Читать книгу The Arena. Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 - Various - Страница 5

First would be the stability and practical uniformity of rates now impossible, as they are subject to change by hundreds of officials, and are often made for the purpose of enriching such officials. State and federal laws have had the effect of making discriminations less public and less numerous, but it is doubtful if they are less effective in enriching officials and their partners, although it may be necessary to be more careful in covering tracks. That they are continued is within the cognizance of every well-informed shipper, and are made clear by such cases as that of Counselman and Peasley, now before the United States Supreme Court. Counselman and Peasley—one a large shipper and the other a prominent railway official—refused to testify before a United States grand jury upon the plea that to do so might criminate themselves; the federal law making it a criminal offence to make or benefit by discriminating rates. Counselman had been given rates on corn, some five cents less per hundred pounds than others, from Kansas and Nebraska points to Chicago.

The outrageous character of this discrimination will appear when we reflect that five cents per one hundred pounds is an enormous profit on corn that the grower has sold at from eighteen to twenty-two cents per one hundred pounds, and that such a margin would tend to drive every one but the railway officials and their secret partners out of the trade, as has practically been the case on many western roads. Doubtless such rates are sometimes made in order to take the commodity over a certain line, and there is no divide with the officials; but the effect upon the competitors of the favored shipper and the public is none the less injurious, and such practices would not obtain under national ownership, when railway users would be treated with honesty and impartiality, which the experience of half a century shows to be impossible with corporate ownership.

Referring to the rate question in their last report, the Interstate Commerce Commission says: “If we go no farther than the railroad managers themselves for information, we shall not find that it is claimed that railroad service, as a whole, is conducted without unjust discriminations.”

“If rates are secretly cut, or if rebates are given to large shippers, the fact of itself shows the rates which are charged to the general public are unreasonable, for they are necessarily made higher than they ought to be in order to provide for the cut or to pay the rebate.”

“If the carrier habitually carries a great number of people free, its regular rates are made the higher to cover the cost; if heavy commissions are paid for obtaining business, the rates are made the higher that the net revenues may not suffer in consequence; if scalpers are directly or indirectly supported by the railroad companies, the general public refunds to the companies what the support costs.”

The Commission quotes a Chicago railway manager as saying: “Rates are absolutely demoralized and neither shippers, passengers, railways, or the public in general make anything by this state of affairs. Take passenger rates for instance; they are very low; but who benefits by the reduction? No one but the scalpers…. In freight matters the case is just the same. Certain shippers are allowed heavy rebates, while others are made to pay full rates…. The management is dishonest on all sides, and there is not a road in the country that can be accused of living up to the interstate law. Of course when some poor devil comes along and wants a pass to save him from starvation, he has several clauses of the interstate act read to him; but when a rich shipper wants a pass, why he gets it at once.”

From years of ineffectual efforts on the part of State and national legislatures and commissions to regulate the rate business, it would appear that the only remedy is national ownership, which would place the rate-making power in one body with no inducement to act otherwise than fairly and impartially, and this would simplify the whole business and relegate an army of traffic managers, general freight agents, soliciting agents, brokers, scalpers, and hordes of traffic association officials to more useful callings while relieving the honest user of the railway of intolerable burthens.

Under corporate control, railways and their officials have taken possession of the majority of the mines which furnish the fuel so necessary to domestic and industrial life, and there are but few coalfields where they do not fix the price at which so essential an article shall be sold, and the whole nation is thus forced to pay undue tribute.

