156 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



from and determined by the local police power of each separate com- 

 munity, although sometimes granted by proclamation from the State 

 Executive, since Mr. Hudson has not assailed it, I will not defend. In 

 the granting of railway passes I confess my inability to discover a crime 

 against the State. Wherein they differ from the orders that a mana- 

 ger issues to seats in a theatre especially since his theatrical privileges 

 come from the people by special license I am unable to perceive. 

 "Passes" are the small currency of the railway company, payable for 

 favors not estimated in, or convertible to, money ; and are used just 

 as the small trader bestows an apple or a toy upon the juvenile carrier 

 between his small customer and himself. The company's rule is to 

 issue passes only for services ; but the rule is construed liberally to 

 apply to prospective as well as actual services, and to count presumed 

 influence, or perhaps an assumed or expected favorable mention of the 

 particular corporation issuing them as a service. But, even if issued 

 for no service, real or prospective, I know of no human being, institu- 

 tion, or concern, public or private, that is not allowed to perform acts 

 complimentary in their nature, or even entirely gratuitous. In the 

 course of many years' experience I have seen fully as many acts of 

 public charity as of private compliment performed by railway com- 

 panies. A friendless and penniless woman, whose husband has been 

 left behind or has deserted her, en route she knows not whither, can 

 be transported to a desired destination, if not in the discretion of the 

 conductor, at least by telegraphing for permission to the proper de- 

 partment. And there is not a railway in the country where such gra- 

 tuitous services are not constant, and as unchronicled and unheralded 

 as they are constant. While I frankly say that, for one, I can not see 

 where the granting either of charities or of "passes" militates against 

 the public character imposed by Legislatures upon railroads, or is for- 

 bidden by the fact that to facilitate its construction the railway com- 

 pany once enjoyed a parcel of the State's power of eminent domain ; 

 I must admit that (except as to employes) the system has always 

 been a nuisance to the railway companies which they have constantly 

 labored to abolish. It is impossible to forecast what quantum of 

 credit Mr. Hudson and his kind may take unto themselves for the 

 Interstate Commerce Act, which has at last promised the railways a 

 grateful relief from the pass-beggar. But if that act shall abolish 

 both pools and passes, public sympathy w T ill be with the honest shipper 

 who must pay increased tariffs, rather than with the local Solon who 

 wakes to find that while screaming at "discriminations" and "long 

 and short hauls " he has actually been emptying his own pockets of 

 the passes with which they were lined. 



The power of the Government over the citizen, then, except in this 

 solitary instance of land condemnation, being never exercised by a 

 corporation : being bestowed invariably and always for the benefit and 

 in the interest of the people, and not of the railway company ; taking 



