ARE RAILROADS PUBLIC ENEMIES? 151 



any line) will have none of their reduced rates unless they reduce 

 them from the proper motive. After all, the act is nothing. It is the 

 motive which must govern. And doubtless we could nowhere elicit a 

 more virtuous, certainly nowhere a better specimen than this of Mr. 

 Hudson's public-spirited argument against railroads, from this most 

 exhaustive and most entertaining of scrap-books. " No matter what 

 you do, if your 'eart is only true," says the old song. And so says 

 Mr. Hudson to the railroads of this republic. But let it at least be 

 remembered in their behalf that, even if they did it with selfish mo- 

 tives, the railways were themselves the first to attempt their own 

 reformation. Railroads are and must remain built for the private 

 emolument of their owners, and not for charitable purposes. They 

 were not proof against the temptation of charging more money for 

 a short haul to non-competitive points than for a long haul to com- 

 petitive points in the struggle to live alongside of paralleling lines 

 which the people themselves have chartered. But, when the pool 

 removed this temptation by making all points non-competitive 

 although no law, human or divine, compelled them ; they did volun- 

 tarily resist the temptation to pool at maximum rates the rates not 

 only fell, but became proportionate to cost of hauling, the competition 

 remaining only as to those " long-haul " points in whose favor Nature 

 has discriminated by establishing water communications. Mr. Hud- 

 son has, perhaps, read a great many books. He should not have 

 omitted from among them the late Dr. Lieber's " Civil Liberty and 

 Self-Government" (especially the chapter wherein is treated the prin- 

 ciple of the " Freedom of Rivers "). Then, remembering that the 

 United States has not only two ocean coast-lines, but great lakes and 

 a system of navigable rivers more magnificent and more benign than 

 that of any other country, he might possibly have perceived how in 

 his railway problem so slight a consideration as our national geogra- 

 phy might be at least as important a factor as a handful of selected 

 individual hardships. Mr. Hudson does not relish the rates charged 

 by our railway companies. He suggests no others, but is entirely 

 clear, none the less, that they should be changed somehow. If rates 

 are at present airanged upon a system, let us drop the system and 

 make them arbitrary according to Mr. Hudson's selection, if he 

 would only agree to abide by it. If your present rates are robbing 

 the people, low as they are very well, lower them still more, and rob 

 your stockholders. It is evident that Mr. Hudson, for one, is no stock- 

 holder. But are not our stockholders parcel of the people ? And so 

 the old impossibility of finding standpoint or rather, the necessity 

 of shifting his point of view with each newspaper-clipping he pastes 

 in his scrap-book renders Mr. Hudson everywhere specious, incon- 

 sistent and absurd ; which leads us up to our second head. 



II. Stock -Watering. But, says Mr. Hudson, you can not really 

 rob your stockholders, you know, because your stock is " water," and 