Controlling rates and the distribution of cars, railway officials have driven nearly all the mine owners who have not railways or railway officials for partners, to the wall. For instance, in Eastern Kansas, on the line of the St. Louis & San Francisco Railway Company, were two coal companies, whose plants were of about equal capacity, and several individual shippers. The railway company and its officials became interested in one of the coal companies, and such company was, by the rebate and other processes, given rates which averaged but forty per cent. of the rates charged other shippers, the result being that all the other shippers were driven out of the business, a part of them being hopelessly ruined before giving up the struggle. In addition to gross discriminations in rates this railway company practised worse discriminations in the distribution of cars; for instance, during one period of five hundred and sixty-four days, as was proven in court, they delivered to the Pittsburg Coal Company, 2,371 empty cars to be loaded with coal, although such company had sale for, and capacity to produce and load, during the same period, more than 15,000 cars. During the same time this railway company delivered to the Rogers Coal Company, in which the railway company and C. W. Rogers, its vice-president and general manager, were interested, no less than 15,483 coal cars, while four hundred and fifty-six were delivered to individual shippers. In other words, the coal company owned in large part by the railway and its officials was given eighty-two per cent. of all the facilities to get coal to market, although the other shippers had much greater combined capacity than had the Rogers Coal Company.

During the last four months of the period named, and when the Pittsburg Coal Company had the plant, force, and capacity to load thirty cars per day, they received an average of one and a fourth cars per day, resulting, as was intended, in the utter ruin of a prosperous business and the involuntary sale of the property, while the railway coal company, the railway officials, and the accommodating friends who operated the Rogers Coal Company, made vast sums of money; and when all other shippers had thus been driven off the line the price of coal was advanced to the consumer.

On another railway, traversing the same coal-field, the railway or its officials became interested in the Keith & Perry Coal Company—the largest coal company doing business on the line—and here the plan seems to have been, in addition to the manipulation of rates, to starve other mine operators out, and force them to sell their coal to the Keith & Perry Company, by failing to furnish the needed cars to those who did not sell their coal to the Keith & Perry Company at a very low price.

When the Keith & Perry Company had a great demand for coal, such parties as sold the product of their mines to that company were furnished with cars, but for the other operators cars were not to be had, such cars as were brought to the field being assigned to such parties as were loading to the Keith & Perry Company, because that company furnished the coal consumed by the locomotives of the railway.

One operator, after being for years forced in this way to sell his product to the Keith & Perry Company, or see his several plants stand idle, has, in recent months, been obliged to build some seven miles of railway in order to reach four different roads, and thus have a fighting chance for cars, although all these railways are provided with coal mines owned by the corporations or their officials.

In Arkansas, Jay Gould, or his railway company, own coal mines and the coal is transported to the neighboring town at low rates, and there is an ample supply of cars for such mines; but the owners of an adjoining mine are forced to haul their coal some eighteen miles to the same town in wagons, as the rates charged them over Mr. Gould’s railway are so high as to absorb the value of the coal at destination.

Not only are individuals thus oppressed, but for reasons which only the initiated can fathom there are seemingly purposeless discriminations against localities, as shown in the following extract from the Coal Trade Journal of March 25, 1891.

“Capt. Thomas H. Bates, before the railroad committee of the Colorado Senate, said: The Grand River Coal & Coke Company mine their coal in Garfield County, about fifty miles west of Leadville, and all they sell in Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo, has to be hauled through Leadville. At Leadville the individual consumer has to pay $7.00 per ton for this coal, while in Denver, with an additional haul of 150 miles, the coal from the same mines is delivered to the individual consumer for $5.50 per ton. The Colorado Coal & Iron Company produce all the anthracite coal sold in Colorado. It is mined at Crested Butte, which is 150 miles nearer Leadville than Denver, yet this coal is sold in Leadville for $9.00 to the individual consumer, while the same coal is hauled 150 miles farther, and sold to the individual consumer for an advance of twenty-five cents per ton over the Leadville price, and is sold in Denver for $7.10 per ton in carload lots.”

With the government operating the railways, discriminations would cease, as would individual and local oppression; and we may be sure that an instant and absolute divorce would be decreed between railways and their officials on one side, and commercial enterprises of every name and kind on the other.

There are but three countries of any importance where the railways are operated by corporations permitted to fix rates, as in all others the government is the ultimate rate-making power: these are Great Britain, Canada, and the United States; and while the British government exercises a more effective control than we do, there are many and oppressive discriminations, and complaints are loud and frequent, and English farmers find it necessary to unite for the purpose of securing protection from corporate oppression, as is shown by the following from the Liverpool Courier of January 29, 1891.

