ARE RAILROADS PUBLIC ENEMIES? 589 



the result being, that while railroads are not philanthropic or chari- 

 table bodies, organized for good works among the poor and needy, 

 they are not basilisks, or gorgons, or minotaurs, destroyers of the 

 state or dragons that feed upon the people. And now we might well 

 leave Mr. Hudson and all his works, were not his lack of standpoint 

 just here so ludicrous as to tempt from us a further word. He cries 

 (page 9), " Railway projectors have invariably embarked in these 

 enterprises, not so much for the public welfare as for their own 

 private enrichment." What else had Mr. Hudson been led to sup- 

 pose ? The millennial state in which private enterprises are conducted 

 for public ends is certainly not yet a State in the Federal Union, 

 wherever else on this planet it may be discovered. Mr. Hudson's 

 next proposition is that, "if the country has had hundreds of millions 

 added to its wealth by railway construction, the builders have also 

 secured tens of millions for their individual fortunes." In any but 

 the millennial state one would think that a free gift to the common- 

 wealth of ninety percentum of one's profits was a rather liberal tithe, 

 and an exceedingly handsome thing. Most private parties, certainly 

 most governments, would open their coffers to their friends on the 

 same terms. But Mr. Hudson is ashamed to think that private capi- 

 tal, enterprise, patience, and labor should have been returned any- 

 thing. Clearly, the Government should take fully cent per cent for 

 the industry of its subjects. 



" While the nation has gained in wealth and population by the 

 general extension of railways," says Mr. Hudson, "it does not follow 

 that the wealth could not have been more justly distributed if railway 

 management had been universally governed by the principles of 

 equity " (page 8). What wealth ? Mr. Hudson was just now com- 

 plaining that the entire benefit did not go to Government, and that 

 the individual received ten per cent. Now he regrets that it was not 

 even more widely distributed among individuals. What are Mr. 

 Hudson's views as to the meaning of the word " equity " ? Would 

 " equity " have been subserved if the ten per centum or the hundred 

 per centum were distributed by lot, or on a basis of pauperism, or 

 covered at once into the treasury of the republic ? The statements 

 that " the equality of all persons is denied by the discriminations of 

 the corporations which the Government has created " ; that " under 

 them the increase of national wealth is not distributed among all 

 classes according to their industry and prudence, but is concentrated 

 among those who enjoy the favor of the railway power " ; and that 

 by means of railways " general independence and self-respect are 

 made impossible " (page 9), may perhaps be passed over with the 

 remark that if Mr. Hudson himself believed in propositions as silly as 

 these, to argue with him at all would be like reading Herbert Spencer 

 to the Salvation Army. 



It is a bonne bouche to bring into the discussion at this point an 



