THE POLITICAL CONTROL OF RAILWAYS. 457 



friends to dinner, I discriminate in his favor against any friend 

 whom I do not invite to dinner. If, in company with several 

 millions of my fellow-citizens, I vote for President Harrison, and 

 President Harrison invites a man who has voted for him to din- 

 ner, and does not invite me, he discriminates against me — me, 

 from whom his charter as President has come equally as from 

 my fellow-citizen who dines at the White House when I do not. 

 But, conceding, in the case of a railway company, that discrimi- 

 nation, otherwise innocent, may work hardship — and also conced- 

 ing the jurisdiction of the people over the railway company it has 

 chartered, to prevent hardship to themselves — have this Interstate 

 Commission and these boards legislated against the hardship ? 

 Have they not rather expended their legislation against the thing 

 which may or may not be a hardship, according to circumstances, 

 and in so doing increased the hardship, to their own damage and 

 expense, rather than ameliorated it ? 



I. The Interstate Act. — This act directs itself to forbid (a) 

 discriminations and (6) pools. Now, an edict against either of 

 these might mean something — might even, if qualified, be pro- 

 ductive of good. But an edict against both is really nothing — can 

 not possibly amount to anything — except either an increased 

 hardship to all parties concerned, or else the usual affirmative to 

 which two negatives invariably amount. If railway companies, 

 can neither discriminate nor come together for consultation and 

 abolishment of discriminations, what is the result ? Merely the 

 result which would follow an attempt to abolish the mice in a 

 pantry by first abolishing the cat which had been put into the 

 pantry to abolish the mice. 



The only possible pretext on which Congress, acting for the 

 people, could abolish pools, was that a pool was a " corner " in 

 transportation, by which two or more competing lines proposed 

 to raise the carrying-tariff in their section of country. But, as a 

 matter of fact, the pooling system was a contrivance io reduce 

 jointly the carrying-tariff in territory where two or more lines 

 served, and that pooling system practically and actually did re- 

 duce the tariffs to shippers. This I have demonstrated and 

 proved by figures already in the pages of " The Popular Science 

 Monthly." * " The pool " proper had nothing to do with this re- 

 duction, except that it controlled the division of tariff receipts 

 between the treasuries of the two or more pooling roads by a 

 process of exact and expert differentiation in which a question 

 of distance transported was only the very minor factor em- 

 ployed ; such items as the cost of stopping, loading, or siding, or 

 returning a freight-car empty to its owner, station expenses, re- 

 pairs to track-way, rolling-stock, clerk-hire, improbability of find- 



*June, 188V, p. 147. 



