RAILROAD PROBLEM IN THE UNITED STATES. 301 



matter of fact, the shortest or economically best line fixes the rate, 

 and other lines must base their charges thereupon. 



Should there be formed in America a general pool to establish tar- 

 iffs as the Railway Clearing-House does in England, or the Railway- 

 Unions do in Germany, it would probably enter into relations with 

 the Federal Government for the sanction and enforcement of its con- 

 tracts. 



The strong pleas made by the railroad interest do not silence the 

 voice of murmuring. Every great railroad serves without competition 

 important breadths of country, and proofs abound that the interest of 

 a road may not always be a consenting parallel with the interests of 

 its patrons. Charges much higher than justice would fix are exacted 

 from customers, who must submit, and who are not sufficiently injured 

 to be driven from their field. There is something ominous, too, in 

 the way in which coarse and unscrupulous men are getting more and 

 more control of the railroad system of the country. People are ask- 

 ing, " What is to prevent the great railroad presidents from exercising 

 their power arbitrarily, and compassing the ruin of individuals, firms, 

 and localities ? " Some of the eminent statesmen and politicians of the 

 republic are of firm belief that the railroads are getting too much 

 power, and that the abuses complained of here and there now are only 

 examples of what may be expected very generally as the years of the 

 near future elapse. The lurid light of " Standard " oil shows how a 

 railroad oligarchy might repeat abuses of its power in the dishonest 

 control of great staples which, like petroleum, form the bases of na- 

 tional wealth. A rise or fall of five cents a bushel in the freight from 

 Chicago to the seaboard affects the value of every farm in the West, 

 and it is easy to see how speculative interests can unwarrantably 

 depress prices, for a time so as to enrich the few manipulators of the 

 market. 



There is throughout the Union great capacity on the part of the 

 people to organize for political ends, and, when the agitation against 

 the railroads took place in the West a few years ago, the rapid spread 

 of the Granger movement showed the power the public are ready to 

 exert whenever they feel that they suffer grievances capable of rem- 

 edy, and this dormant force in the last resort will rise to resist any 

 tyranny which railway kings may be foolish enough to exercise. 

 Among the most prominent public men who are of opinion that it is 

 now time that the Federal arm were invoked to repress l-ailroad aggres- 

 sion and who advance the cause of anti-monopoly, may be named Sena- 

 tors David Davis and William Windom, Judge Jeremiah S. Black, 

 and Governor Gray, of Indiana. Judge Black holds the paradoxical 

 opinion that railroads are held by their owners simply as trusts, and 

 that therefore their tariffs should be public, reasonable, and just. 

 Hon. J. M. Mason, of West Virginia, holds that railroads are common 

 carriers who levy tolls and exercise eminent domain, and as such they 



