i 5 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to the greatest number, but tbe least good to the greatest number (or, 

 possibly, the greatest good to the least number), so that the selected 

 village is favored. But what else would this be, again, but a mo- 

 nopoly of commercial privileges ; and how soon did the railway or the 

 railways adopt Mr. Hudson's suggestion and discriminate exclusively 

 in favor of his village before Mr. Hudson would be on his feet again 

 with an entirely new compilation of grievances, demanding to know 

 why this particular village was selected out of the entire continent to 

 be so pre-eminently favored? Does not even Mr. Hudson begin to 

 catch a glimpse of just how vast, how complicated, and inexhaustible 

 this railway problem really is ? But possibly he does not, for he says, 

 You charge this village of B too much. No, we charge everybody 

 according to geographical position ; it saves us labor to do so, says 

 Mr. Alexander. Well, anyhow, says Mr. Hudson, you lowered the 

 rate to A, and did not lower the rate to B, and that's the act of a public 

 enemy ; and he straightway sits down and inflicts us with a book of 500 

 pages, of which the argument is (or ought to be, to be consistent) that 

 A is not the public or even the republic, whereas B is both the one 

 and the other. If Mr. Hudson will kindly turn to one of his own pages 

 (in which possibly the mass of excerpta has bewildered him), he will 

 be doubtless surprised to find (page 159) an admission that, astound- 

 ing as it may seem, on a single trunk-line in a single year, as between 

 the anti-pool rates of 1865 and the pool rates of 1882, a saving to the 

 public, in freights alone, of $318,947,486,261 has been effected. But, 

 having made the admission, he is ready to meet it after his kind. 

 "This is an astonishing instance," he continues, "of giving away what 

 the giver never owned or possessed ; the fact is kept out of sight that the 

 business of 1882 is the result of the progressive reduction of rates for 

 many years, and could never have existed but for the reductions." Sure- 

 ly, the readers of " The Popular Science Monthly " have never witnessed 

 quite such a wiping out of the laws of supply and demand as this ! 

 Mr. Hudson will have us believe that the people of the United States 

 on the line of the given railroad would not have eaten and drunk, or 

 purchased supplies, worn clothes or slept on beds, and that population 

 itself for seventeen years would have suspended its rules perhaps the 

 laws of gravitation themselves have ceased had not this railroad re- 

 duced its rates. But let us overlook any possible increase of popula- 

 tion or of the wants or luxuries of a given territory in the space of 

 twenty-two years, and consider this particular railway company as all 

 railways. The argument will then remain as follows : Railways are 

 public enemies because they are exorbitant in their charges. But fig- 

 tires show that their charges are constantlv decreasing. Never mind 

 that, says Mr. Hudson, if railways reduce their rates they only do so 

 from the selfish motive of getting still more business. Most shippers 

 over a railway would be contented if the railway would only charge 

 them low rates. But Mr. Hudson (who, possibly, is not a shipper over 



