34-o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



connection or that were distinctly hostile. Railroads sprang np at 

 first in subservience of local interests, and have been welded and are 

 being welded together in subservience of general interests. The logic 

 of economy and public advantage has overridden the individualities of 

 men, the strifes of communities, the ignorances and prejudices of the 

 public mind. Railroad management becomes less and less local, and 

 more and more an affair dictated by events and beyond the grasp of 

 any one mind or any number of minds that can act in unison. The 

 great names in railroad affairs are not great by reason of overpowering 

 genius, but by reason of the consolidations forced by events, the elimi- 

 nation of the men representing the smaller interests, and by the con- 

 centration of power in the hands of him who by his superiority over 

 his associates or competitors, or by something fortuitous, becomes the 

 representative of the combined interests. 



The public mind does not grudge extraordinary rewards and pow- 

 er to genius and great public service, but it is galled to see such 

 thrown by circumstances into the hands of men only actuated by per- 

 sonal aims. When such a condition of things grows into a national 

 system ; when in substance empires in domain have been parceled out 

 to a few individuals, when we suspect that a few individuals are ab- 

 sorbing the growing wealth of the country, and perhaps more the 

 past acquisitions ; when a plutocracy threatens to become greater than 

 political parties, to wield more power and become superior to the 

 chosen representatives of the people, it is high time to sift the charac- 

 ter of their tenure, to inquire whether we have become a nation of 

 Bombastes Furiosos in civil affairs ; whether the Fourth-of-July ora- 

 tory of past generations was a mere exercitation of the cerebrum and 

 diaphragm of budding orators or traditionary wind-bags ; whether if 

 Providence has favored infants, drunkards, and the United States, as 

 has been intimated by our European fellow-men, has it not withdrawn, 

 or is it not rapidly withdrawing, its favors from the United States? 

 While European nations have been growing toward a greater diffusion 

 of civil rights, in the United States the sovereignty of the individual 

 man has declined, and wealth and a class that wealth creates have be- 

 come known at the polls and in the Legislatures ; and the courts them- 

 selves, the very flower of the virtue and intelligence of the people, are 

 strongly charged in some cases with contamination. 



Consolidation, consolidation, consolidation, is the trend in the de- 

 velopment of transportation. This is so, in spite of the competitive 

 principle on which our nation has sought to stand. This nation has 

 sought to look to no rulers of great and long-continued importance. 

 It has stood on the ground of reinstating its rulers with power at short 

 intervals ; this emphasizes the idea that the sovereign power rests with 

 the people. Next to this, the dominating idea on which we have 

 rested has been that competition among our citizens would control our 

 affairs. The theory of no-government in that part of it which does 



