158 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



defend it against the grantor himself in the grantor's own courts 

 these are the least of the burdens which this once granted and quickly- 

 terminated privilege of eminent domain is supposed to impose, and 

 practically does impose, upon railway companies. Admitting their 

 public character even such a character is, perhaps, not morally a de- 

 terrent to the rights of their stockholders to get the interest on their 

 investment; or otherwise a displacement of the unwritten law of meum 

 and tuum. Railroads, by the uniform decisions of half a century, are 

 indeed public conveniences. But, so far, this character of a public 

 convenience has been only a burden, never a blessing, or even a shield. 

 The man who steals a ride on a railway-train and imputes it to him- 

 self for sin would be a curiosity. The railway company has no con- 

 science-fund ; and, had it, there would be no contributors. It may 

 submit to robbery, may carry for less than the cost of the service, 

 and so plunder its stockholders to its heart's content, and Mr. Hud- 

 son and his clique have no protest to put on record. But if under 

 all this load the railway company succumbs to bankruptcy, Mr. Hud- 

 son, from his elastic standpoint (or rather from his lack of any stand- 

 point whatever) is enabled to cite this very bankruptcy as another in- 

 stance of the hostility and danger of railways to the republic. He 

 has charged them with being enemies to the public, firstly, because of 

 their tariffs. He charges them, secondly, with being public enemies 

 because of the bankruptcy which a failure to collect those tariffs has 

 brought upon them ; and yet again, thirdly when that bankruptcy 

 has made the stock nominal in value and so speculative, and a shrewd 

 operator absorbs it and so lays the foundation of a private fortune 

 Mr. Hudson still charges the railways with being public enemies be- 

 cause the far-seeing operator has accumulated this very private for- 

 tune ! Moreover, he lumps the whole catena of cause and effect into 

 a series of indictments (or, more absurdly still, into a series of specifi- 

 cations under a single indictment against railways as a class or an 

 institution), and proposes as a relief from the whole what? Why, 

 that the Government confiscate (or purchase by way of condemnation) 

 these railways, and make them a public highway upon which any one 

 may run his own rolling-stock on payment of a trackage-fee ! 



I know what the railways of this continent are, what services they 

 perform. I know that, by vigilant watch for and adoption of the latest 

 triumphs of engineering and mechanical skill, and by employment 

 of the costliest of expert assistance, they have reduced the percentage 

 of accident to a minimum, and the chances of loss of life to a fraction 

 so small that it is actually a mathematical truth to assert that a man 

 is safer in a railway-train running at full speed than in his bed, or in 

 any other spot on this most precarious globe ! What these railways 

 could become if operated upon Mr. Hudson's plan I can not question ; 

 the details of that picture I can not, for one, fill in. I know not what 

 terminal facilities, what time-tables, or what percentage of slaughter 