LANCASHIRE FARMERS AND RAILWAY RATES

After the counsel given them yesterday by Mr. A. B. Forwood, of Ormskirk, it may be expected that the Liverpool District Farmers’ Club will be on the watch for tangible evidence of their grievances against the railway companies…. Under certain circumstances competition operates to the advantage of the public, and rival carriers are constrained to convey goods from place to place at moderate charges; but where a company is not held in check, the tendency is for rates to advance. In many cases, too, special interests of the companies are promoted at the expense of localities, and even individuals are subjected to the wrong of preferential charges. (There are no complaints in Britain that these discriminations are practised for the purpose of enriching the officials.) Hence the necessity for the Railway Commission to regulate the magnates of the iron road, who when left without restraint pay little regard to interests other than those of their shareholders.

Although Mr. Acworth fails to mention this phase of English railway administration, it would appear that the evils of discrimination are common under corporate management in Great Britain, and that they are inherent to and inseparable from such management; and that the questions of rates, discriminations, and free traffic in fuel can be satisfactorily adjusted only by national ownership, and if for no other reasons such ownership is greatly to be desired.

The failure to furnish equipment to do the business of the tributary country promptly is one of the greater evils of corporate administration, enabling officials to practise most injurious and oppressive forms of discrimination, and is one that neither federal nor State commission pays much attention to. With national ownership a sufficiency of cars would be provided. On many roads the funds that should have been devoted to furnishing the needed equipment, and which the corporations contracted to provide when they accepted their charters, have been divided as construction profits or, as in the case of the Santa Fe, Union Pacific, and many others, diverted to the payment of unearned dividends, while the public suffers from this failure to comply with charter obligations; yet Mr. Dillon informs us that the citizen commits an impertinence when he inquires why contract obligations, which are the express consideration for the exceptional powers granted, are not performed.

Another great advantage which would result from national ownership would be such an adjustment of rates that traffic would take the natural short route, and not, as under corporate management, be sent around by the way of Robin Hood’s barn, when it might reach destination by a route but two thirds as long, and thus saving the unnecessary tax to which the industries of the country are subjected. That traffic can be sent by these round-about routes at the same or less rates than is charged by the shorter ones is prima facie evidence that rates are too high. If it costs a given sum to transport a specific amount of merchandise a thousand miles, it is clear that it will cost a greater sum to transport it fifteen hundred; and yet traffic is daily diverted from the thousand mile route to the fifteen hundred one, and carried at the same or lower rates than is charged by the shorter line. It is evident, that if the long route can afford to do the business for the rates charged, that the rates charged by the shorter are excessive in a high degree.

Under government management, traffic would take the direct route, as mail matter now does, and the industries of the country be relieved of the onerous tax imposed by needless hauls. Only those somewhat familiar with the extent of the diversions from direct routes can form any conception of the aggregate saving that would be effected by such change as would result from national ownership, and which may safely be estimated as equal to two and a half per cent. of the entire cost of the railway service, or $25,000,000 per annum.

With the government operating the railways there would be a great reduction in the number of men employed in towns entered by more than one line. For instance, take a town where there are three or more railways, and we find three (or more) full-fledged staffs, three (or more) expensive up-town freight and ticket offices, three (or more) separate sets of all kinds of officials and employees, and three (or more) separate depots and yards to be maintained. Under government control these staffs—except in very large cities—would be reduced to one, and all trains would run into one centrally located depot; freight and passengers be transferred without present cost, annoyance, and friction, and public convenience and comfort subserved, and added to in manner and degree almost inconceivable.

Economies which would be affected by such staff reductions, would more than offset any additions to the force likely to be made at the instance of politicians, thus eliminating that objection; such saving may be estimated at $20,000,000 per annum.

