62 ILLINOIS STATE DMRYMENS ASSOCIATION. 



of the best minds of this country and Europe, not only in regard to the 

 great economic question involved, but because of its relation to the govern- 

 ment itself; and its probable bearing upon the future of the country. A 

 few years ago, a joint commission of the British Parliament, composed of 

 the ablest men of the kingdom, had the whole subject under most elaborate 

 consideration for a long period of time ; and strange as it may seem, about 

 the only conclusion arrived at was that duringtheirforty years of experience 

 their railroad legislation had never accomplished anything which it sought 

 to bring about ; and had never prevented anything it sought to hinder. 

 And a subsequent report comes to the alarming conclusion " That the time 

 was soon coming when the question would have to be decided whether the 

 government would possess the railroads, or the railroads possess the govern- 

 ment." In our own country, we all know how commissions upon commissions 

 liave been raised by our different State Grovernments and reports made 

 thereby, and though we have not accomplished apparently very much, yet 

 I believe great good will be the result of all this thought and investigation, 

 and that in the language of Charles Francis Adams, Jr., one of the railroad 

 commissioners of Massachusetts, " the subject is rapidly being discussed 

 down to certain principles and practical issues, which can be so formulated 

 as to bear directly and successfully on this absorbing subject," and establish 

 the true relation of these vast corporations to the government, and the 

 public ; so all shall act in harmony and as they \^ere designed, for mutual 

 good. 



And here I ought to say that many of our ablest and best railroad 

 managers are themselves keenly alive to this subject, moved by a sense of 

 its importance, not only to their own real interests, but from a consciousness 

 of the higher questions involved, and who I feel confident will, as correct 

 principles of practical application are ascertained, aid in securing or at least 

 assent to such legislation as shall restrain more selfish, reckless, or corrupt 

 operators. I have such an abiding faith, not only in the intelligence of 

 our countrymen, but in their moral sense, as to believe them capable of 

 seeing and ready to sustain the right, so that wrong cannot permanently 

 continue. It is often claimed that these subjects should be left entirely to 

 competition to regulate, and that thence will come all needed reforms, but 

 here again observation and experience prove the very reverse, and upon 

 principle must continue to do so. 



In order to secure safe competition in any business, capital must easily 

 be placed in or removed therefrom, which can never be the case with rail- 

 roads. There capital is fixed and permanent, and a competing line is sure 

 either to be crushed or consolidated, and the public made to sustain the 



