THE FARMER, THE INVESTOR AND THE RAILWAY. 49 



are infinitely less intimate and with the services of which the public could dispense 

 without serious results. 



The railway and the bank each perform functions that the State might; yet the 

 bank alone is held to the most rigid discharge of its duties, a nia.\imum fixed for its rates 

 of toll, the amount it shall loan any one party, and the kind of security determined as 

 well as the amount of its reserve fund, its books and assets at all times subject to inspec- 

 tion without notice, no share issued until paid for in full, the payment of unearned divi- 

 dends made a penal offense and breaches of trust punislied in an exemplary manner. 



Can there be any sufficient reason why the railway corporation, with infinitely 

 greater power and privileges, performing functions a thousand times more important, and 

 directly afltecting a hundred persons for one affected by bank administration, should not 

 be subjected to control quite .is stringent and quite as far-reaching? 



Shares and bonds being the basis of tolls, sliould a railway company be permitted 

 to issue share or bond until its par value in actual money has been covered into the cor- 

 porate treasury? 



Should the basis of tolls be laid until it lias been shown that a proposed line is nec- 

 essary to public convenience and will make fair returns on its cost? 



Should a railway companj' be permitted to collect tolls until it has shown theexact 

 cost of the instrument of transportation? 



Should it not be a penal offense for a railway official to pay an unearned dividend? 



Should not railway accounts, stock and bond ledgers and assets be subjected to like 

 inspection as those of national banks? 



Would not rate wars cease were railways, once having reduced rates, debarred from 

 ever again advancing them without governmental permission? 



Should not railway companies be taxed on their capitalization as shown in issues 

 of bonds and shares? 



Should not railways be appraised at present cash value, and earnings from all 

 sources, be limited to what would afford a given maximum return on such appraisal? 



Or should the nation assume the ownership and operate the railways through a 

 non-partisan commission, as the Province of Victoria, Australia, has shown to be both 

 practical and economical? 



There is no longer any question as to the power of the nation to control these great 

 arteries of trade, nor is there outside a limited circle, any question as to the necessity of 

 such control, and it but remains for the lawgivers to formulate such statutes as will pro- 

 tect user and investor, both of whom are at the mercy of a small body of men who can 

 and do make andmar the fortunesof individuals, cities and States withoutlet or hindrance 



^SHOULD THE NATION OWN THE RAILW.-VY? 



When the paper published in the February Arena, entitled "The Farmer, the In- 

 vestor and the Railway," was written the writer was not ready to accept national owner- 

 ship as a solution of the railway problem, but the occurrences attending the flurries of 

 last Autumn in the money markets, when half a dozen men, in order to obtain control of 

 certain railways, entered into a conspiracy that came near wrecking the entire industrial 

 and commercial interests of the country, having shed a lurid light upon the enormous 

 and baleful power which the corporate control of the railways places in the hands of 

 what Theodore Roosevelt aptly termed '-the dangerous wealthy classes," has had the 

 effect of converting to the advocacy of national ownership, not only the writer, but vast 

 numbers of conservative people of the Central, Western and Southern States, to whom 

 •First published in the Arena July and August, 1891. 



