for the shorter haul ; and nothing but 
 putting a stop to competition by law would prevent it. This it 
 was insisted the new law does not attempt or intend. On the 
 contrary the importance of competition in fostering and regulat- 
 ing the internal commerce among the States is clearly noted. In 
 the sixth section carriers are permitted to reduce their rates at 
 any time, but are forbidden to raise them except after giving ten 
 days' notice. In the fifth section the pooling of freight is for- 
 bidden, unquestionably because the practice was regarded as 
 having a tendency to prevent or check competition. The act 
 studiously omits to bring the steamboats and other independent 
 
APPENDIX. 217 
 
 Water lines within its control, and must, therefore, have contem- 
 plated the continuance not only of competition, but of those 
 things which competition renders inevitable. The existence of 
 competitive forces to an extent that the railroad companies at 
 competitive points are unable to control, it was therefore argued, 
 would make out a case of circumstances and conditions so dis- 
 similar to those prevailing at non-competitive points as might 
 justify the making of the greater charge for the shorter haul 
 which was in general prohibited. 
 
 The competition which was brought to our attention as having 
 this imperative force was, first, the competition of railroads \vith 
 water-ways ; second, the competition of railroads with other 
 railroads which are not subject to the provisions of the " Act to 
 regulate commerce " ; third, the competition with each other of 
 railroads which are subject to that act ; fourth, the competition 
 of business or trade centres with each other, operating indirectly 
 upon the roads which form their channels of trade ; &&& fifth, 
 the competition of business interests in like manner operating 
 upon the roads, by whose assistance the business is carried on. 
 This fifth species of competition has already been remarked upon 
 to some extent, and it has been seen that it will not justify a 
 railroad company in discriminating between its own customers to 
 an extent that would create an exception to the general rule the 
 statute prescribes. We pass it now without further remark. 
 The others demand at our hands due consideration. 
 
 I. It was fairly shown before us that instances exist, and may 
 be found, along the routes of petitioner's lines in the States of 
 Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louis- 
 iana, where the competition of water-ways forces down the rail- 
 road rates below what it is possible to make them at non-competi- 
 tive points and still maintain the roads with success or efficiency. 
 The reason is that the carriers by water can perform the service 
 at very much less cost than the carriers by land. The general 
 fact is that railroad rates for the transportation of property must 
 approximate closely those which are made between the same points 
 by steamer, and the steamer rates are generally, if not invariably, 
 
218 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 much below what the railroads can afford to accept upon all their 
 business. In such cases, if competition is maintained, more must 
 be charged at interior poiiitb than can be obtained at the points 
 of competition ; and if the competitive rates are such as are 
 productive of some gain, however slight, the non-competitive 
 points are likely to receive indirect advantage therefrom, while 
 the competitive points have the larger and more direct benefit, and 
 are afforded a choice of agencies in transportation whose rivalry 
 may fairly be expected to keep the cost down to a minimum. The 
 interior points may have no ground for complaint in such a case, 
 provided the rates they are charged are in themselves just and 
 reasonable, even though the effect be that in some cases more is 
 charged for the short than for the long haul over the same line in 
 the same direction. This general fact is recognized the world over ; 
 and of English railways it has been often remarked that some of 
 them would be deprived of much of their value if they were not 
 allowed to meet water competition by such concessions at the points 
 of contact as the competition would compel. 
 
 The only question that fairly arises in regard to it is whether 
 the competition is kept within proper bounds. Vessel owners pro- 
 duced evidence before us to show that the railroads put down their 
 rates to a ruinous point in their determination to take the com- 
 petitive traffic at all hazards, and eventually to crush out com- 
 petition ; and railroad managers retorted with evidence that the 
 blame for unremunerative rates was upon their rivals. But the 
 question of relative fault is not important now. Low rates are a 
 necessity of the situation ; and if railroads compete with water 
 transportation either on the ocean or on the navigable rivers, they 
 have no choice but to accept such rates. To compel the roads to 
 observe strictly the general rule laid down by the fourth section 
 would necessitate their abandonment of some classes of business 
 in which their competition with water transportation is now of 
 public importance. Vessel owners who appeared before us to op- 
 pose the applications made for relief, put their opposition in some 
 cases explicitly on the ground that denying the applications would 
 enable the vessel men to put up their own rates. This was to be 
 
APPENDIX. 219 
 
 expected, and is far from being blameworthy if in fact their 
 business is not now reasonably profitable; but it is suggestive of 
 the fact that the interest of the public and that of any class of 
 public carriers is not in all respects identical. 
 
 It is more than probable that the complaints made by the vessel 
 owners against certain of the railroads are to some extent well 
 founded ; that the railroads have not only made the rates at points 
 of competition with vessels much too low in order that they might 
 at all events obtain the business, but that this had been done in 
 disregard alike of right and of true policy, This is only saying 
 that in their wars of rates with vessel owners they have sometimes 
 shown the same recklessness as in like wars among themselves ; 
 but the fact still remains that they must either be allowed to com- 
 pete with vessel owners and make low charges for the purpose, or 
 they must leave vessel owners in possession of the business with- 
 out the check upon charges which competition would afford. 
 
 The question here is whether this limitation of competition was 
 intended by the statute ; or, on the other hand, did Congress in- 
 tend that the existence of competition might in some cases make 
 out the dissimilar circumstances and conditions which would sup- 
 port a greater charge for the shorter haul, even though it might 
 be over the same line in the same direction, the shorter being in- 
 cluded in the longer distance ? On this subject the history of 
 the proceedings in Congress which resulted in the adoption of 
 the fourth section as it stands is instructive, and with such 
 brevity as is practicable it is recited here, not as determining con- 
 clusively the construction of the section, but as showing bej^ond 
 question that the benefits of competition were meant to be re- 
 tained, and that exceptions to the rigorous general rule were pro- 
 vided for to meet the contingencies which the competition might 
 create. 
 
 In the report of the Senate select committee, submitted Janu- 
 ary 18, 1886, known as the Cullom report, is found the following 
 language 
 
 No question connected with the problem of railroad regulation has given 
 the committee more perplexity than that relating to the utility and expedi- 
 
220 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 ency of legislation prohibiting a carrier from charging more for a shorter 
 than a longer haul under any circumstances; not that we have any doubt 
 as to the injustice of such a charge under most circumstances, but because 
 it seems inexpedient to enforce such a regulation under all circumstances. 
 When the effect of the proposed prohibition is considered with refer- 
 ence to the whole internal commerce of the United States, and especially 
 with reference to the necessity of preserving the prevailing cheap rates for 
 long distance transportation, there is reason to fear that the result of 
 rigidly enforcing the proposed regulation would be to stifle competition in 
 numberless cases where it now exists and is to the general public interest, 
 and perhaps to deprive the country of the benefits of the low through 
 rates now and for years given to and from the tide-water, without practical 
 or appreciable advantage to intervening points. 
 
 The bill introduced with the report contained the following pro- 
 vision upon this subject: 
 
 SECTION 4. That it shall be unlawful for any common carrier subject to 
 the provisions of this act to charge or receive any greater compensation in 
 the aggregate for the transportation of passengers or property for a shorter 
 than for a longer distance over the same line in the same direction, and 
 from the same original point of departure, if such greater charge for the 
 shorter distance constitute an unjust discrimination; but such greater 
 charge for a shorter distance shall be presumptive evidence of unjust dis- 
 crimination, which may, however, be rebutted by the common carrier. 
 
 Upon application to the Commission appointed under the provisions of 
 this act, such common carriers may, in special cases, be authorized to 
 charge less for longer than for shorter distances for the transportation of 
 passengers or property; and the'Coinrnission may from time to time make 
 general rules covering exceptions to any such common carrier in cases 
 where there is competition by river, sea, canal, or lake, exempting such 
 designated common carrier from the operation of this section of this act; 
 and when such exceptions shall have been made and published they shall 
 have like force and effect as though the same had been specified in this 
 section. 
 
 Afterwards, and before debate, the committee on February 16, 
 1886, reported as a substitute for this bill another, in which the 
 following language is found : 
 
 SEC. 4. That it shall be unlawful for any common carrier to charge or 
 receive any greater compensation in the aggregate for the transportation of 
 passengers or property subject to the provisions of this act for a shorter 
 than for a longer distance over the same line in the same direction, and 
 from the same original point of departure: provided however, that upon 
 application to the Commission, &c. * * * [substantially as before]. 
 
