3 oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the pool-system, for, with a fixed percentage of the total earnings of 

 a federation of roads, what temptation can remain to make one par- 

 ticular road do more business than that agreed upon as its share ? To 

 the objection that pooling would abolish the incentive to excellence in 

 each road, Mr. Fink answers that the system provides for a periodical 

 reapportionment of percentages of earnings among the lines, and that 

 at such times the public preferences for prompt and well-managed 

 lines would tell, to the punishment of dilatory and badly conducted 

 roads. One of the unavoidable difficulties of pooling must ever be the 

 decision as to the percentage allowable to a new line. Only costly 

 trials of strength seem to be able to bring about such decision. 



The prices of various important commodities in the different markets 

 of the Union limit the freights chargeable upon them. Thus, if Liver- 

 pool salt is to compete with the American article, its carriage inland 

 must be very cheap ; and wider considerations of the same kind have 

 to be borne in mind by those intrusted with the power of making 

 tariffs over the great lines. American grain competes with Russian 

 in the great market of Liverpool, and a question of the tenth of one 

 cent per ton per mile may in the long stretches of American rail-car- 

 riage decide for or against the sale of the Iowa or Minnesota farmer's 

 produce. The tea and silk trade of China with Great Britain can 

 choose between two great routes, the direct water-route, or the journey 

 in part made up of the American transcontinental railroads. 



A closing argument on behalf of pools remains to be stated. The}" 

 make each great road the guardian of its district, which would not be 

 the case were there to be a consolidated monopoly instead of a pool. 

 As matters now stand, the Pennsylvania and the Baltimore and Ohio 

 roads prevent a concentration of business on the New York Central, 

 the line on which, as far as simple and direct economy is concerned, 

 the harvests of the West can be cheapest carried to the seaboard. 

 Pools, too, by preventing wars, will tend to make railroading less un- 

 certain and more profitable than it has been, and will thus lead to new 

 lines being constantly built. 



The detailed criticism of General Reagan's proposed enactments 

 presents fatal objections, and furnishes a new theme for that school of 

 thinkers who hold that the sphere of legislation does not include the 

 control of any business whatever, which may be safely left to meet 

 its difficulties spontaneously. General Reagan's uniform mileage rate 

 would give the shortest route connecting New York and Chicago the 

 lowest rate ; hence that route would command all the business until it 

 could accept no more, when the next shortest would come in for the 

 surplus, and so on, leaving nothing for indirect routes whatever. Be- 

 sides, in railroad practice after the Chicago rate eastward has been 

 fixed, the St. Louis business comes in, and the competition of the roads 

 directly connecting St. Louis and the Atlantic ports must be met by 

 the routes less directly connecting the termini via Chicago. As a 



