110 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



profits are therefore absorbed by those who control his transportation and 

 who have not the prescience to make their profits from fostering com- 

 merce b}^ h)w rates and increased business. The wisdom of this latter 

 policy may be recognized by comparing the policy of the Baltimore and 

 Ohio road, with that of the New York Central and its connecting roads. 

 Another feature in the agitation for reform in the conduct of our transpor- 

 tation system is that the older and more prominent merchants of this city 

 and of all large cities throughout the United States are many of them 

 antagonistic to any movement looking toward improved transportation 

 facilities. When we come to examine into this anomalous feature, we find 

 that these men were once identified with the welfare of our active com- 

 mercial interests, in which they were at that time prominent, but having 

 accumulated a surplus capital have gone into the railroad business or 

 invested their capital in securities of railways having all the defects we 

 have pointed out, and are now opposed to progress in a direction which 

 would probably depreciate the value of their securities; in short, are now 

 interested in taxing the very commerce with which they were once actively 

 identified, to sustain the abuses of a defective system of transportation. 

 This is, of course, natural, but it does not follow that the merchants, man- 

 ufacturers, and property-owners at the East, and- the entire producing and 

 commercial interests of the West should passively endure these evils with- 

 out eflFort to remedy them. It has been said of stock watering, that where 

 it represents surplus earnings invested in improvements, the stockholders 

 are entitled to such increase in value of their property; but it should be 

 remembered primarily that a railroad is semi-public in its nature; that it 

 is granted certain privileges, among which is the right of eminent domain 

 — the right to take private property against the will of its owner, " because 

 it is for public use" — and therefore it owes some duties to the public, 

 which a private citizen or a manufacturing company does not. Again, 

 most of our railways have been projected and built for the purposes of 

 local development, but having accomplished that object and been largely 

 paid for by local interests, have been unable in their early stages, before a 

 large traffic developed, to pay as an investment, and have passed at low 

 prices into the hands of capitalists, who instead of reducing rates as traffic 

 increased, watered their stock so that public attention might be diverted 

 from their immense profits, and when the commercial and other classes 

 ask for lower rates and demur at the practice of stock watering and other 

 abuses, they claim credit for constructing improved highways with which 

 they had origiuall}^ nothing to do, and that they are entitled to reap the 

 entire benefit resulting from the application of the giant power of steam to 

 the purposes of transportation. Highwaj's are necessarily public in 

 character, and until the application of steam, as noted above, were the 

 exclusive property of the public. Since the discovery of steam, commerce 

 has increased a thousand fold, and as it increased has extended its bound- 

 aries and become dependent upon transportation in even a still greater 

 ratio; indeed, it may be said at this period, transportation is commerce, 



