148 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of a pool than they were before. The explanation appears, however, 

 as the demonstration proceeds and the technical meaning of the terms 

 " long haul " and " short haul " becomes self-evident. Clearly the points 

 we have named become " short hauls " as against (for example) San 

 Francisco, the haul to which is therefore called a " long haul." Now, 

 in establishing rates to San Francisco, certainly it is very apparent 

 that the railroads which have pooled to Salt Lake City or Denver must 

 take a new factor into the account, for San Francisco has a most excel- 

 lent water communication with the entire world, and is perfectly inde- 

 pendent of railways, monopolies or otherwise. In other words, it is 

 Nature and not railroad corporations that have discriminated against 

 Denver and Salt Lake City, and in favor of San Francisco, by making 

 it a commercial fact that (since water is cheaper than land transporta- 

 tion) San Francisco is actually nearer New York than Denver or Salt 

 Lake City. The fact is that so long as railway rates are regulated by 

 geography however distorted they may appear to the non-expert, the 

 substitution of arbitrary for geographical rules in framing a tariff 

 would result in rendering them still more distorted and uneven. And 

 if the railways, pooled or unpooled, charge proportionately less rates 

 to San Francisco than to Denver or Altoona or Salt Lake City, the 

 higher power that has ordered it is the irresistible power of Nature. 

 To what lengths of invective and diatribe Mr. Hudson and his kind 

 would proceed, did Nature and geography "pool" with the railways, 

 it is amusing to speculate ; but the fact which oppresses the railway 

 company at present, and imposes upon it the necessity of accommo- 

 dating its rates to Nature (since Nature will not accommodate herself 

 to the railways) is that no pool can be made with the ocean, which 

 charges nothing to the sons of men who plow its bosom with their 

 ships, and which is at no expense to keep itself in repair. For, let it 

 be always remembered, in discussing these and like questions, a railroad 

 is not, per se, a means of transportation. Such a definition is very far 

 from being definitive by exclusion, as a definition ought to be. A rail- 

 road is a prepared and exclusive highway for traffic by means of the 

 motive power of the locomotive engine, and is available only where 

 locomotives can be used. There are still the foot-path, the bridle-path, 

 the wagon-rOad, the ocean, the river, the canal, with which it must 

 compete. There is still the inclined plane, with which (for the down- 

 grade, certainly) no locomotive even can compete. And so, even were 

 railway companies the terrible affairs, the grasping monopolies, the 

 enemies of the human race, which Mr. Hudson asserts them, they are 

 only so because the human race uses them, if it uses them at all, in 

 preference to other means of transportation. Should Mr. Hudson in- 

 duce his clientele to discontinue their preference, the fact might be dif- 

 ferent ; but in order to accept Mr. Hudson's conclusion (which, be it 

 remarked again, is not the rule of the Interstate Commerce Law) that 

 railways are public enemies because their tariffs sometimes are greater 