APPENDIX. 221 
 
 The formal discussion of the measure was commenced April 14, 
 1886, the chairman of the select committee opening the debate 
 by a speech in which he said concerning the fourth section : 
 
 It is agreed that this is the principle that should be observed as a general 
 rule. The committee found, however, that the principle was not of 
 universal application; that there were cases in which the railroads were 
 compelled to make lower rates for longer than for shorter distances by the 
 great law of competition, which is stronger than any law we can make, 
 and that in some cases it would be a great hardship to the public as well 
 as the railroads to rigidly enforce the general principle. 
 
 It is perfectly clear that the intention of the original framers of 
 the Senate bill was to leave it to the discretion of the Commission 
 to exempt carriers from the operation of the rule in cases when 
 the " great law of competition " made such a relaxation proper, 
 having in view the interests of the carriers and the people. 
 
 On May 6, 1886, Senator Cullom moved to amend the section 
 by striking out the words "covering exceptions to any such com- 
 mon carrier in cases when there is competition by river, sea. 
 canal, or lake." He supported this motion by the suggestion 
 that these words were not necessary, and that without them the 
 Commission would have the same power and more. Senator Har- 
 ris favored the amendment, as giving a broader discretion to the 
 Commission, and it was adopted. 
 
 On May 12th, a motion was made by Senator Camden to change 
 the phraseology of the first part of the section, so that it should 
 read " of like kind of property under substantially similar cir- 
 cumstances and conditions." This amendment was agreed to as 
 a substitute for a previous amendment proposed by Senator Cam- 
 den, and with little additional debate. 
 
 The bill was finally passed on the part of the Senate, section 4 
 remaining substantially as above,with the insertion of the following : 
 
 But this shall not be construed as authorizing any common carrier within 
 the terms of this act to charge and receive as great compensation for a 
 shorter as for a longer distance. 
 
 The bill then went to the House of Representatives, and was 
 
222 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 referred to the Committee on Commerce. That committee reported 
 as a substitute for it the bill before pending in the House, which con- 
 tained the following provision upon the subject embraced in section 
 4 of the Senate bill : 
 
 That it shall be unlawful for any person or persons engaged in the 
 transportation of property as provided in the first section of this act to 
 charge or receive any greater compensation for a similar amount and kind 
 of property, for carrying, receiving, storing, forwarding, or hauling the 
 same, for a shorter than for a longer distance, which includes the shorter 
 distance on any one railroad; and the road of a corporation shall include 
 all the road in use by such corporation, whether owned or operated by it 
 under a contract, agreement, or lease by such corporation. 
 
 In opening the debate on July 21, 1886, Mr. Reagan, chairman 
 of the House Committee on Commerce, severely criticised the 
 fourth section of the Senate bill, saying that the closing part of 
 the section substantially nullified the former part, while his pro- 
 posed substitute contained an absolute prohibition. 
 
 The minority of the committee, four in number, opposed the 
 substitution, and in their report the following passage occurs : 
 
 NOT do the minority favor the provision prohibiting a greater charge for 
 a shorter than a longer haul, as it was shown to a satisfactory degree, as 
 we think, in the hearing, that, where two competing points were connected 
 by water as well as rail, it was impossible for the railroads to secure the 
 traffic unless they made their rates as low as the water rates, arid that 
 while they might be able to do this on a portion of their traffic, it would be 
 destructive of their interests to reduce all their rates to those which were 
 forced upon them between certain points by the competition of the water 
 routes. 
 
 It is obvious, therefore, that, in the House as well as in the 
 Senate, it was understood that the existence of competition was 
 intended to be included in the margin of discretion provided for 
 by the Senate measure. The question as to this point was dis^ 
 tinctly marked ; the debate, so far as this section was concerned, 
 was upon that basis. On July 30, 1886, the substituted bill was 
 agreed to and passed on the part of the House. A conference 
 committee was appointed, and at the second session of the Con- 
 gress that committee agreed upon a report, which was presented 
 
APPENDIX. 223 
 
 to the Senate December 15, 1886. By this report the fourth sec- 
 tion of the Senate bill was amended so as to read as it now 
 stands. 
 
 The work of the conference committee was very elaborately and 
 carefully performed. The two bills which were referred to it pre- 
 sented very clearly the views which had prevailed in the two 
 houses respectively, on the general subject of relative charges on 
 long and short haul traffic the House view of an inflexible rule, 
 forbidding absolutely the greater charge for the shorter haul, and 
 the Senate view that the rule should be subject to exceptions 
 when the circumstances and conditions required it. The confer- 
 ence committee accepted deliberately the Senate view, and pre- 
 sented it, in the report to the two houses. In the Senate the re- 
 port, before adoption, was discussed, and what was proposed by it 
 on this point of vital interest was very distinctly brought out and 
 made prominent; and in the 'House, where also the report was 
 adopted, nothing which was said by any one indicated that the 
 situation was otherwise understood. 
 
 It is impossible to resist the conclusion that in finally rejecting 
 the "long and short haul clause" of the House bill, which pre- 
 scribed an inflexible rule, not to be departed from in any case, 
 and retaining in substance the fourth section as it had passed the 
 Senate, both houses understood that they were not adopting a 
 measure of strict prohibition in respect to charging more for the 
 shorter than for the longer distance, but that they were, instead, 
 leaving the door open for exceptions in certain cases, and, among 
 others, in cases where the circumstances and conditions of the 
 traffic were effected by the element of competition, and where ex- 
 ceptions might be a necessity if the competition was to continue. 
 And water competition was beyond doubt especially in view. 
 
 In thus deliberately making provision for competition, even 
 though it might be necessary to allow for the purpose exceptions 
 to the general rule laid down in the statute, Congress must be 
 supposed to have done so because the public interest required it 
 That competition is the life of trade is one of the most generally 
 accepted of maxims ; among its principal benefits is the protection 
 
\ 
 
 224 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 it gives against extortionate charges. But legitimate, open, and 
 fair competition was meant ; not everything that has been done 
 under the name of competition, and which in many cases has been 
 equally destructive of public and of private right. Among the 
 common abuses have been the granting of special favors in excep- 
 tional rates, rebates, drawbacks, &c., all of which are now express- 
 ly prohibited by law when they assume the form of unjust dis- 
 crimination. There has also been favoritism between places and 
 communities as a result of violent competition, but this also is no 
 longer permissible. Other similar wrongs will be referred to 
 further on ; but the wars of rates, under the excitement of which 
 traffic is carried at a loss, to be made good by excessive charges 
 on other traffic at other times, is not the least of those from which 
 the public has suffered. And these wars are as indefensible when 
 vessel owners are their objects as when made between the rail- 
 roads themselves, and are not to be justified on any pretence of 
 competition. Water transportation is entitled to such traffic as 
 in fair rivalry and at fair prices it can take, and the railroads in 
 competition with it must recognize this right and not recklessly 
 attempt to preclude its exercise. It is true that while the roads 
 are obliged to publish their tariffs and the carriers by water are not, 
 the former are at a disadvantage in the competition ; but possibly 
 the law in this regard may be amended if justice shall be found to 
 require it. 
 
 Every railroad company ought, when it is practicable, to so 
 arrange its, tariffs that the burden upon freights shall be propor- 
 tional on all portions of its line and with a view to revenue suffi- 
 cient to meet all the items of current expense, including the cost 
 of keeping up the road, buildings, and equipment, and of returning 
 a fair profit to owners. But it is obvious that, in some cases, 
 when there is water competition at leading points, it may be im 
 possible to make some portion of the traffic pay its equal propor- 
 tion of the whole cost. If it can then be made to pay anything 
 toward the cost, above what the taking of it would add to the ex- 
 pense, the railroad ought not, in general, to be forced to reject it, 
 since the surplus, under such circumstances, would be profit. As 
 
APPENDIX. 225 
 
 has beeu tersely said by M. de la Gournerie, formerly inspector- 
 general of bridges and railways in France, a railroad " ought not 
 to neglect any traffic of a kind that will increase its receipts more 
 than its expenses " ; and long-haul traffic which can only be had 
 on these terms may "sometimes be taken without wronging any 
 one, when, to carry all traffic, or even the major part of it, at the 
 like rates, would be simply ruinous. But we desire to apply 
 generally to every kind of competition herein discussed the obser- 
 vation above made, that when competition leads to the transporta- 
 tion of property below actual cost, fairly computed, it ceases to be 
 legitimate. Fair and reasonable competition is a public benefit ; 
 excessive and unreasonable competition is a public injury. Com- 
 petition is to be regulated, not abolished. The%ther sections of 
 the law of themselves imply ample authority for its regulation, 
 and, in connection with the fourth section, support the interpreta- 
 tion that it is wholly inadmissible to press competition to a point 
 where expenses are increased beyond the increase of income. 
 
