THE POLITICAL CONTROL OF RAILWAYS. 465 



Altogether, the railroad company seems to be in the position 

 of Mr. Dow's Calvinist : 



" You can and you can't, 

 You will and you won't ; 

 You'll be damned if you do, 

 And be damned if you don't ! " 



Twoscore of boards, framed by consent of local politicians, shont : 

 " You railways must operate your trains. You must incur such 

 bills as we Railway and Interstate Commissioners impose upon 

 you, and do just as we say in everything ; but you can not collect 

 for your services the wherewithal to pay bills, except at such 

 figures as we see fit to permit you to make. We know nothing 

 about railroading. We are only Republicans, or Democrats, or 

 Prohibitionists, or Women's-Righters. But do as we say ; and if, 

 in the doing of it, you kill anybody, or maim anybody, or if we 

 hear of any defaults in payment of fixed charges, look not to us 

 for loving-kindness ! " This was Portia's idea of mercy to poor 

 Shylock. And let us admit, for argument's sake (or concede it as 

 certain, for that matter), that the railway company is a Shylock, 

 compelled by law to exact the last penny to which it is entitled. 

 " Cut out your pound of flesh," says Portia ; " the court awards it 

 and the law doth give it. But if, in the cutting, you take more or 

 less, by the estimation of a single hair, than just one pound, then 

 your goods are confiscate and your life itself is forfeit to the state " 

 — and in so saying, the divine Portia (who had already admitted 

 that the Jew asked nothing but justice, and was entitled to judg- 

 ment at every point in his favor) was a by no means unfair proto- 

 type of the modern American Legislature, which first charters rail- 

 way companies to exercise certain and stated functions, and then 

 exercises them itself, leaving to the unhappy railway companies 

 nothing but the responsibility and the punishment for its own blun- 

 ders. Under the circumstances, is it to be wondered at that, very 

 recently, a certain worm did, in some sort, turn ? — that a certain 

 railway company in the distant West, on being commanded by the 

 Iowa Board of Railway Commissioners to turn in to them a state- 

 ment of the value of its plant, replied that its plant was worth 

 considerably less than before the commissioners began to make 

 rules and regulations ; that it would continue to depreciate as long 

 as the commissioners kept on making them ; that any estimate 

 as to the aforesaid value would be mere guess-wor]i ; and that the 

 only certainty possible in the matter was that enough rules and 

 regulations from the honorable commissioners would ultimately 

 deprive railway plants in their jurisdiction of any value what- 

 ever ! 



There are a few things left which a railway company may 

 do. It may, by a late decision of the Interstate Commission, issue 



VOL. XXXIT. 30 



