GENERAL CONCLUSIONS. 345 



THE EAILEOAD SIDE OF THE QUESTION. 



Having thus dwelt at considerable length on the evils of railway 

 management, it is essential to a just consideration of the measures 

 to be employed for their correction, that we should recur for a mo 

 ment to the very important part railroads have played in promoting 

 the industrial, social and political progress of the world. 



To present in detail the beneficial results of railways is of course 

 impossible. They are at once innumerable and immeasurable. 

 Nor is it possible to make a summary that will convey an adequate 

 general conception of the benefits they have conferred. 



Having mileage enough for a continuous track six times around 

 the entire globe; moving annually a tonnage of some twenty thou 

 sand million dollars in value, the passengers scarcely less in number 

 than the population of the whole earth; stimulating the productive 

 forces of industry everywhere; rendering easy many otherwise im 

 possible exchanges of products between different countries; lead 

 ing io commercial treaties which else had not been effected for gen 

 erations to come; promoting social as well as business relations be 

 tween widely separated communities; binding together as a homoge 

 neous people, the inhabitants of remote and unlike divisions of a 

 common country; encouraging friendly intercourse between the peo 

 ple of many lands; and so helping to establish a brotherhood of the 

 nations, the railway is everywhere justly regarded as being fore 

 most among civilizing agencies. 



For these reasons it is believed that there is but little danger that 

 the $6,000,000,000 of capital said to be invested in railways will be 

 sacrificed, or that the people of any country will knowingly cripple 

 this immensely important interest. 



The problem to be solved simply stated, is this: how to devise a 

 system of control in the interest of the public, that will, at the 

 same time, be entirely just to the railway corporations? 



From the survey of the history of railroading in the United States, 

 and in foreign countries, the Wisconsin Eailroad Commissioners 

 report the following general conclusions as unavoidable. 



1. That the public character of railways is fully established. 



One form of argument in high quarters against the exercise of 

 public supervision, is embraced in the proposition that corporations 

 have transportation to sell, and the purchase of the article, or privi 

 lege so offered, like that of all other commodities in market, is at the 

 option of the purchaser. But the conditions of sale in this case 

 come under none of the ordinary conditions of human traffic. The 

 original right to construct and operate a railway is an emanation of 

 sovereignty, grounded on public considerations, and having explicit 

 reference to public, as well as private use and profit. The question 

 of power is already substantially and fortunately settled as to our 

 own State. The subsidiary question of the necessity and propriety 

 of judiciously exercising that power when possessed, is equally 

 settled in the opinion of the civilized world. We know of no gov 

 ernment in Europe which has not already exercised this power, not 

 with reference to the special ends of arbitrary government, but with 

 the purpose of defending the people from the encroachments of con 

 solidated wealth, manifest in the form of corporate monopoly. 



