THE TEXAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
[ANNUAL, ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT.] 
t 
REGULATION OF THE ISSUANCE OF TEXAS RAIL- 
ROAD SECURITIES BY THE STATE GOVERNMENT. 
E. A. THOMPSON, 0. E. 
Chief Engineer Railroad Commission of Texas. 
Mr. James J. Hill, President of the Great Northern Railway, in an 
address delivered recently before the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association, 
said: “Next to the Christian religion and the common schools, no other 
single work enters into the welfare and happiness of the people of the 
whole country to the same extent as the railway.” Such an expression 
coming from one of the leading railroad men of the country and one of 
the foremost spirits of the financial world, renews the earnest attention 
of the people to those great highways of commerce, the railroads, and to 
their important influence on the public economy, and lends deeper signifi- 
cance to the question of their proper regulation and control by the gov- 
ernment, and to the maintenance of a correct relation between them and 
their patrons. 
While it is a well recognized fact that this country owes more to its 
railroads, as a factor in increasing its wealth and population, than to 
perhaps all other agencies combined, it has also become an established 
principle that laws must prevail and be enforced, subjecting them to gov- 
ernmental control and regulation, in order that the people may be justly 
and economically served, without discrimination as to individual or 
place, and in order that they may not imperil and dominate in their 
might the power that gave them being and under whose protecting care 
they have thrived so prosperously. 
Leading up to a consideration of the subject of governmental regula- 
tion of railroad securities as pertains to Texas in particular, it will be 
not inappropriate to briefly discuss the general conditions that obtained 
in the United States prior to the enactment of any railroad legislation 
in this State, and to review the relations then existing between the rail- 
Made before the Texas Academy of Science at Austin, Texas, October 24, 1902. 