With the nation owning the railways the great number of expensive attorneys now employed, with all the attendant corruption of the fountains of justice, could be dispensed with; and there would be no corporations to take from the bench the best legal minds, by offering three or four times the federal salary; nor would there be occasion for a justice of the Supreme Court of Kansas to render a decision that a corporation chartered by Kansas for the sole purpose of building a railway in that State has the right and power under such charter to guarantee the bonds of corporations building railways in Old or New Mexico, and shortly after writing such decision be carted all over the seaboard States in one of the luxurious private cars of such corporation. Under national ownership such judges would pay their travelling expenses in some other way, and be transported in the ordinary manner, and not half as many judges would travel on passes. There are many judges whose decisions any number of passes would not affect; but if passes are not to have any effect upon legislation and litigation, why are congressmen, legislators, judges, and other court officials singled out for this kind of martyrdom? If the men who attain these positions remained private citizens, would passes be thrust upon them?

Although the reports of the Victorian Commissioners show, in detail, all the expenditures of railway administration, yet not one dollar is set down for attorneys’ salaries or for legal expenses, and it is presumed that the ordinary law officers of the government attend to the little legal business arising, and yet judging from reports made by Kansas roads, the expenditures of the corporate owned railways of the United States for attorneys’ salaries and other legal expenses, are at least two per cent. of the entire cost of operating the roads, and yearly aggregate some $14,000,000, all of which is taken directly from railway users, and is a tax which would be saved under national ownership, as United States district attorneys could attend to such legal business as might arise. This expenditure is incurred in endless controversies between the corporations, in wrecking railways, in plundering the shareholders, in contending against State and federal regulation, in manipulating elections and legislation, and in wearing out such citizens as seek legal redress for some of the many outrageous acts of oppression practised by the corporations. Once the government was in control, these lawyers would be relegated to some employment where they would do less harm, even if not engaged in a more honorable vocation than that of trying to defeat justice by the use of such questionable means as the control of the vast revenues of the corporations place in their hands.

Is it possible that the railway companies can legitimately use anything like $14,000,000 yearly in protecting their rights in the courts?

The president of the Union Pacific tells us that: “The courts are open to redress all real grievances of the citizen.”

There is probably no man in the United States better aware than is Sidney Dillon that no citizen, unless he has as much wealth as the president of the Union Pacific, can successfully contest a case of any importance in the courts with one of these corporations which make a business, as a warning to other possible plaintiffs, of wearing out the unfortunate plaintiff with the law’s costly delays; and failing this do not hesitate to spirit away the plaintiff’s witnesses, and to pack and buy juries—retaining a special class of attorneys for this work—the command of great corporate revenues enabling them to accomplish their ends, and to utterly ruin nearly every man having the hardihood to seek Mr. Dillon’s lauded legal redress, and when they have accomplished such nefarious object, the entire cost is charged back to the public, and collected in the form of tolls upon traffic. Laws are utterly powerless to restrain the corporations, and Mr. Dillon tells us how easy it is to evade them by pleading compliance, when there has been no compliance, and then having the expert servants of the corporation swear there has been.

With the government operating the railways, every citizen riding would pay fare adding immensely to the revenues. Few have any conception of the proportion who travel free, and half a century’s experience renders it doubtful if the pass evil—so much greater than ever was the franking privilege—can be eliminated otherwise than by national ownership. From the experience of the writer, as an auditor of railway accounts, and as an executive officer issuing passes, he is able to say that fully ten per cent. travel free, the result being that the great mass of railway users are yearly mulcted some $30,000,000 for the benefit of the favored minority; hence it is evident that if all were required to pay for railway services, as they are for mail services, the rates might be reduced ten per cent. or more, and the corporate revenues be no less, and the operating expenses no more. In no other country—unless it be under the same system in Canada—are nine tenths of the people taxed to pay the travelling expenses of the other tenth. By what right do the corporations tax the public that members of Congress, legislators, judges, and other court officials and their families may ride free? Why is it that when a legislature is in session passes are as plentiful as leaves in the forest in autumn?

