338 RAILROAD LEGISLATION AND INVESTIGATION IN WISCONSIN. 



ural law is not certainty operative. There is neither freedom of 

 means nor of forces. A road once built cannot be placed in any 

 market the company pleases and compete for freight, as the manu 

 facturer can compete for his raw material, or the merchant vessel for 

 a cargo. It can only offer its facilities and bide its time. Should 

 no rival spring up to contest the field, it can command the produce 

 of the section of country tributary to it, on its own terms, so that it 

 leaves barely margin of profit enough to the producer and dealer to 

 induce production and delivery. And if, by-and-by, a rival line 

 should be established, and the traffic should be less than equal to 

 the carrying capacity of both, the two are almost sure, after fruit 

 less efforts to drive each other from the field, to form a combina 

 tion, agreeing either to demand equal rates, agreed upon, or to 

 &quot;pool&quot; their earnings. 



This point having been reached, the public have no ground of 

 hope, except in the possibility of a falling out of the companies, 

 and a renewal of the competition which gave origin to the compact. 

 For the companies themselves, there seems, in most cases, to be no 

 safety but in a still closer union, under an act of consolidation from 

 which there is no breaking away. 



The controversy, then, is irrepressible, if the reliance is upon 

 economical laws alone; being a conflict between the necessities of 

 society on the one hand, and the natural selfishness of strong mo 

 nopolies on the other. 



We will now consider other difficulties and evils of railway con 

 struction and management. To make the matter worse, the roads 

 are often so constructed, and railway transportation so managed, as 

 to almost compel heavy exactions on the part of the railway com 

 panies, and lead to dissatisfaction and condemnation on the part of 

 the public. An overshadowing evil attendant upon railway con 

 struction and operation is the fact that all railway enterprise is the 

 result of individual interest and purpose, subject to no harmonizing 

 general control. To avoid inconvenieuce and losses, consequent 

 upon discordant management, the companies themselves are impelled 

 to consolidation by a constant law of self-interest, which the public 

 have regarded with hostility and distrust. The result must and 

 should be an appreciation of the fact that the true interest of the 

 public, as well as of the corporations, lies in the direction of better 

 organized and less discordant expenditure of energy and capital, 

 and in the adoption of more comprehensive principles of legislation 

 to that end. The facts ought to be realized not only that discrimi 

 nations by exorbitant charges upon one locality at the expense of 

 another, is an evil to be discouraged, but also that legislation dis 

 couraging investment by encouraging ruinous competition is equally 

 to be deplored. 



Prominent among these evils is the primary one of unwarrantable 

 cost. A road having been built as economically as possible, no 

 one can reasonably make complaint of charges that yield only a 

 moderate per cent, of profit on the investment. Indeed, the public 

 are willing that they who put their money into railways should have 

 a very liberal profit, since it is attended with more risk than is the 

 investment of money in many other ways. But if a road has cost 