 II. The question whether railroad competition with other rail- 
 roads which are not subject to the control of this law, can present 
 a case of dissimilar circumstances and conditions, within the 
 meaning of section 4, may possibly be one of greater doubt. The 
 classes of roads not thus subject, and whose competition might be 
 severe, are the Canadian roads and roads which are entirely within 
 the control of a single State. As regards the latter, it is not im- 
 probable that cases exist of roads not restrained by any long and 
 short haul clause corresponding to the Federal statute, which are 
 so situated in respect to rivals coming under the law of Congress 
 as to be able to monopolize to the public detriment the traffic at 
 important points of competition unless the latter are given equal 
 freedom of action. We do not understand, however, that any of 
 the pending applications are of this nature, and we therefore 
 leave such cases to be considered when they shall be presented 
 more directly. Competition with Canadian roads may, it is be- 
 lieved, present a case of dissimilar circumstances and conditions. 
 Whenever such roads compete with roads in the United States 
 for business between one part of our country and another, a state 
 
226 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 of circumstances arises and exists as to such business which jus- 
 tifies American roads in meeting such competition by a correspond- 
 ing reduction of rates, without regard to the fact that in so doing 
 the rates between the terminals may be reduced below rates to 
 and from intermediate places which are otherwise reasonable and 
 just in themselves. The fact that American roads are left free to 
 meet such competition is of itself an assurance that no extensive 
 war of rates is likely to be engaged in by the Canadian roads, or, 
 if engaged in, to be long pursued. 
 
 III. The competition with each other of the railroads which 
 are subject to the Federal law can seldom, as we think, make out 
 a case of dissimilar circumstances ancl conditions within the mean- 
 ing of the statute* because it must be seldom that it would be 
 reasonable for their competition at points of contact to be pressed 
 to an extent that would create the disparity of rates on their lines 
 which the statute seeks to prevent. But we cannot now assume 
 that no case has arisen or can hereafter arise which on its own 
 peculiar facts and in consideration of its special equities can be 
 deemed to present a just claim under the statute. 
 
 First, it may be observed here that in some parts of the country 
 it is not easy to separate railroad competition altogether from 
 competition by the water-ways. 
 
 Water competition is not limited in force strictly to the points 
 of contact of water and rail lines, but extends its influence to an 
 indefinite distance therefrom, qualifying to greater or less extent 
 the all-rail rates. But passing that consideration by, it will be 
 found on investigation that cases will exist in which, unless the 
 force of strictly railroad competition is allowed to create exceptions 
 under the statute, an existing competition which is supposed to 
 be of public interest must come to an end. And where that is the 
 case the strong lines will in general be gainers at the expense and 
 sometimes to the destruction of those which are weaker. 
 
 One such case is that of the railroad extending from Pittsburgh, 
 Pa., parallel to the Pennsylvania Railroad as far as Youngstown, 
 and thence to Ashtabula, Ohio, where, through connection with 
 the Lake Shore, it gives to the people of Pittsburgh and Youngs- 
 
APPENDIX. 227 
 
 town competition with the Pennsylvania road in their business to 
 and from New York and New England. The peculiarity of the 
 competition is, that the business on the roads respectively is 
 started in opposite directions when destined to the same point, so 
 that on east-bound traffic from Pittsburgh the haul by one road is 
 shorter than from Youngstown and longer by the other. As the 
 Pennsylvania road has the shorter line, it is in position to deter- 
 mine what the rates shall be and the longer line has no option 
 but to conform to them. In making them the leading road gives 
 to Pittsburgh lower rates than to Youngstown, as it justly should 
 do, in recognition of the geographical position. But the other 
 road must do the same, though over its line the traffic between 
 Youngstown and the seaboard will have the shorter haul. There 
 is nothing unreasonable or unjust in this ; and if the longer line 
 were to attempt a change which should reduce the rates from 
 Youngstown to the level of those of Pittsburgh it would in doing 
 so only open a war of rates in which all the advantages would be 
 with its rival. Finding itself in this dilemma, it applied to the 
 Commission for an order permitting a greater charge to be made on 
 traffic to and from Youngstown than is made on that to and from 
 Pittsburgh, and its application is strenuously opposed by the 
 Pennsylvania road, which insists that competition by this round- 
 about route is illegitimate and ought not therefore in any manner 
 to be aided. 
 
 Whether this position is sound the Commission may determine 
 hereafter. It is sufficient to say of the case at this time that it is 
 one and not a solitary instance in which a strict application of 
 the general rule laid down by the statute must be fatal to com- 
 petition. If the competition in itself is illegitimate, it may be 
 right to permit its destruction. But it is not admitted by those 
 interested in the road just mentioned that its case is of this nat- 
 ure. It is shown that it was constructed by Pittsburgh capital 
 for the express purpose of the competition ; and it appears that 
 though the route is indirect, the competition has given it con- 
 siderable business, and large investments have been made in re- 
 liance upon its continuance. 
 
228 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 One fact obvious on the statement of this case is that the wrong 
 against which the long and short haul clause of the statute is 
 aimed is not to be found in it. When the greater charge for the 
 shorter haul over the same line in the same direction is spoken 
 of, the natural suggestion to the mind is of a line leading with 
 some directness to the place to which the traffic is destined ; and 
 there seems to be in such greater charge a manifest unfairness, 
 since it deprives the place of shipment nearest the destination of 
 its proper advantage of situation. But in the case stated the position 
 is the opposite to this ; the greater charge for the shorter haul pre- 
 serves the proper advantage of situation, and has in itself no ele- 
 ment of injustice to localities. It is the situation which forces upon 
 the road an unequal charge which is nevertheless not unfair, and a 
 strict application of the statute must compel the surrender of what 
 is now competitive traffic to the older and more direct route whose 
 very conformity to the general rule precludes conformity by the 
 competitor.' 
 
 There are other cases in the country of roads now taking part 
 in competitive traffic which the peculiarities of situation will com- 
 pel them to abandon if the long and short haul clause of the 
 statute is strictly applied. This to some extent might be the 
 case with certain north and south roads, like the road from Cin- 
 cinnati to Toledo, and that from New Albany to Chicago, which 
 have heretofore engaged considerably in east and west bound 
 traffic which they deliver to or receive from other roads crossing 
 them, or at their terminals. In many cases these roads have 
 been accustomed to make the greater charge for the shorter haul 
 simply because the direction they run compels it ; but in doing 
 so they may wrong no one, because the rates are not determined 
 by them but by the direct east and west lines, and are made with 
 regard to relative distance. Both the roads named now have 
 applications pending for relief from an embarrassment for which 
 they are not themselves responsible ; and they aver, with plaus- 
 ibility at least, that the public interest will suffer if they are 
 shut out from such share in competition as they have hitherto 
 taken. We do not pass upon these cases finally at this time, and. 
 
APPENDIX. 229 
 
 therefore, do not undertake to say of them that they constitute 
 cases in which the competition of roads subject to the Federal law 
 creates the dissimilar circumstances and conditions which make 
 up ,in exceptional case. But this brief reference to the facts is 
 suggestive of a possibility, at least, that the exceptional case may 
 exist ; and if it does exist a strict enforcement of the general rule 
 mi glit be found quite as injurious to the public interests as to 
 those of the railroads which would thereby be shut out from com- 
 petition. 
 
 IV. Whether the competition of towns which are trade centres 
 or distributing points can in any case make out the dissimilar 
 circumstances and conditions independent of the competition of 
 the carriers is a question which may be said to be presented by 
 the evidence taken, but not with such distinctness as to call for 
 an expression of opinion at this time. The pre-eminence of such 
 trade centres in the territory reached by the petitioner's roads is 
 peculiar, and has probably been increased by the concessions in 
 rates which the railroads have made to them, while making less 
 concessions or none at all to less important stations. This con- 
 dition of affairs tends to perpetuate itself, and the disparity of 
 rates as between competitive and non-competitive towns the 
 former being the " trade centres '* must have had some influence 
 to increase steadily the disparity in growth and prosperity. 
 