The writer, as an executive officer of a railway company having authority to issue passes, has, during a session of the legislature, signed vast numbers of blank passes at the request of the legislative agents of such company, and under instructions of the president of the corporation to furnish such lobby agents with all the passes they should ask for. No reports of passes issued are made either to State or federal governments, or to confiding shareholders, and should such reports be asked for, by State or nation, in order to measure the extent of this evil, the Sidney Dillons would rush into print and tell us it was a piece of impertinence for any citizen (or the public) to inquire into the extent of or the manner in which the corporations dispensed their favors. The only way to kill this monster is to put the instruments of transportation under such control as only national ownership can give. Laws and agreements between the corporations have been proven, time and again, wholly ineffective even to lessen this great and corrupting evil.

In every conceivable way are the net revenues of the corporations depleted, and needless burthens imposed upon the public, but one of the worst is the system of paying commissions for the diversion of traffic to particular lines, often the least direct. The more common practice is to pay such commissions to agents of connecting lines where it is possible to send the traffic over any one of two or more routes, and the one which may, by the payment of such commission, secure the carrying of the passenger (or merchandise) may be the least desirable, and the one which would never have been taken but for the prevarications of an agent bribed by a commission to make false representations as to the desirableness of the route he selects for the confiding passenger.

This is but one of many phases of the commission evil, another being that these sums are ultimately paid, not by the corporations, but by the users of the railways, and but for the payment of such commissions the rates might be reduced in like amounts. Aside from commissions paid for diverting passenger traffic great sums are paid for “influencing” and “routing” freight traffic, and these sums, while paid to outsiders, or so-called brokers, are frequently divided with railway officials. When the writer was in charge of the transportation accounts of a railway running east from Chicago, it was a part of his duties to certify to the correctness of the vouchers on which commission payments were made, and he became aware of the fact that one Chicago brokerage firm was being paid a commission of from three to five cents per hundred pounds on nearly all the flour, grain, packing house, and distillery products being shipped out of Chicago over this railway, no matter where such shipments might originate, many of them, in fact, originating on and far west of the Mississippi River; and when he objected to certifying to shipments with which it was clear that the Chicago parties could have had nothing to do, he was told, by the manager, that his duties ended when he had ascertained and certified that such shipments had been made from Chicago station. From investigations instituted by the writer, he soon learned that some one connected with the management was deeply interested in the payment of the largest sums possible as commissions.

The corporations have ineffectually wrestled with the commission evil, and any number of agreements have been entered into to do away with it; but it is so thoroughly entrenched, and so many officials have an interest in its perpetuation, that they are utterly powerless in the presence of a system which imposes great and needless burthens upon their patrons, but which will die the day the government takes possession of the railways, as then there will be no corporations ready to pay for the diversion of traffic. National ownership alone can dispose of an administrative evil that, from such data as is obtainable, appears to cost the public from $20,000,000 to $25,000,000 per annum.

10Mr. Meany, in his Sun article, summarizes six causes for the diminution of railway dividends and remarks: “It is unnecessary to dwell at any great length upon the first five mentioned reasons, but too much could not be said on the sixth. It is now nearly seven years since James McHenry of London (and New York, Pennsylvania & Ohio Railway litigation fame) openly charged railway managers, in an interview published in the Sun, with criminal collusion in the matter of securing extraordinary privileges and unapproachable contracts with their several corporations for favored fast freight lines, express routes, bridge companies, etc., etc., in all the benefits of which such managers shared to a very great extent. On that occasion Mr. McHenry was promptly cried down. Would he be cried down to-day?”

