CHAPTER III. 



THE FARMER AND THE RAILROADS. 



THE measure of profit to be derived from a study of a 

 few problems in transportation will depend largely 

 upon the degree in which the reader succeeds in for- 

 getting all that he has read upon the subject in the partisan 

 press, and in banishing from his mind the prejudices arising 

 from heated controversy. This will be quite difficult to 

 readers in new and sparsely-settled districts, whose products 

 must be transported over long lines of railroad constructed by 

 speculative methods. Under such circumstances the owners 

 of the roads will be engaged in constant struggles — usually 

 unavailing — to extort from an inadequate traffic a revenue to 

 pay interest upon an inflated capitalization. The railroads 

 thus situated will represent the dominant money power of the 

 state, and the money force will be relentlessly applied to pro- 

 mote the ends of the management. The railroads will be 

 constant applicants for legislative action or non-action, and 

 what they seek will be sometimes proper and sometimes 

 improper. In either case they will be in a very difficult 

 position. To all Legislatures the people will send a certain 

 number of members, who will not, if they can help it, permit 

 any bill desired by any financial interest to become a law 

 unless they themselves derive from it some personal profit. 

 For this condition of affairs the people alone are to blame. 

 The railroads have to deal with it. There is a widespread 

 opinion that railroads desire to see corrupt men in Legislatures. 

 This is not true. While I have no personal acquaintance 

 with railroad political management, yet my opportunities for 

 observation of other financial interests have been such as to 

 warrant the unequivocal statement that all men who are in 

 charge of great enterprises know it to be to their interest that 

 Legislatures and municipal councils should be incorruptible. 



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