 By some of the witnesses before us this was bitterly complained 
 of, while by others it was defended as being best for both classes 
 of towns. The smaller towns in this part of the country it was 
 said, are dependent on the trade centers for their supplies, and 
 they get indirectly the benefit of low rates to the distributing 
 points in lower prices than could otherwise be given to them. In 
 proportion also as the distributing points are prosperous, they 
 can and do extend to the dealers at other points credit and in- 
 dulgence. The prevalence of such ideas, and the acting upon 
 them in making freight tariffs, gives to railroad managers a 
 power of determining within certain limits what towns shall be 
 trade centers, and what their relative advantages ; and while it 
 may be, as they assert it is, that in deciding upon rates under the 
 
230 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 pressure of the competition of trade centres they endeavor to 
 do justice between them, yet as they do not, at the same time, 
 feel a like pressure from non-competitive points, it is obvious that 
 justice to such points is in great danger of being overlooked, and 
 it is altogether likely that it is so to some extent. 
 
 One result is that towns recognized by railroad managers as 
 trade centres come to be looked upon as towns with special priv- 
 ileges, and other towns strive for recognition as such, and com- 
 plain, perhaps, of injustice when they fail. It was made very clear 
 by the evidence produced in behalf of the railroads that the ex- 
 ceptionally favorable rates which were given to certain localities 
 were in some cases given to build up trade centres ; and as they 
 had had that effect, and large establishments had been located at 
 such centers invited by the favoring rates, it was urged that there 
 would be injustice in now compelling the roads to go back to the 
 rule of equality. Of this it may be said, first, that as between 
 different localities it is no sound reason for discriminating in 
 favor of one as against another that the purpose is to build up 
 the favored locality as a trade centre; and, second, if the dis- 
 crimination has existed and has had its effect, the fact that large 
 establishments have thereby been encouraged is no reason why 
 the injustice should be perpetuated. This statute aims at equality 
 of right and privilege, not less between towns than between in- 
 dividuals, and it will no more sanction preferential rates for the 
 purpose of perpetuating distinctions than of creating them. 
 
 These general views will indicate as far as we deem at this time 
 necessary the bounds within which the railroad managers must 
 limit their action in making charges which are greater in the ag- 
 gregate for the transportation of passengers or of the like kind of 
 property for a shorter than for a longer distance over the same 
 line in the same direction, the shorter being included in the 
 longer distance. With responsibility to the law and to the restrain- 
 ing power of the Commission in case the bounds are exceeded, it 
 may confidently be expected that all carriers will bring themselves 
 into conformity with the general law so far as it may be found 
 reasonably practicable, and that the occasions for special interfer- 
 
APPENDIX. 231 
 
 ence will not be numerous. Our observations and investigations 
 so far made lead to the conclusion that strict conformity to the 
 general rule is possible in large sections of the country, without 
 material injury to either public or private interests ; and that in 
 other sections the exceptions can be and ought to be made much 
 less numerous than they have been hitherto, and that when ex- 
 ceptions are admitted the charges should be less disproportionate. 
 Very many of the roads, as we are informed, have so arranged 
 their tariffs as to make no exception whatever ; and where that 
 has been proved to be reasonably feasible, return to the former 
 custom cannot be tolerated. In. any case in which a company fails 
 to bring its tariffs into conformity with the general rule, if parties 
 whose interests are thereby unfavorably affected complain, it must 
 be prepared to justify its action by a showing of circumstances 
 and conditions which render it just and reasonable. 
 
 In the views i bove expressed the members of the Commission, 
 after full consideration, are unanimous. 
 
 The order for temporary relief which was made in favor of the 
 petitioner will be allowed to remain in force until the day orig- 
 inally limited for its expiration, and in the meantime its officers 
 will have the opportunity to make thorough revision of its freight 
 and passenger tariffs, in order to bring them as nearly as may be 
 reasonably feasible into harmony with the general rule of the stat- 
 ute and with the views expressed in this opinion. That they may 
 be brought much nearer to conformity than they now are without 
 the sacrifice of any substantial interests, we have very little ques- 
 tion ; and as business adapts itself to the new principle establish- 
 ed by Congress, it will no doubt be found that exceptions can 
 safely and steadily be made less and less numerous. 
 
 The other applications for relief under this section which remain 
 to be disposed of are as follows : Fifteen are by the Richmond 
 and Danville Railroad Company, The East Tennessee, Virginia 
 and Georgia Railroad Company, and other members of the South- 
 ern Railway and Steamship Association, which is an association 
 of railroad and steamship companies operating lines of transpor- 
 
232 THE PEOPLE AND THE RAILWAYS. 
 
 tation in the territory south of the Ohio and Potomac and east of 
 the Mississippi River. Eleven are by other railroad lines in the 
 same territory, the Mobile and Ohio, "Queen and Crescent," 
 Illinois Central, and others. Two are on behalf of companies in 
 Louisiana and Texas. Seven are presented by the various trans- 
 continental lines. One is in favor of the New York, New Haven 
 and Hartford and other companies operating short lines in Con- 
 necticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, which also seek relief 
 against alleged water competition. One is filed by the Delaware 
 and Hudson Canal Company, and another by the Home, Water- 
 town and Ogdensburg Railroad Company, in the State of New 
 York, asking relief in respect to Canadian competition. Four are 
 presented in behalf of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie, the Cin- 
 cinnati, Hamilton and Dayton, and two other roads similarly 
 situated. One by the Mason City and Eort Dodge Company, a 
 north and south road in the State of Iowa. Four are in behalf 
 of certain roads in the vicinity of Peoria. Two are in behalf of 
 roads in Southern Illinois, relating to their connections south of 
 the Ohio. Three are by the Wisconsin Central and two other 
 roads in Wisconsin and Minnesota. One by the New York, 
 Philadelphia and Norfolk, in Delaware. One by the Memphis 
 and Little Rock, in Arkansas ; and one by the Detroit, Grand 
 Haven and Milwaukee, in the State of Michigan. 
 
 The temporary orders which have been made on some of these 
 petitions will in like manner be permitted to remain in force 
 until the expiration of the time originally limited in each. No 
 further order will be made upon any of the petitions, for although 
 some two or three of the cases may not, by the facts recited in 
 the applications for relief, be brought strictly within the princi- 
 ples above discussed, yet they all present what are claimed to be 
 different circumstances and conditions adequate to authorize ex- 
 ceptions to the general rule ; and if the petitioners are persuaded 
 that the fact is as they represent, they should act under the 
 statute accordingly. 
 
 The points that are intended to be decided at this time are as 
 follows : 
 
APPENDIX. 233 
 
 First. That the prohibition in the fourth section against a 
 greate" charge for a shorter than for a longer distance over the 
 same line, in the same direction, the shorter being included with- 
 in the longer distance, as qualified therein is limited to cases in 
 which the circumstances and conditions are substantially similar. 
 
 Second. That the phrase " under substantially similar circum- 
 stances and conditions " in the fourth section, is used in the same 
 sense as in the second section ; and under the qualified form of 
 the prohibition in the fourth section carriers are required to judge 
 in the first instance with regard to the similarity or dissimilarity 
 of the circumstances and conditions that forbid or permit a greater 
 charge for a shorter distance. 
 
 Third. That the judgment of carriers in respect to the circum- 
 stances and conditions is not final, but is subject to the authority 
 of the Commission and of the courts, to decide whether error has 
 been committed, or whether the statute has been violated. And 
 in case of complaint for violating the fourth section of the act 
 the burden of proof is on the carrier to justify any departure from 
 the general rule prescribed by the statute by showing that the 
 circumstances and conditions are substantially dissimilar. 
 
 Fourth. That the provisions of section one, requiring charges 
 to be reasonable and just, and of section tsvo, forbidding unjust 
 discrimination, apply when exceptional charges are made under 
 section four as they do in other cases. 
 
 Fifth. That the existence of actual competition which is of 
 controlling force, in respect to traffic important in amount, may 
 make out the dissimilar circumstances and conditions entitling 
 the carrier to charge less for the longer than for the shorter haul 
 over the same line in the same direction, the shorter being in- 
 cluded in the longer, in the following cases : 
 
 1. When the competition is with carriers by water which are 
 not subject to the provisions of the statute. 
 
 2. When the competition is with foreign or other railroads 
 which are not subject to the provisions of the statute. 
 
 3. In rare and peculiar cases of competition between railroads 
 which are subject to the statute, when a strict application of the 
 
234 THE PEOPLE AND THE It AIL WAYS. 
 
 general rule of the statute would be destructive of legitimate 
 competition. 
 
 Sixth. The Commission further decides that when a greater 
 charge in the aggregate is made for the transportation of passen- 
 gers or the like kind of property for a shorter than for a longer 
 distance over the same line in the same direction, the shorter 
 being included in the longer distance, it is not sufficient justifica- 
 tion therefor that the traffic which is subjected to such greater 
 charge is way or local traffic and that which is given the more 
 favorable rates is not. 
 
