464 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



obtaining at a date when all government was more or less des- 

 potic (and generally more than less). Neither did a feudal sys- 

 tem ever decree the prices at which its vassals should yield their 

 labor. Supposing a railway company to have been in operation 

 in the days of feudal systems, can any one imagine a law com- 

 pelling it to make charges irrespective of the services it ren- 

 dered ? And yet, in a late session of the House of Representatives 

 at Washington, a bill was, I am informed, introduced to forbid a 

 railway company from carrying oil in tanks at lesser rates than 

 it charged for carrying oil in barrels ! (It is immaterial that oil 

 in tanks can be carried with very little handling, and at an ex- 

 pense of labor and material very little over tha^t required to run 

 empty cars, while to transport it in barrels requires much hand- 

 ling, care, and watchfulness. Nothing in the way of detail, it ap- 

 pears, is material when politicians assume to legislate concerning 

 railway companies.) Indeed, our railway companies might well 

 clamor for and welcome a return to feudal systems, if they con- 

 sulted their own convenience — to say nothing of their fixed 

 charges ! Nor would a return be such a bad thing for the an- 

 archist or the socialist from his own standpoint. For, under feu- 

 dalism, the subject was not touched by the crown-taxes — the taxes 

 for revenue, for war-making, for internal protection. The fathers 

 of our common law, in tracing the origin of property to " title by 

 occupancy " to the garden of Eden (which Adam, at least until dif- 

 ferent arrangements were made, owned because he occupied it) — 

 to the times when King Ahab, despot as he was, dared not help 

 himself to Naboth's vineyard until, by ruse or device, he had di- 

 vested Naboth's title — never denied the general proprietary title 

 to the earth's surface which Mr. Henry George has selected as the 

 proper one. They simply set it aside as inconvenient. But, what- 

 ever elemental title human beings may have to the use of the 

 earth's surface as human beings, the railway company holds its 

 title to its right of way by both alienation and use. It has pur- 

 chased, but can only enjoy, so long as it serves the public. It is 

 a public trust for a public convenience only. From the moment it 

 ceases to serve the public and the public convenience, its fran- 

 chises, its titles, its real estates lapse ; and every court in Christ- 

 endom has so decreed and maintained. If Mr. George's system 

 of common proprietorship in real property were law to-day, he 

 could not divest a railway company so long as it performed its 

 functions. And yet it is over this industry, chartered only for 

 the public facility — and simply because under and by reason of 

 the immense convenience of that facility it requires enormous 

 capitalizations and creates immense debts — that the politician 

 squats, and the anarchist howls, and the communist grinds his 

 teeth. 



