ARE RAILROADS PUBLIC ENEMIES? 579 



covered, in all the immense delicacy of mechanism which moves 

 8,778,581,001 of people one mile, and billions of dollars' worth of 

 treasure in every direction across and along a continent in a single 

 year, and supports a property representing $7,070,399,054 of securi- 

 ties, a single point for his admiration or even for his approval. 



Archimedes had the world for a load and natural science for a 

 lever ; but even Archimedes was obliged to sigh for a place whereon 

 to plant bis fulcrum. It appears to me that, in this laborious work of 

 five hundred closely printed octavo pages, what Mr. Hudson lacks 

 most of all is a standpoint. He has a load, he has a grievance for a 

 lever, but, since he can not himself float in space, he makes no im- 

 pression on what he claims to be the burden to be moved. Mr. Hud- 

 son's want of standpoint is prominent at his very outset in his very 

 title-page. He calls his book " The Railways and the Republic," thus 

 antagonizing his two terms. But the grouping is vicious, to begin 

 with ; since railroads, whether regarded as legal entities or as com- 

 panies of individuals, are as much part and parcel of the republic as is 

 Mr. Hudson himself. Starting upon this false major premise, Mr. 

 Hudson proceeds in the first of his eleven chapters to give us the in- 

 dictment, the remaining ten to be the counts of the particulars. 



The title given to this indictment, "The Problem of Railway 

 Domination," is again illicit. Where is the "domination" to be elimi- 

 nated ? Frankly admitting that the present writer believes that rail- 

 ways belong to the persons whose money has built or purchased them, 

 and that their quasi-public character is justified and satisfied by their 

 honest performance, by the best methods that applied science up to 

 date has furnished, of the duties of public transportation, he proposes 

 from this standpoint to examine : first, Mr. Hudson's indictment as a 

 whole, passing thereafter — as far as the limits of a single paper will 

 allow — to the particulars exhibited. 



According to Mr. Hudson, the railways of the United States either 

 " dominate" at present, or propose sooner or later to " dominate," the 

 republic. How? By being "gigantic monopolists," says Mr. Hud- 

 son. And how do they become gigantic monopolists ? By being 

 gigantic corporations, controlled by men of altogether too enormous 

 private fortunes. Now, we have always known that a railway was a 

 corporation, and that some of our railways might fairly be called 

 " gigantic." But there is not one of these " gigantic " corporations 

 which is, in any sense of the term known to dictionaries at least, a 

 monopoly. To be exactly all-fours with the lexicographers, the only 

 railways in the Union which are monopolies 'are countable on the 

 fingers of one hand, and must be as insignificant in extent, capitaliza- 

 tion, importance of terminals and every other characteristic, as they 

 are in number. Everybody knows that a shipper or traveler from 

 New York to any point in the United States has an abundant choice 

 of routes before him. Whether his objective be Buffalo, New Orleans, 