 Nor is it sufficient justification for such greater charge that the 
 short-haul traffic is more expensive to the carrier, unless when 
 the circumstances are such as to make it exceptionally expensive, 
 or the long-haul traffic exceptionally inexpensive, the difference 
 being extraordinary and susceptible of definite proof. 
 
 Nor that the lesser charge on the longer haul has for its motive 
 the encouragement of manufactures or some other branch of in- 
 dustry. 
 
 Nor that it is designed to build up business or trade centres. 
 
 Nor that the lesser charge on the longer haul is merely a con- 
 tinuation of the favorable rates under which trade centres or in- 
 dustrial establishments have been built up. 
 
 The fact that long-haul traffic will only bear certain rates is no 
 reason for carrying it for less than cost at the expense of other 
 traffic. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 OCCIDENTS, RAILWAY. 
 
 how reported for newspapers, 140 
 bystander unsafe witness as to, 
 
 161 
 
 cannot be foreseen, 159 
 single, may bankrupt R. R. Co., 
 
 160. 
 
 expense of railway, 151 
 at Forest Hills, 158 n 
 discussion of five recent, 144 et 
 
 seq. 
 
 reduced to minimum, 73 
 early history of, confined to East, 
 
 144 
 not sent to teach uncertainty of 
 
 life, 143 
 
 ACT. See INTERSTATE COMMERCE 
 ACT. 
 
 " ACT OF GOD" 
 definition of, 141-154 
 where recent accidents reasonably 
 
 so called, 149 
 must be very bad weather at sea, 
 
 143 
 doctrine of. rapidly disappearing, 
 
 143 
 newspapers admit one, 163 
 
 ADVANTAGES. 
 
 undue or unreasonable, what are, 
 101 
 
 ALBUM OF STATESMANSHIP. 
 
 a very recent, 7 
 
 ALEXANDER, E. P. ESQ. 
 statement as to tariffs, 56 
 Hudson's criticism of, 14 
 
 AMENITY OF RAILROADS. 
 
 one not to be lost sight of, 143 
 ARBITRATION, 
 failure of, as preventive of strikes, 
 166 
 
 B. 
 
 BANKRUPTCY, 
 of R. R. Companies prevented by 
 
 pools', 47 
 
 possibility of, increased by Inster- 
 state Commerce Act, 77 
 
 BETTERMENTS. 
 
 capitalization of, legitimate, 61-62 
 BLACKMAIL. 
 
 of railway companies, constant, 69 
 
 alleged example of, 69 
 
 BOOKKEEPING, 
 saved by Ion? and short haul sys- 
 tem, 137 
 substituted for " soulfulness," 155 
 
 BRAINS. 
 
 cannot be equalized by law, 84-3G- 
 37 
 
 BRIBERY OF LEGISLATORS. 
 
 inadequacy of, in certain cases, 45 
 BBOWN v. MARYLAND. 
 case of, cited, 105 
 
236 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 BOYCOTT. 
 
 pools ameliorate effects of, 47 
 
 BUREAU. 
 
 for filing R. R. schedules at Wash- 
 ington, 152. 
 
 BYSTANDERS. 
 
 not safe witnesses as to railway ac- 
 cidents, 161 
 
 C. 
 
 CANADIAN COMPETITION. 
 
 fostered by Interstate Commerce 
 Law, 85-90-91 
 
 Jos. Nimmo Jr., as to, 91 
 
 CAPITAL. See INCREASE OP CAP- 
 ITAL OVER CAPITALIZATION. 
 
 increase of, protects the employe, 
 13 
 
 CARS. 
 
 comparatively short time in use, 
 138. 
 
 CARR'S ROCK. 
 
 accident at, recalled, 145 
 
 CENTRALIZATION. 
 
 in business not preventable by law, 
 
 24 
 
 normal tendency of, 24 
 can Congress interfere with, 25 
 of wealth, not necessarily increaser 
 
 of poverty, 12 
 
 CHANNELS OF TRADE. See 
 
 TRADE CENTRES. 
 CHARITIES. 
 
 of railroad companies, 07 
 CHATSWORTH. 
 
 accident at discussed, 148 
 
 CHICAGO, 
 irresistible trade centre at, 115 
 
 CHILDREN. 
 
 laborers cannot be paid propor- 
 tionately to his, 133 
 
 "CIRCUMSTANCES AND CON- 
 DITIONS." 
 
 what are, under Interstate Com- 
 merce Act, 101 
 
 CIRCUSES, 
 combinations of unobjectionable, 9 
 
 CITIES. 
 
 sundry, damaged by Interstate 
 Commerce Law, 140 
 
 which are geographical trade cen- 
 tres not so damaged, 140 
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF FREIGHTS 
 
 is discrimination under act, 109 
 
 COMBINATIONS. 
 
 not oppressors of the poor, 12 
 for amusements not objectiona- 
 ble, 9 
 
 a convenience to consumers, 11 
 not conspiracies against the public, 
 17 
 
 COMMERCE. 
 
 what is, 16 
 
 " COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER" 
 THE. 
 
 says accidents should be " impos- 
 sible," 162 
 
 COMMERCIAL DEPRESSION. 
 
 result of Interstate Commerce Act, 
 140 
 
 COMMISSION. -See INTERSTATE 
 COMMERCE COMMISSION. 
 
 COMPANY. 
 
 strongest must swallow weakest, 46 
 
 COMPETITION. 
 
 Hudson's views as to, 15 
 
 COMPLAINANT AGAINST A 
 RAILWAY COMPANY. 
 
 under Interstate Law need show 
 no damage, 76 
 
 CONDEMNATION OF LAND. See 
 EMINENT DOMAIN. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 237 
 
 CONGRESS, 
 cannot protect railway companies, 
 
 88, 89. 
 
 or stockholders, 88, 89 
 or listen to complaints of railway 
 
 companies, 136 
 
 CONSTRUCTION COMPANIES, 
 save loss to railway builders, 49 
 savers of time, 48 
 Hudson's definition of, 50 
 general utility of, 48 
 popular suspicion of, 132 
 
 CONSUMER. 
 
 benefited by combination of manu- 
 facturers, 10 
 
 better protected by large than by 
 small producers, 12 
 
 CONTROL. 
 
 one year of Interstate Commerce, 
 13 et seq. 
 
 of railways by government dis- 
 cussed, 
 
 COOLEY, HON. THOS. R. 
 
 fortunate appointment of, 85. 
 CO-OPERATION. 
 failure, as a remedy for strikes, 166 
 impossible in R. R. operation, 166 
 
 " CORNER." 
 
 a " Trust " is not a, 10 
 disastrous to speculators, 10 
 not disastrous to consumers, 20 
 railway pool is not a, 28 
 
 CORPORATION. 
 
 minuteness of interest does not 
 
 discharge, 155 
 cannot be abolished or wrecked by 
 
 combinations of, 12 
 not blamable for their growth, 12 
 no analogy with trade guilds, 19 
 only rule of is obedience, 156 
 why they " have no souls," 149 
 cannot sympathize with distress, 
 
 155 
 cannot reward zeal or moral worth, 
 
 155 
 prices reduced by combinations, of, 
 
 13 
 
 cannot avoid expense of book-keep- 
 ing, 155 
 
 COST. 
 
 versus value of R. R. business, 14 
 of Interstate Commerce Act to 
 people, 
 
 CULLOM, HON. SHELBY L. 
 
 says railroads can protect them- 
 selves, 73, 87 
 
 speech of, at Springfield, 111., 92 
 answers author, 86 
 
 D. 
 
 DE LESSEPS, COUNT. 
 
 statement as to Panama Canal, 64 
 DEADY, J. 
 holds that railroad companies have 
 
 a right to live, 79 
 text of his decision, 80 
 
 DECLARATION OF INDEPEN- 
 DENCE. 
 
 railroad companies not sharers in 
 principles of , 101 
 
 DEPRESSION. 
 
 commercial, resulting from Inter- 
 state Commerce Law, 140 
 
 DISCRIMINATIONS. 
 
 between States not shippers, con- 
 templated by U. S. Constitution, 
 105 
 
 unjust, prevented by pools, 47 
 
 DIVIDENDS. 
 
 desire to pay, called " greed," 149, 
 153 
 
 " DOG IN THE MANGER.' 
 