As a rule, American railways pay the highest salaries in the world for those engaged in directing business operations, but such salaries are not paid because transcendant talents are necessary to conduct the ordinary operations of railway administration, but for the purpose of checkmating the chicanery of corporate competitors. In other words, these exceptionally high salaries are paid for the purpose, and because their recipients are believed to have the ability to hold up their end in unscrupulous corporate warfare where, as one railway president expressed it, “the greatest liar comes out ahead.” With the government operating the railways, there would be no conflicting interests necessitating the employment of such costly officials whose great diplomatic talents might well be dispensed with, while the running of trains, and the conduct of the real work of operating the roads, could be left to the same officials as at moderate salaries now perform such duties, and consolidation of all the conflicting interests in the hands of the government will enable the public to dispense with the services of the high priced managers now almost exclusively engaged in “keeping even with the other fellow,” as well as with the costly staffs assisting such managers in keeping even, and the savings resulting may be estimated at from $4,000,000 to $5,000,000 per year.

Government control will enable railway users to dispense with the services of such high priced umpires as Mr. Aldace F. Walker, as well as of all the other officials of sixty-eight traffic associations, fruitlessly laboring to prevent each of five hundred corporations from getting the start of its fellows, and trying to prevent each of the five hundred from absorbing an undue share of the traffic. It appears that each of these costly peace-making attachments has an average of seven corporations to watch.

Referring to traffic associations, and their vain endeavors to keep the corporations within sight of commercial ethics, the Interstate Commerce Commission says: “But the most important provisions of the law have not so often been directly violated as they have been nullified through devices, carefully framed with legal assistance,—here is one of the places where the high-priced lawyer gets in his work—with a view to this very end, and in the belief that when brought to legal test the device hit upon would not be held by the courts to be so distinctly opposed to the terms of the law as to be criminally punishable.” In this connection, it is well to remember what Mr. Dillon tells us of the ease with which the laws can be evaded.

With national ownership the expenditures involved in the maintenance of traffic associations would be saved, and railway users relieved of a tax that, judging from the reports of a limited number of corporations of their contributions towards the support of such organizations, must annually amount to between four and five million dollars.

Of the six hundred corporations operating railways, probably five hundred maintain costly general offices, where president, treasurer, and secretary pass the time surrounded by an expensive staff. The majority of such offices are off the lines of the respective corporations, in the larger cities, where high rents are paid, and great expenses entailed, that proper attention may be given to the bolstering or depressing the price of the corporation’s shares, as the management may be long or short of the market. So far as the utility of the railways is concerned as instruments of anything but speculation, such offices and officers might as well be located in the moon, and their cost saved to the public. The average yearly cost of such offices (and officers) is more than $50,000, and the transfer of the railways to the nation would, in this matter alone, effect an annual saving of more than $25,000,000, as both offices and officials could be dispensed with, and the service be no less efficient.

Moreover, with the nation owning the railways, the indirect but no less onerous tax levied upon the industries of the country, by the thousands of speculators who make day hideous on the stock exchanges, would be abrogated, as then there would be neither railway share nor bond for these harpies to make shuttlecocks of, and this would be another economy due to such ownership.

Railways spend enormous sums in advertising, the most of which national ownership would save, as it would be no more necessary to advertise the advantages of any particular line than it is to advertise the advantages of any given mail route. From reports made by railway corporations to some of the Western States, it appears that something over one per cent. of operating expenses are absorbed in advertising, aggregating something like $7,000,000 per year, of which we may assume that but $5,000,000 would be saved, as it would still be desirable to advertise train departures and arrivals.

A still greater expense is involved in the maintenance of freight and passenger offices off the respective lines, for the purpose of securing a portion of the competitive traffic. In this way vast sums are expended in the payment of rents, and the salaries of hordes of agents, solicitors, clerks, etc., etc. Taking the known expenditures, for this purpose, of a given mileage, it is estimated that the aggregate is not less than $15,000,000 yearly, all of which is a tax upon the public, that would be saved did the government operate the railways.

