TRANSPORTATION THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 337 



8. The large salaries paid high railroad officials is to a great degree 

 only a legalized method of giving them an important part of the 

 emoluments received. Their positions being free from the strain of 

 personal competition and risk of capital, such as attend the business 

 man, and without the pressure of social expenses and duties, such as 

 rest upon the high government official, and frequently destitute of re- 

 quirements of expert skill and professional knowledge, such as often 

 command prizes of the highest kind, they are altogether without a 

 parallel as remunerated positions. 



Electric, gas, and other companies represent branches of trans- 

 portation, of which railroads are the great representatives, and much 

 is true of these companies that is true of railroad companies, and all 

 stand on much the same ground regarding salaries paid to their high 

 officials and in their general effects. 



In contrast to these advantages accruing to railroad organizers and 

 managers, the advantages that are supposed to accrue by the organiza- 

 tion of railroad and all other stock companies, and to which prospect- 

 uses however flattering, are confined, are 



1. The profit on the investment through rise in the value of the 

 property, and dividends to those who give valuable considerations for 

 stocks and bonds. 



2. The indirect benefit that will accrue to other properties, and the 

 public convenience and advantage that will be derived from the opera- 

 tions of the company. 



Where legitimacy begins and where it ends in such organization 

 and management is a question of casuistry in particular cases, but 

 there has been swerving enough from what is legitimate to make it 

 the startling and pronounced feature of American commercial life for 

 the past twenty-five years. 



As the result of such illegitimacy, as the leading cause, what do 

 we find ? 



We find Pelion piled on Ossa in the matter of private wealth. 



We find the ideas of equality and simplicity on which the Govern- 

 ment was founded stultified in the house of their friends. 



We find fiery zeal and many successes in making millions and 

 multiples of millions, and the hardships of acquiring a competence, in- 

 creasing. 



We find a class that exceed any class of officers in the Government 

 in the importance of tenure and their power imperium in imperio. 



We find the individual less assertive than a generation ago of his 

 independence, and the typical, prosperous citizen eats the bread of de- 

 pendence upon a corporation, or controls one or more. 



We find an important number of the influential members of the 

 class that is and has been most influential in this country since the 

 organization of the Government, lawyers the only learned class active 

 in affairs, officers of courts, the chief legislators and law-makers of the 



VOL. XXIX. 22 



