TRANSPORTATION THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 341 



not delegate large power to individuals and the let-alone theory have 

 gone hand in hand in our public policy. But, curiously or otherwise, 

 the compact of thought of the fathers with its traditional acceptance 

 by intervening generations does not hold pure in deed at this time. 

 There was aggressive statesmanship in founding the republic ; the 

 statesmanship since that day has not been aggressive. The most dis- 

 tinguished names in civil affairs since that day have been Jackson 

 and Lincoln, whose aggressiveness has been that of repelling innova- 

 tions or evils ; Lincoln broke the back of the slave-power and of the 

 rebellion by his Emancipation Proclamation, and attained the highest 

 point of inspiration and daring ever yet reached by an American 

 statesman ; but it was the heroic stroke of defense, not of aggression. 

 No statesmanship arose, during the forty years that it was practically 

 an issue, that was able and aggressive enough to keep back the war 

 for slavery and secession, although it was proved immediately after 

 the war was over that it was a war for an abstraction an abstraction 

 of selfishness, ignorance, and prejudice that was dissipated in the light 

 of a new day, and an abstraction that might have been dissipated a 

 generation earlier, without the bellows of war, with a different order of 

 statesmanship. 



While we may be proud of our founders, we need not be proud of 

 all the statesmanship that has preceded us, nor accept the belief that a 

 final orthodoxy has been reached in this country for the government 

 of a great nation. 



It is certainly not the highest order of society that it should be au- 

 tomatic ; it is so in China. Accepting this to be the fact, we need not 

 fight off innovations as though in them were the seeds of destruction. 



What is it that now confronts us in the status of the transportation 

 companies, the monopolies par excellence of this country ? 



The chief proprietors have life-leases of power, to be bequeathed to 

 whom they will, while civil officers and legislators have to go fre- 

 quently back to the people to be reinstated or deposed. 



They have wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. 



They build up a subsidiary class around them, who establish colos- 

 sal fortunes by special rates, rebates, and drawbacks, and are exempt 

 from the American principle of competition. Of this class the Stand- 

 ard Oil Company is the great type. 



They possess great power over the incomes and savings of the peo- 

 ple by controlling avenues of investment, and can and do greatly use 

 this power to absorb such investments for themselves. 



They have the power to tax commerce arbitrarily, and so tax it all 

 they think it will bear, barred only by one strong influence, their in- 

 ternal jealousies. 



They check personal ambition, independence, and enterprise, as 

 success in very important fields of activity can only be obtained 

 through them. 