 Interstate Commerce Law is a, 140 
 " DOMINATION OF RAILWAYS." 
 Hudson's idea of, 31, 33 
 
 E, 
 
 ELLENBOROUGH, LORD, 
 his rule of construction of grants, 
 
238 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 EMINENT DOMAIN. 
 
 a duty not a privilege, 68, 70 
 
 law of, in the people's, not the rail- 
 road company's interest, 68, 70 
 
 what it is not, 65 
 
 benefit of, to railroad company, 
 ceases with construction, 66, 70 
 
 responsibilities larger than advan- 
 tages of, 65 et seq. 
 
 EMPLOYE OF RAILROAD CO. 
 See " ACT OF GOD." 
 
 absorbing duties of, 30 
 
 ought absence of mind of, to dis- 
 charge company ? 143, 149, 152 
 
 person of, protected by railroad 
 company, 145 
 
 why not require good faith from, 
 168 
 
 are railroad companies responsible 
 for unforeseen mental incapacity 
 of, 143, 149 
 
 rarely fails in emergency, 152 
 
 his employment a contract, 168 
 
 " ENORMOUS FORTUNES." 
 Hudson on, 33, 34. 
 railways not responsible for, 34 
 how acquired, 63 
 
 EQUITY. 
 
 Hudson's definition of, 72 
 
 " EVENING TOST " THE. 
 
 rejoinder to, 157 n 
 EXPERIENCE. 
 
 necessary to operate railways, 29 
 
 not a disadvantage, 29 
 
 F. 
 
 " FAST FREIGHT " LINES. 
 
 benefits of, 49-50 
 FEUDALISM. 
 
 institution of, adequate for its day, 
 18 
 
 modern, Hudson on, 9 
 
 FIELD, HON. STEPHEN J. 
 opinion cited, 105 
 
 FIGURES. 
 
 Hudson's use of, 23 
 FINK, ALBERT. 
 
 Hudson's reply to, 55 
 FLUCTUATION. See POOLS. 
 
 violent, prevented by pools, 47 
 
 FORFEITURE OF RAILWAY 
 COMPANY'S CHARTER. 
 
 constant peril of imposed by law,69 
 FORESIGHT. 
 
 cannot be checked by law, 36 
 FOREST HILLS. 
 
 accident at, discussed, 147-158 n 
 FORTUNES. See ENORMOUS FOR- 
 
 TUNES. - 
 
 "FREE COMPETITION." 
 
 does not mean " forced competi- 
 tion," 21 
 
 FREEDOM OF RIVERS. 
 
 Dr. Lieber on, 58 
 FREIGHT REDUCTION. 
 
 R. R. history is the history of, 101 
 FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 not connected with R.R. history, 72 
 FUERZA MAJOR. 
 
 Mr. Nevin on, 141 
 
 (See ACT OF GOD.) 
 
 G. 
 
 GEOGRAPHY.-See TRADE CEN- 
 TRES. 
 
 makes trades centres, 116 
 GOOD MORAL CHARACTER, 
 of shippers, railways cannot re- 
 quire certificate of, 109 
 
 GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF. 
 what practically means, 74 
 
 GREAT BRITAIN. 
 dissimilar requirements of R. R. 
 operations in, and U. S., 110 
 
INDEX. 
 
 239 
 
 " GREED." 
 desire to pay dividend, is called. 
 
 149, 153 
 
 of corporations, may be a public se- 
 curity, 153. 
 
 GRIEVANCE. 
 
 not necessary to have, in order to 
 fight a R. R. Co., 76 
 
 GUILDS. The Mediaeval Trade, 
 no analogy with modern corpora- 
 tions, 17, 18, 19 
 
 H. 
 
 HUDSON, JAMES F. 
 
 example of methods of, 26 
 
 brings no R. R. experience to dis- 
 cussion, 26 
 
 argues against his own statements 
 of fact, 57. 
 
 on combinations, 9 et seq. 
 
 dangerous tendency of his theories, 
 
 the real railway wrecker, 74 
 
 I. 
 
 INDUSTRIAL CENTRES "IN 
 CITIES. 
 
 human foresight does not create, 
 118 
 
 abortive attempt to make in Chi- 
 cago/US 
 
 INDUSTRIAL CENTRES IN NA- 
 TION. See TRADE CENTRES. 
 
 INCREASE OF CAPITAL. See 
 BETTERMENTS ; CAPITAL ; 
 OVER-CAPITALIZATION. 
 
 INCREMENT UNEARNED. See 
 UNEARNED INCREMENT. 
 
 INJUSTICE OF INTERSTATE 
 COMMERCE LAW. See IN- 
 TERSTATE COMMERCE ACT. 
 to certain western towns, 140 
 
 INTERCHANGE, 
 of goods between nations is com- 
 merce, 16 
 
 INTERSTATE, 
 all railways are in one sense, 110 
 
 INTERSTATE COMMERCE ACT. 
 
 cost of, to people, 52 
 
 estimated cash expense of one 
 
 year's operation, 
 has not decreased private fortunes. 
 
 136 
 a dog in the manger in certain 
 
 cases, 140 
 
 supposed reasons for, 75 
 abounds in penalties, 75 
 but no rewards, 75 
 no protection for stockholder or 
 
 investor, 75 
 does not define terms used by it, 
 
 101 
 
 abolishes legal rule of " due pro- 
 cess of law, " 76 
 
 a relief from the pass nuisance. 68 
 first report on operation of, 134 
 carrier must interpret at his own 
 
 peril, 126 
 
 does not prevent rate wars, 134 
 officially interpreted not to affect 
 
 present R. R. management, 129 
 either unpatriotic or unnecessary, 
 
 90 
 popular errors resulting in, 122, 
 
 132 
 constitutionality of, discussed, 102, 
 
 106 
 
 no provision of as yet enforced, 85 
 first official act thereunder was to 
 
 suspend its provisions. 
 
 See LOUISVILLE AND NASHVILLE 
 DECISION. 
 
 experimental only, 87 
 
 public disabilities worked by, 84 
 
 repeals part of U. S. customs law, 
 
 85 
 
 increases rates to shipper, 52, 83 
 dangerous possibilities of, 90 
 localized ill effects of, 140 
 injustice of to certain towns, 140 
 to be understood in "Pickwickian 
 
 sense/' 136 
 
 INTERSTATE COMMERCE COM- 
 MISSION. 
 
 first act of was to suspend the act 
 itself 
 
L'40 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 See LOUISVILLE AND NASHVILLE 
 DECISION. 
 
 has not changed R.R. situation, 136 
 
 does not join public criticism of 
 R.R. companies, Io6 
 
 testifies to good character of R.R. 
 companies, 127 
 
 avoids deciding against R.R. com- 
 panies, 135 
 
 avoids testing constitutionality of 
 act, 135, 167 
 
 orders each carrier to find out 
 meaning of act for himself, 126 
 
 orders no change in R.R. manage- 
 ment, 129 % 
 
 reaffirms familiar principles, 127 
 
 finds its duties "enormous" and 
 " superhuman " and " imprac- 
 ticable," 124 
 
 how it may take jurisdiction, 76 
 
 no grievance necessary to take jur- 
 isdiction, 76 
 
 approves of present R.R. proced- 
 ure, 123 
 
 assumes that it must do something, 
 124 
 
 abandons attempt to administer 
 law creating itself, 123 
 
 a lost opportunity of, 135 
 
 its " Louisville and Nashville" de- 
 cision, Appendix II, 122 et seq 
 
 discussion of, 122 et seq. 
 
 officers of, 84 
 
 INVENTION. 
 
 human cannot dispense with human 
 watchfulness, 153 
 
 " JOHNNY SKAE'S ITEM." 
 used to illustrate Hudson's argu- 
 ments, 27 
 
 JURIES. 
 
 readiness to mulct R. R. Compa- 
 nies, 69, 161 
 
 railway company must accept most 
 hostile, 69 
 
 JURISDICTION. 
 
 how Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission may take, 76 
 
 K. 
 
 KENOSHA, WISCONSIN. 
 
 attempt to make trade centre at, 
 115 
 
 KOUT'S STATION. 
 accident at, discussed, 148 
 
 L. 
 LABOR. 
 
 when competes for wages, 21-22 
 "LAND-GRAB." 
 
 land grant is not a, 41-42 
 LAND GRANT. 
 
 generally, 37, 41, et seq. 
 
 what receipt of entails, 43-44 
 
 ratification of, 44 
 
 legal rule as to construction of, 44 
 
 not a " land grab," 41-42 
 
 LAWS OP SUPPLY AND DE~ 
 MAND. 
 
 regulate trade centres, 119 
 
 See LONG AND SHORT HAUL-TBADE 
 CENTRES. 
 
