WANTED A RAILWAY COURT OF LAST RESORT. 217 



court from the court of the State Railway Commissioners, thus 

 either subordinating or conforming all State railway statutes to 

 the Federal statute of Interstate Commerce, amending the rail- 

 way statutes to the statute of Interstate Commerce in as far 

 and as often as the same may he amended or altered or enlarged 

 by the Federal Congress. 



The first of these remedies the Government purchase and 

 operation of railways I have so fully and at length discussed in 

 these pages that it would seem superfluous to touch the matter 

 further, unless the reasons then given to show that the project 

 was impracticable and impossible (or, if practicable and possible, 

 then unconstitutional) can be disposed of. I may briefly state 

 that the principal of those reasons were : first, that the immense 

 number of competing railways would make the operation of more 

 than one of them between terminals an act of bankruptcy on the 

 part of the Government (which would attempt to compete with 

 itself), while to discontinue a competing road would be to deprive 

 local stations of business facilities to which they would be en- 

 titled as well as the terminals ; and, secondly, as above stated, 

 that to operate the five hundred railways in the United States, or 

 any considerable number of them, would necessitate a civil serv- 

 ice so enormous and costly that, even if administered with the 

 most rigid economy, it would absolutely and superlatively realize 

 for this people the worst effects which the most hectic of the 

 popular railway reformers have prophesied from the continu- 

 ance of the present system. In addition to these practical objec- 

 tions the constitutional objection was, that the purchase of our 

 railways would be impossible at present, whatever it might have 

 once been, since no price at which the railway plants could be 

 purchased could be arrived at. To purchase them at more than 

 their value would be a robbery of the non-railway public; to 

 purchase them at less than their value would be a robbery of the 

 owners of the railways ; while to purchase them at their exact 

 value, admitting that it could be reckoned, would be in itself a 

 confiscation (and so a robbery), as forcing innocent holders to 

 relinquish such legitimate investments for their capital as they 

 had lawfully seen fit to select. 



As to the second remedy, there is, I think, something indeed, 

 a great deal to be said in its favor, not only from the side of the 

 railway companies, but from the side of the people of this country 

 (from the shippers, as we may perhaps call the non-railroad oper- 

 ating population; of course, an enormous majority of the whole). 

 And as to this I respectfully offer the following considerations, not 

 in behalf of the railways, but of the customers of the railways. 



Congress has more than once passed a national bankruptcy 

 act, and, I believe, always with beneficial results. Moreover, I 



