336 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY. 



panics wliicli bas produced the Interstate Commerce law, lies uncon- 

 Bciously far deeper than that. It lies in the fact that the laws of trade 

 invariably select the same points for trade-centers that Nature herself 

 bas first selected. New York, Boston, Baltimore, New Orleans, San 

 Francisco were trade-centers before railroads were devised. When a 

 trade-center was wanted on Lake Michigan, Chicago was selected, not 

 by men, but by the force of natural laws. What the capitalists called 

 a " swamp," and so avoided, was really a business plain. Sand drifted 

 in, and built a bar before Michigan City ; at certain other lake points 

 the bluff, crumbling constantly into the lake, imperiled the harbors ; 

 other natural causes worked away at others. The cosmic forces were 

 at work in favor of Chicago, and Chicago was elected trade-center of 

 the majestic West. In other words, it is simply because it can not 

 dispense with the discriminations of Nature that the people are dis- 

 appointed with the railway as an institution, and so propose to vent 

 their disappointment by enacting laws bristling with penalties, but no- 

 where promising them protection ; putting their affairs into the hands 

 of non-experts, and calling them to penal and paternal account for 

 every breath they draw. If Senator CuUom seriously believes that 

 the railroads have created the trade-centers of this continent arbitra- 

 rily, let him tell us why every railroad companj'^ in the country is will- 

 ing to spend millions of dollars in order to get into such cities as New 

 York and Chicago ? Could a railroad create a trade-center as easily 

 as Senator Cullom imagines, it would certainly come cheaper to that 

 company to make a trade-center of their own than to buy their way — 

 against every known legal, commercial, political, and geographical ob- 

 stacle — into one already established. 



The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was built by Philadelphia 

 capital ; certainly it did not desire to discriminate against Philadel- 

 phia. If railroads can make trade-centers where they like why did 

 not the Pennsylvania Railroad create a trade-center for itself in its 

 own City of Brotherly Love ? The Lehigh Valley Railroad Company 

 is a loyal Pennsylvania corporation, and its owners are natives there 

 and. to the manor born. Why did not the Lehigh Valley Railroad 

 Company make for itself trade-centers on its own line, where land was 

 cheap, instead of crowding into New York City at one end and into 

 Buffalo at the other, at enormous cost ? The Grand Trunk Railway 

 is a British institution built to foster the interests of Great Britain's 

 greatest colony, at the direct expense of its greatest commercial rival 

 in the world's family of nations — the United States ; why does not 

 the Grand Trunk road make for itself commercial centers at Montreal 

 or Toronto or Hamilton or Ottawa or Windsor ? Why has it spent 

 millions of good honest British gold in buying its way into Chicago 

 at one end and Boston at the other ? If, the moment railways w^ere 

 organized, they set the laws of Nature and of man alike at defiance, 

 and began " to divert trade from its natural channels into artificial 



