ARE RAILROADS PUBLIC ENEMIES? 159 



would be necessary did every man, woman, and child possess the in- 

 alienable right to place upon their tracks their own locomotives, their 

 own passenger-coaches and freight-carriages, and to run them at their 

 own sweet will hither and thither. Nor can my fancy devise where 

 all this rolling-stock would be stored when not in use (unless, indeed, 

 means were devised to suspend it, by balloons or other aerial contriv- 

 ance, over the railways themselves). Mr. Hudson does not discuss 

 these questions at all, but leaves them, possibly, to the inventive 

 genius of the race. And there, perhaps, we may also rest them. 



But, taking leave of Mr. Hudson and his chimera, we have yet be- 

 fore us the railways themselves. Against the inequality of their own 

 rates and the hardship of the long and short haul (in other words, 

 against the discriminations of Nature and of physical laws), no less 

 than against the peril of bankruptcy and the consequent speculative 

 tendency of their stocks (after which may come the wrecking, the 

 watering, and the vast individual fortunes), the railways of this re- 

 public have endeavored, by establishment of pool commissions, to de- 

 fend both the public and themselves ; and, whatever their motive 

 may have been, their record as to that can not be disturbed. As to 

 the effect of the Interstate Commerce Law upon the shipper and the 

 passenger, time and trial alone can testify. But it is precisely such 

 literature as Mr. Hudson's, and the sentiment it manufactures, which 

 have made railway-wrecking, stock-watering, and their concomitant 

 disasters possible ; while for these disasters, down to date at least, 

 the pool has been found the only and entirely adequate remedy. That 

 remedy, drastic as it is, the railways (far from being public enemies) 

 have themselves applied. The honest administration of railways for 

 all interests, the payment of their fixed charges, the solvency of their 

 securities, the faithful and valuable performance of their duties as 

 carriers, can be conserved in but one way by living tariffs such as 

 the pools have guaranteed. But we want no living tariffs, says our 

 Mr. Hudson. Give us a governmental control, and we will pay no 

 tariffs only a trackage-fee ! Supposing this revolution accomplished, 

 and how many years or months would, perhaps, elapse before another 

 declamation in five hundred more pages of close type against the ex- 

 cessive trackage-fees, the favors to public officials or private cronies, 

 or a formulated demand that the Government provide terminals at its 

 own expense (another planet, possibly), sumptuous rolling-stock, mo- 

 tive power, and accident insurance policies for its passengers would 

 arrive from the constant, sleepless, and irrepressible Mr. Hudson ? Is 

 it not, after all, Mr. Hudson and his kind and not the Wall Street 

 operator who trades on the sham public opinion they manufacture 

 who are the true stock-waterers, railroad-wreckers, and enemies of this 

 republic ? 



