224 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to decree the building of another railway between two other 

 points ; and as the one would be impossible, so the other would 

 be absurd. 



For all that is said about superfluous and over-railway con- 

 struction, I confess that I would like to hear mentioned the one 

 of our five hundred United States railway lines which is superflu- 

 ous, or which the community which is served by it would consent 

 to have torn up or to otherwise dispense with. I have myself 

 cajoled, argued, and fought for rights of way, and finally brought 

 condemnation and sundry other legal proceedings in order to con- 

 struct a railway ; but, once constructed, I think it would be dan- 

 gerous to limb or life to suggest a discontinuance of that railway 

 to the very people who once resisted, to their last extremity, its 

 location. 



The people of the United States are indebted to their railways 

 in a sense which obtains in no other country on this planet. To 

 say that the railways have turned forests into farms and made 

 the desert blossom as the rose does not express this obligation. 

 It is a greater one than that. To the United States as to no other 

 nation the railways have brought wealth by a present realization 

 of prospective revenues so enormously as to quite amount to an 

 actual creation of values. In other countries railways have been 

 built when populations demanded them, or could not exist longer 

 without them when great cities were to be brought together and 

 great industries to be served. In the United States the railways 

 have preceded and created the demand, the interests, the cities 

 themselves. 



The percentage in error of judgment is at least no greater in 

 the promoting of railway enterprises than in any other branch of 

 human procedure. Nor is it impossible to argue that even a forced 

 railway construction where actually no demand can be pre- 

 mised, no interests subserved, where no capital seeks legitimate 

 investment, and no traffic exists, and for only ulterior purposes 

 (such as "selling out") is entirely a disadvantage to a com- 

 munity. Even the debentures of such a railway are not a public 

 burden. For, while a promise to pay value is not perhaps a crea- 

 tion of value at the start, if interest be paid upon that promise and 

 it is finally funded and ultimately paid in cash, it becomes a con- 

 tribution to the public wealth (however meanwhile that promise 

 or the guarantee of it may work criticism or prophecy of national 

 ruin, or the elocution of the agitator or the communist about 

 bloated or unhealthy private fortunes and the like). Large views 

 and considerations of " the long run," do not, I think, warrant any 

 paternal surveillance over private capital or the laws of supply 

 and demand. What is wanted is either a surcease of railway 

 commissions, Federal, State, and Territorial, in the United States, 



