AN APOSTATE DEMOCRACY. 667 



believed to be moved, like other commercial enterprises, to seek the 

 convenience and approval of their patrons, they have been forced to 

 construct depots in towns of a certain size, no matter whether busi- 

 ness warranted it, to arrange the movement of trains on connecting 

 lines to save a traveler from delay, and to post bulletins to acquaint 

 the impatient public with belated trains and the hour of their 

 arrival. It is assumed by another class of legislation that they revel 

 in the destruction of life and property and the persecution of their 

 employees. One State at least requires the erection of stage planks 

 or the use of trucks for the reception of baggage. In another, loco- 

 motives must be armed with lookouts to warn heedless trespassers, 

 and in case of injury or death the company must prove affirmatively 

 that it was not guilty of negligence. In still other States it is pro- 

 vided that there shall be no reduction of salary without a month's 

 notice, no discharge of employees without reasons, if demanded, and 

 no record, or black list, of incompetents or rascals. Even the estab- 

 lishment of relief departments, to which no one is obliged to con- 

 tribute, is prohibited. To show still further that railroads have 

 no rights that the high-minded legislator is bound to respect, it is 

 provided by one law that they shall pay the charges of other car- 

 riers on freight delivered to them; by a second, that they shall issue 

 passes to shippers of certain commodities; and by a third, not con- 

 fined to railroads, that they shall not employ detectives or other per- 

 sons to discover dishonesty or to protect their property from the 

 destruction of rioters. In so humane an age as the present, thieves 

 would hardly be refused a privilege so unquestionably just. 



As yet but two other classes of corporations outside of elevator 

 and railroad companies have been denied the right to fix the price of 

 their services. This baleful movement of democratic despotism has 

 overtaken telegraph and telephone companies, and threatens the gas 

 and street-car companies. The corporations still free from it have 

 not, however, escaped the blasting solicitude of the social reformers. 

 The owners of mills, factories, and mines have suffered severely from 

 it. But if their hours of toil have been shortened to the verge of 

 disaster; if their discipline of the careless and incompetent has been 

 modified to the point of impotency; if they have had to put up their 

 buildings and to guard their machinery in prescribed ways, not 

 always the wisest; if, in a word, they have been bound and gagged 

 by regulations that rival those with which Colbert throttled the in- 

 dustries of France, the story of their oppression is too much like that 

 of the railroads to need recital. Of more interest because more novel 

 is the oppression of the insurance companies, which, like the rail- 

 roads, require ability and character of the highest order, and a 

 special knowledge that few legislators take the trouble to master. 



