WATER ROUTES CHEAPEST. 335 



eluding the compensation paid to officers, agents, and employees of 

 the company. 3. The amount of stock and bonds issued, the price 

 at which they were sold, and the disposition made of the funds from 

 said sale. 4. The amount and value of commodities transported 

 during the year, as nearly as the same can be ascertained. 



8. Though the existence of the Federal power to regulate com 

 merce to the extent maintained in this report, is believed to be 

 essential to the maintenance of perfect equality among the States as 

 to commercial rights; to the prevention of unjust and invidious dis 

 tinctions which local jealousies or interests might be disposed to in 

 troduce, to the proper restraints of consolidated corporate power, 

 and to the correction of many of its existing evils, your committee 

 are unanimously of the opinion that the problem of cheap trans 

 portation is to be solved through competition, as hereinafter stated, 

 rather than by direct congressional regulation of existing lines. 



9. Competition, which is to secure and maintain cheap transpor 

 tation, must embrace two essential conditions: First It must be 

 controlled by a power with which combination will be impossible. 

 Second It must operate through cheaper and more ample channels 

 of commerce than are now provided. 



10. Railway competition, when regulated by its own laws, will not 

 effect the object; because it exists only to a very limited extent in cer 

 tain localities, it is always unreliable and inefficient, and it invariably 

 ends in combination. Hence, additional railway lines, under the 

 control of private corporations, will afford no substantial relief, be 

 cause self-interest will inevitably lead them into combination with 

 existing lines. 



11. The only means of securing and maintaining reliable and effec 

 tive competition between railways is through national or State owner 

 ship, or control of one or more lines, which, being unable to enter 

 into combinations, will serve as regulators of other lines. 



12. One or more double- track freight railways, honestly and 

 thoroughly constructed, owned and controlled by the Government, 

 and operated at a low rate of speed, w r ould doubtless be able to 

 carry at a much less cost than can be under the present system of 

 operating fast and slow trains on the same road, and, being incapa 

 ble of entering into combinations, would, no doubt, serve as a very 

 valuable regulator of all existing railroads within the range of their 

 influences. 



13. The uniform testimony deduced from practical results in this 

 country, and throughout the commercial world, is, that water routes, 

 when properly located, not only afford the cheapest and best known 

 means of transport for all heavy, bulky, and cheap commodities, but 

 that they are also the natural competitors, and most effective regula 

 tors of railway transportation. 



