84 PETER S. GROSSCUP 



consolidation was thought both impracticable and unwise. 

 Laws were passed to forbid it. Public opinion was against 

 it. But one day, under a hailstorm of public anathema, a 

 hand reached out and, gathering up the local roads, joined 

 them in a single road reaching from the sea to the lakes. Then 

 the idea took root elsewhere. One by one the roads were con- 

 solidated, the shortest lines becoming the trunks and the ad- 

 jacent lines the branches; until, as they exist now, a single 

 railroad carries us from Chicago to New York, another from 

 Chicago to New Orleans, others from Chicago to every point 

 on the Pacific Coast; and at rates, both for passengers and 

 freight, less than are charged by any railroads in the world. 

 Who of this generation would now go back to the railroads of 

 our fathers? Who, except the irresponsible agitator, stops to 

 question even the private fortunes picked up in the process 

 of consolidation? Who, indeed, looks upon the railroad sys- 

 tem, thus consolidated, as other than the normal state of such 

 affairs — the necessary and beneficial outcome of railroad 

 evolution? 



This is a specific instance, but, wherever we turn, in the 

 survey of development under economic law, it will be found 

 that mankind has always been helped. There are men now 

 living who were alive when the Duke of Wellington was the 

 first citizen of the world. They have lived through the in- 

 dividual changes, many of them bitterly opposed, out of 

 which have come the present day conveniences of life-— con- 

 veniences that in the matter of substantial comfort give to 

 the well paid American workman more than the Duke him- 

 self possessed. The Duke had finer mahogany and better 

 plate; but the breakfast table of the American has fruits and 

 cereals, meats and coffees, that all the ships of England could 

 not have gathered for her great soldier. The Duke had robes 

 and sashes such as the American perhaps has never seen, but 

 in the quality that gives comfort the Sunday suit of the Amer- 

 ican surpasses any clothes the Duke put on. The Duke had 

 all England to choose from in the selection of his dwelling. 

 He built it in a public park— a park free alike to the eyes and 

 feet of the commonest Englishman— a park not surpassing 

 in beauty those of a hundred cities in America; not the equal 