 LETTRES DE CACHET. 
 against R. R. Companies, 76 
 
 LIBRARIES. 
 
 R. R. Companies build for their 
 employes, 157 
 
 library for collection of R. R. sched- 
 ules at Washington, 82 
 
 LIEBER, FRANCIS. 
 
 on freedom of rivers, 58 
 LEGISLATORS. 
 
 and land grants, 45 
 LOCAL TRAFFIC. 
 
 cost of greater than of through, 127 
 LOCOMOTIVE. 
 
 cannot compete with inclined plane, 
 54 
 
 LONG HAUL AND SHORT HAUL 
 50 et seq. See INTERSTATE COM- 
 
INDEX. 
 
 241 
 
 MERGE ACT; INTERSTATE COM- 
 MERCE LAWS, and passim. 
 
 LOUISVILLE AND NASHVILLE 
 
 DECISION. 
 text of, appendix 
 discussion of, 86 
 unique and startling document, 126 
 
 M. 
 
 MACHINERY. 
 
 R. R. cannot counteract, careless- 
 ness or inattention, 153 
 
 MANAGEMENT OF RAILWAYS. 
 See RAILWAY COMPANIES. 
 
 MANHATTAN ELEVATED R. R. 
 
 avoids a terrible disaster, 162 
 MANUFACTURER, 
 wages not protected by srnallness of, 
 
 12 
 
 MARGIN OF PROFIT. 
 utter disappearance of, in late case, 
 133 
 
 MARKETS. -See TRADE CENTRES. 
 railways not operated against par- 
 ticular, 56 
 
 MARSHALL, C. J. 
 
 opinion cited, 105 
 MONOPOLISTS. 
 
 gigantic, railways are not, 32 
 MONOPOLY. 
 
 practical safeguard against, 13 
 MORTGAGES. 
 
 Pacific Railway, 45 
 
 N. 
 
 NATURE. -See TRADE CENTRES. 
 NEVIN, W. W. 
 
 on Mexican " Fuerza Mayor, 141 '* 
 NEW HAMBURGH. 
 
 accident at, recalled, 145 
 NEW YORK CITY. 
 
 made a trade centre by geography, 
 
 NEWSPAPERS, THE. 
 no railroad company able to please, 
 158, 162 
 
 NIMMO, JOSEPH J. 
 the Canadian competition, 91 
 on benefit of Pools, 47 
 
 NOAH. 
 
 had no competitor in ark-building, 
 16 
 
 NUISANCE, 
 pass begging always a, to R. R. 
 
 companies, 68, 136 
 railways, not the public, complain 
 of, 136 
 
 O. 
 
 OBEDIENCE TO ORDERS, 
 only rule corporations can enforce, 
 156 
 
 OIL. See STANDARD OIL COMPANY. 
 
 reduction in price of, to consumer, 
 10 
 
 OPPRESSION OF THE POOR. 
 
 from what classes does it come, 156 
 OVER CAPITALIZATION. 
 
 when legitimate and patriotic, 64 
 
 P. 
 PANIC. 
 
 no machinery can avert, 154 
 PARALLELING. 
 long and short haul principle a 
 
 relief from, 5 
 effects of, 51 
 
 PARTNERSHIP. See COMBINA- 
 TIONS, TRUSTS. 
 
 PASSES. 
 
 a nuisance to R, R. companies, 68 
 railways, not recipients, complain 
 
 of, 136 
 
 not detrimental in principle, 67-68 
 no sympathy with disappointed 
 
 beggar of, 68 
 rule as to issuing, 67 
 
242 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 PERIL. 
 
 carrier must interpret Interstate 
 Commerce Act, at his own, 126 
 
 PERIODICITY. 
 
 of popular railway criticism, 30 
 " PICKWICKIAN SENSE." 
 Interstate Commerce Act to be 
 interpreted in a, 136 
 
 POOL. 
 
 railways must discard the word, 
 
 140 
 
 intricacy of work of the, 137 
 prevents "gobbling" of weaker by 
 
 stronger company, 47 
 beneficial effects of a, 47 
 practical result of the, 48 
 is a differentiation of percentages, 
 
 46 
 
 tables illustrating benefits of, 52 
 not a division of lumped receipts, 46 
 the, steadily reduces tariffs, 28 
 not a "corner" in transportation, 
 
 28,48 
 
 the name unfortunate, 46 
 estimate of saving effected by, 57 
 
 POPULAR DISCONTENT WITH 
 RAILWAYS. 
 
 causes of analyzed, 82 
 
 PREFERENCES. 
 undue or unreasonable, what are, 
 101 
 
 PRICE. , 
 versus, value of railway business, 14 
 
 PRICES. 
 
 decrease in, dreaded by working- 
 men, 12 
 
 constant lowering of, in U. S., 13 
 POLICE POWER, 
 of railways no complaint against, 
 67 
 
 PRIVATE ENRICHMENT. 
 
 Hudson says Railways built for, 71 
 
 PROBLEM OF RAILWAY MAN- 
 AGEMENT. 
 
 intricacies of the, 29-30 
 
 PROCESS OF LAW. 
 
 Insterstate Commerce Act dispenses 
 with the, 76 
 
 PROFITS. 
 
 fair for capital, what are, 20 
 "PUBLIC HIGHWAY," THE. 
 
 Hudson's idea of, 71 
 
 R. 
 
 RACINE, WISCONSIN. 
 
 The rejoinder to, 158 n 
 RAILROAD GAZETTE, THE. 
 disallows attempt to make trade 
 centre at, 115 
 
 RAILWAYS. 
 
 not antagonistic to republics, 21-25 
 
 built for private as well as public 
 uses, 58-68. 
 
 must judge of its own rates or dis- 
 continue business, 68 
 
 public obligations of insisted upon, 
 69 
 
 people not compelled to use, 55 
 annot compete with water-ways, 
 54 
 
 definition of a, 54 
 
 not operated to crush particular 
 markets. 56 
 
 undreamed of, when constitutional 
 provision was drafted, 106 
 
 RAILWAY COMPANIES. 
 
 no sin to rob a, 70 
 
 do not maltreat employes, 156 
 
 more apt to make them comfort- 
 able, 156 
 
 do not desire accidents, 150 
 
 when not responsible for acci- 
 dents. 
 
 See "ACT OF GOD." 
 
 always largest loser in case of ac- 
 cident, 151-152 
 
 Interstate Act does not protect 
 against enemies, 79 
 
 their public obligations, 69 
 
 or against fixed charges or divi- 
 dends, 79 
 
 have no conscience funds, 70 
 
INDEX. 
 
 have private as well as public ca- 
 pacity, 68 
 
 why "public enemies ?" 70 
 
 unnecessary to pass law that they 
 shall be governed by circum- 
 stances, 91 
 
 are they outside of constitutional 
 protection ? 88 
 
 public services they perform, 73 
 
 operation of, approved by Interstate 
 Commerce Commission, 126 
 
 their struggle for the public con- 
 venience, 84 
 
 blackmail and other infelicities of, 
 69 
 
 popular misrepresentation of, 132 
 
 much different problems in United 
 States and Great Britain, 110 
 
 cannot create trade centres, 117 
 
 may still charge more for short 
 than long haul, 127 
 
 receive approval of Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission, 127, 128, 129 
 
 innocent of social tendencies, 134 
 
 must fix its own rates, 68 
 
 must live by doing business brought 
 them, 121 
 
 must do largest business for largest 
 shipper, 17-121 
 
 when bankrupt, become a public 
 danger, 15 
 
 introduced legal principle of pro- 
 tection to employes, 144-145 
 
 cannot inquire into moral character 
 of shippers, 17 
 
 cannot satisfy the newspapers, 158- 
 162 
 
 readiness of jurors to mulct, 161 
 
 spare no expense to prevent ac- 
 cidents, 157 
 
 build lyceums and libraries for 
 .their employes, 157 
 
 RAILWAY CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 what is first maxim of, 113 
 
 RAILWAY INTEREST IN 
 . UNITED STATES. 
 
 magnitude of, 84-130-131 
 RAILWAY MANAGEMENT. 
 
 approved of by Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission, 127 
 government centralization of, 41 
 
 RAILWAY PROBLEM. 
 
 practical solution of the, 
 
 RAILWAY QUESTIONS, 
 why not leave them to experts ? 
 99 
 
 RAILWAY WRECKING. 
 how prevented, 74 
 
 RATE WARS. 
 
 not prevented by Interstate Com- 
 merce Act, 134 
 
 the public pay for, 135 
 
 largest known, occurred under 
 Interstate Commerce Act, 135 
 
 RATES. 
 
 on through traffic falls 50 per cent 
 in 10 years, 56 
 
 not increased on short haul to 
 meet loss on long haul, 56 
 
 Interstate Commerce Act has in- 
 creased, 136 
 
 railway must establish its own, 68 
 
 REASONABLE CHARGE 
 
 common law as to was never doubt- 
 ful, 100 
 
 REBATES. See DISCRIMINATIONS. 
 