Under government control, discriminations against localities would cease, whereas now localities are discriminated against because managers are interested in real estate elsewhere, or are interested in diverting traffic in certain directions; again, under corporate management, it is for the interest of the company to haul a commodity as far as possible over its own lines (with the government owning all the lines this motive will lose its force), and thus traffic is forced into unnatural channels. For instance: much of the grain from Kansas should find its way to foreign markets via the short route to the Gulf, the distance to tide water by this route being less than half what it is to the Atlantic, yet so opposed to this natural route are the interests of the majority of the corporations controlling the traffic associations, which now dictate to the people what routes their traffic shall take, that the rates to the Gulf are kept so high as to force the traffic to the Lakes and to the Atlantic; and as all the railways leading to the Gulf have lines running eastward, the much lauded corporate competition fails to help out the citizens of Kansas, who are subjected to the domination of the new tyrant denominated a “traffic association.” With the nation operating the railways, all this would be changed, and localities favorably located would be able to reap the benefits which such location should give, and should such a condition ever obtain, the farmers of western Iowa will not then ship corn to the drouth-stricken portion of Kansas for fifteen cents per one hundred pounds, while the Kansas corn grower, living within seventy-five miles of the same market, is charged ten cents per one hundred pounds for a haul one eighth as long. By such rates the railways force the hauling of corn from Iowa to western Kansas, and then force the corn grower of central Kansas to send his corn eastward, the result being two long hauls, where one short one would suffice; but then the corporations would have absorbed less of the substance of the people.

Another, and an incalculable benefit, which would result from national ownership, would be the relief of State and national legislation from the pressure and corrupting practices of railway corporations which constitute one of the greatest dangers to which Republicaninstitutions can be subjected. This alone renders the nationalization of the railways most desirable, and at the same time such nationalization would have the effect of emancipating a large part of the press from a galling thraldom to the corporations.

With the nation operating the railways, we may have some hope that rates will be reduced by some system resembling the Hungarian zone which has had the effect of diminishing local passenger rates about forty per cent., resulting in such an increase of traffic as to greatly increase the revenues of the roads; the average of rates by ordinary third-class trains being about three fourths of a cent per mile, and one and a half cents per mile for first-class express trains.

In Victoria, the parcel or express business is done by the government railways, and the rates are not one half what they are with us when farmed out to a second lot of corporations. Space does not permit the discussion or even the statement of the many salutary phases of government control, as developed in the various countries of Europe, and it is not necessary, as there are abundant reasons to be found in conditions existing at home, for making the proposed change. By far the most menacing feature of continued corporate ownership is the power over the money markets which it places in the hands of unscrupulous men, any half dozen of whom can, at such a time as that following the failure of the Barings, destroy the welfare of millions, and plunge the country into all the horrors of a money panic. Whether it be true or not, there are many who believe that a small coterie, who had information before the public of the condition of Baring Brothers and that a block of many millions of American railway securities held by that house were being (or soon would be) pressed upon the market, entered into a conspiracy for the purpose of locking up money and thereby depressing prices in order to secure, at low cost, the control of certain coveted railways. The railways were secured, and there is not much doubt that they had been lying in wait for such a critical condition of the money markets to accomplish this purpose, which still further enhances their power for evil. With the railways nationalized, not only would there be no temptation for such nefarious operations, but the power of such men over values would be greatly lessened, if not wholly destroyed, as there would be no railway shares for them to play fast and loose with, and as money, instead of being tied up in loans on chromos representing little but water, would seek investment in bona fide enterprises, their operations would have little influence, and would certainly have no such baleful power over the industries of the country, as their ability to affect the value of railway shares—on which such immense sums are now loaned on call—gives them, they being able by locking up a few millions when the money market is in the condition, which obtained at the time of the Baring collapse, to force the calling of loans and the slaughtering of vast numbers of the shares, carrying the control of the railways they covet. If only for the purpose of divesting “The dangerous wealthy classes” of this frightful power, national ownership would be worth many times its cost, and without such ownership a score of manipulators are soon likely to be complete masters of the republic and all its industrial interests; hence, the question reverts to the form stated in the opening of this paper: Shall the nation accept as a master a political party that may be dislodged by the use of the ballot, or shall the republic be dominated by a master in the form of a score of unscrupulous Goulds, Vanderbilts, and Huntingtons, who cannot be dislodged, and who never die?