June 18, 1886.] 



SCIENCE. 



579 



doctrine in question is the basis of every system of 

 logic in existence, and necessarily so. 



Jevons was perhaps a little too apt to present 

 his thoughts to the public before he had given 

 them time to mature, and hence some of his theo- 

 ries are crude and but half worked out. Indeed, 

 he seems in some cases to have been aware of this 

 himself ; for he writes to one of his correspondents 

 about the ' Principles of science,' in the following 

 terms : "To the want of a psychological analysis 

 of the basis of reasoning I plead guilty. ... No 

 doubt, to a considerable extent I have avoided the 

 true difficulties of the subject ; but this does not 

 preclude me from attempting to remedy the defect 

 at some future time, if I live long enough, and can 

 feel that I see my way to a more settled state of 

 opinion" (p. 322). But, unfortunately for him 

 and for us, he did not live long enough to finish 

 this and other tasks that he had projected ; and it 

 is sad to think how much the world may have lost 

 by the death, at the age of forty-six, of a man of 

 such freshness of thought, and courage of opinion, 

 as Jevons undoubtedly showed. 



THE RAILWAYS AND THE REPUBLIC. 



Can competition be so arranged as to prevent 

 the more serious abuses of railroad power? Can 

 it be made to apply to railroads as it does to most 

 other lines of business ? Fifty years' experience 

 has seemed to show that it cannot. Mr. Hudson 

 believes that it can ; and he makes out a case 

 which will appear plausible to those who are not 

 in a position to understand the practical difficul- 

 ties involved in his project. 



Each year's history shows that under our ex- 

 isting system — or want of system — railroad 

 managers wield an irresponsible power, dangerous 

 alike to shippers and to the government. By 

 arbitrary differences in charge they can ruin the 

 business of individuals ; by political corruption 

 they can often thwart all attempts at government 

 control. The history of the Standard oil company, 

 which Mr. Hudson tells extremely well, furnishes 

 an instance of both these things. The railroads 

 made a series of contracts with the company to 

 do its business at much lower rates than they 

 would give to any one else ; while the railroads 

 and the company together were able to set at 

 nought the plainest principles of common law, to 

 defy legislative investigation, and laugh at state 

 authority itself. 



What is to be done under these circumstances? 

 This is the question to which Mr. Hudson addresses 

 himself. He does not fall into the extreme of 



The railicays and the republic. By James F. Hudson. 

 New York, Harper, 1886. 8°. 



advocating state ownership. He has too strong a 

 sense of the dangers of government management 

 to believe that political corruption could be 

 avoided, or enlightened economy secured, by a 

 measure like this. Admitting, then, that railways 

 are to remain under private ownership, how are 

 their abuses to be brought under control? Almost 

 every writer has his own notion on the subject, 

 and his own individual shade of opinion ; but we 

 may group them under three main heads : — 



1. There is one class of writers who insist that 

 things are well enough as they are ; who say that 

 the reduction in rates under our present system 

 has been so great, and the development of the 

 country so rapid, as to outweigh any incidental 

 evils which may exist. They say that the most 

 we can possibly think of doing is to prohibit a 

 few of the worst abuses, and perhaps secure a 

 very .moderate amount of publicity ; and that 

 other things will take care of themselves. This 

 is the position of writer's like Stuart Patterson or 

 Gerritt Lansing. 



2. Many of the more enlightened railroad men, 

 like Albert Fink, G. R. Blanchard, or Charles 

 Francis Adams, jun., do not deny the existence 

 of most serious evils ; but they attribute them to 

 unrestricted competition, which favors competing 

 points at the expense of local points, or places 

 solvent roads at the mercy of bankrupt ones. 

 They favor legalizing pools, and limiting the 

 irresponsible construction of new roads, and think 

 that the public interest would be best served by a 

 responsible combination of railroads, with a com- 

 mission to see that the interests of the shippers 

 were not neglected. 



3. On the other hand, Mr. Hudson insists that 

 we have, not too much competition, but too little ; 

 that the abuses incident to its partial and irregu- 

 lar working can be best avoided by enabling it to 

 act everywhere instead of nowhere. This he 

 proposes to do by allowing others besides the rail- 

 way company to use the track, on payment of a 

 just and reasonable toll. He argues strongly to 

 prove that this plan is not merely equitable, but 

 practicable, and that each of the other positions 

 is wrong, both in fact and in morals. 



He has no difficulty in breaking down the 

 arguments of the first group. The men who in- 

 sist that railroad management is a private busi- 

 ness, with which there should be no interference, 

 and that all is well enough as it is, are every day 

 becoming fewer. The really difficult conflict is 

 against ;those who admit the evils, but who say 

 that the remedy is to be found in well-controlled 

 combination rather than uncontrolled competition. 

 Mr. Hudson insists that combinations perpetrate 

 outrages which individual roads could not perpe- 