 REDISTRIBUTION. 
 
 what is proper point of, 15 
 
 REDUCTION OF RAILWAY 
 TARIFFS. 
 
 history of railways is the history 
 
 of, 109 
 official tables of, in U. S., 108 
 
 REFORMER. 
 
 f the American Railroad, who is 
 the, 28, 73 
 
 REMEDIES. 
 
 discussed. 
 
 REPUBLIC. 
 
 accident on B. & O. R. R. at, dis- 
 cussed, 116 
 
 REPUBLICS. 
 
 not antagonistic to railways, 21 
 
244 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ROLLING STOCK. 
 comparatively short time iu use, 
 138 
 
 S. 
 SELL OUT. 
 
 manufacturer's right to, 15 
 SHIPPER. 
 
 discriminations between States not 
 contemplated by U. S. Constitu- 
 tion, 103, 104 
 
 SHORT HAUL. See LONG HAUL 
 
 AND SHORT HAUL. 
 SITUATION. 
 
 at passage of Interstate Commerce 
 Act, 130 
 
 not changed by passage of Inter- 
 state Commerce Act, 130 
 
 SOPHISMS. 
 
 is it patriotic to supply ? 25 
 SPECIAL SECRET RATES. 
 
 prevented by pools, 47 
 STANDARD OIL COMPANY. 
 
 a growth of anti-pooling days, 46 
 
 has cheapened staple dealt in, 10, 
 38 
 
 STANDPOINT. 
 
 Hudson has none, 31 
 STATES. 
 
 discriminations between prevented 
 by U. S. Constitution, 103, 104 
 
 STATESMANSHIP. 
 
 an album of, 7 
 STEAM CAR HEATER. 
 
 not invented at time of certain 
 disasters, 157 
 
 STERNE, SIMON, ESQ. 
 impracticability of his suggestions 
 as to strikes, 166 
 
 STOCKHOLDER. 
 
 Interstate Commerce Act does not 
 
 protect, 70, 75 
 no objection to railway robbing its, 
 
 51 
 
 STOCK WATERING, 
 what is and what is not, 59 et seq. 
 a crime against a railroad com- 
 pany, 60 
 how can be prevented, 74 
 
 STRIKES, 
 can railway be prevented ? 164 et 
 
 seq. 
 interstate commerce law forbids 
 
 railways to settle by pooling 
 
 against, 140 
 
 principle of an imported one, 132 
 how pools ameliorate effects of, 47 
 
 SUPPLY AND DEMAND. 
 
 the laws of, 22 
 
 (See TRADE CENTRES; INTERSTATE 
 
 COMMERCE LAW, passim. ) 
 SURPLUS. 
 
 The National, how a benefit, 64 
 SYLLOGISM. . 
 
 curious use of, by Hudson, 41 
 
 T. 
 
 TARIFF SCHEDULES. 
 
 railway, -what they include, 39, 40 
 how made up, 39, 40 
 
 TAY BRIDGE. 
 
 accident at, recalled, 145 
 TELEGRAMS. 
 
 prices reduced by strong ownership 
 of wires, 11 
 
 TERMINAL FACILITIES. 
 
 what would be under " Public 
 
 Highway" scheme, 73 
 TERMS, 
 certain left undefined by Interstate 
 
 Commerce Law, 101 
 
 THEATRES. 
 
 might be referred to an Interstate 
 
 Commission. 127 
 TIME. 
 
 saved by construction companies, 
 48 
 
 of employment of rolling stock in- 
 considerable, 138 
 
INDEX. 
 
 245 
 
 TRADE CENTRES. 
 
 some disastrous attempts to cre- 
 ate, 115, 116. 
 
 railways must conform to, 117 
 created by natural laws, 114 
 human will cannot create, 114 
 supposed methods of establishing, 
 
 112, et seq 
 
 E. P. Vining, Esq., on, 138 
 normal tendency to, 17 
 
 TRANSPORTATION. 
 
 combinations to perform, not to 
 control, 33 
 
 TRESPASS ON RAILWAY PROP- 
 PERTY. 
 
 company compelled to pay for, 69 
 " TRUST." 
 is not a "corner," 10 
 
 U. 
 
 UNJUST DISCRIMINATIONS, 
 what are ? 101. 
 
 UNEARNED INCREMENT. 
 is there such a thing ? 62, 63 
 
 V. 
 
 VALUE OF BUSINESS. 
 
 versus cost of doing, 14 
 VESTED RIGHTS. 
 
 danger to from reckless writing, 28 
 VIGILANCE. 
 
 of entire railway company worth- 
 less when, 154 
 
 " VILLE DU HAVRE." 
 accident to steamship, recalled, 154 
 
 VINING, E. P., ESQ. 
 on trade centres, 138 
 on evils of Interstate Commerce 
 
 Act, 139, 140 
 
 statement as to pools, 137 
 on benefits of pools to public, 137, 
 138 
 
 W. 
 
 WAGES, 
 when they compete for labor, 21, 
 
 22 
 
 WALKING DELEGATE, THE. 
 
 how might be circumvented, 168 
 WATER. 
 
 competitive transportation by, 54 
 immense facilities by, in U.S., 58 
 
 "WATER." See STOCK WATER- 
 ING. 
 
 WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH 
 
 CO. 
 
 has cheapened telegraph service, 11 
 WHITE RIVER JUNCTION. 
 
 accident at discussed, 147. 
 WORKMAN. 
 
 no time to discuss questions of po- 
 litical economy, 133. 
 
 "WRECKING" 
 of railways, how prevented, 74 
 
 Y. 
 
 YOUNG, BRIGHAM. 
 example of pure monopolist, 24 
 
-"Oh ain't those dogs jealous! 
 boss cane carrier. Just watch 
 
 in. ixQAUlL, <jom. of Pensions. 
 D. W. VOORHEES, U. S. S. 
 JAMES B. BECK, U. S. S. 
 JOS. C. S. BLACKBURN, U. S. S. 
 J. R. McPHERSON, U. S. S. 
 JOHN W. DANIEL, U. S. S 
 JOHX H. REAGAN, U. S. S. 
 Z. B. VANCE, U. S, S. 
 M. C BUTLER, U. S. S. 
 JAS. Z. GEORGE, U. S. S. 
 WADE HAMPTON, U. S. S. 
 C. B. BRECKINRIDGE, M. C. 
 W. C WHITTHORNE, M. C. 
 THOMAS WILSON, M. C. 
 JOS WHEELER. M C. 
 MELBOURNE H. FORD, M. C. 
 GEORGE A. ANDERSON. M. C. 
 THOMAS K. HUDD, M. C. 
 BENTON McMILLIN, M. C. 
 JAMES PHELAN, M. C. 
 JOHN H. ROGERS, M. C 
 T. M. NORWOOD, M. C. 
 JAMES N. BURNS, M. C. 
 HENRY GEORGE. 
 
 "But I wouldn't have felt so smart 
 if I'd known I was goin' to be sold to 
 a dood!" 
 
 -JTg-. STEVENSON", 1st Asst. P. M. G. " 
 ELI SAULSBURY, U. S. S. 
 
 E. C. WALTHALL, U. S. S. 
 
 W. G. SUMNER, Professor, Yale Col. 
 
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 C. C. MATSON, M. C. 
 
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 J. H. OUTHWAITE, M. C. 
 
 H. H. CARLTON, M. C 
 
 J. C. CLEMENS, M. O. 
 
 B. F. SHIVELY, M. C. 
 WM. C. OATES, M. C. 
 W. J. STONK, M. C. 
 P. T GLASS, M. C. 
 
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 ALEX. M. DOCKERY. M. C. 
 T. C. McRAE, M. C. 
 JOHN E. BUTTON, M. C. 
 H W. RUSK. M. C. 
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 POEMS OF PASSION. 
 
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 No book during the last ten years has created so genuine a sensation as " Poems of 
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