ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN’S ASSOCIATION. 
61 
dividends becoming large, instead of making a just reduction to the public 
in rates, the stock is doubled or largely increased, upon which dividends 
are demanded ; and then if times change, business declines, and dividends 
aie reduced, it is proclaimed that railroads are a bad investment and do not 
pay. Take for example a railroad with a nominal capital basis of sixty or 
eighty thousand dollars per mile, which could be constructed and equipped 
for half the sum in money fairly expended, is it right in equity that the 
public should be compelled perpetually to pay dividends on the larger sum ? 
For instance, the New \ork Central Railroad is said to have had, through 
the watering process, a capital basis of more than twice its actual cost when 
Commodore Vanderbilt obtained possession of it, and all know how he 
added eight millions thereto from accumulated profits over dividends, which 
was an amount legally perhaps, but not justly extorted from the public ; and 
now it is expected that dividends will be ’perpetually paid on such a basis. 
Though there may be no legal remedy, yet is there any justice in this ? 
Our express companies are also drawing dividends to an enormous amount 
on a like false basis. Now is there never to be any remedy for such 
inequities ? Are we forever to pay many millions on purely imaginary 
capital, merely because certain men were granted privileges based upon the 
principle of mutual and equal benefit ? These are serious questions, demand¬ 
ing not wild passionate action, not action outside the law and in violation 
of just rights, but of calm, earnest discussion and consideration; not to be 
put down by the mere outcry of vested rights—which are rather clearly 
vested wrongs if vested at all. They may be legal, but surely not based 
on any principle of reciprocal justice. But again I assume, not only that 
compensation should equitably be only upon a fair amount of capital, fairly 
invested, but that that capital should be fairly and economically managed. 
What right has one corporation to ask the public to make good its 
losses arising from its own wrong, its incompetent or corrupt management, 
more than another, a railroad more than a manufacturing company, or an 
individual ? Should not the loss justly fall upon the negligent stockholders ? 
What would be thought of an individual or a bank that sought thus to 
recoup for such losses ? 
Now we all know how much more easy it is to criticise than to do 
better, to point out a wrong than to correct it, or even to show how it can 
be corrected. And here, when we attempt to show how these necessities 
of the public are to be secured and wrongs righted, we encounter these 
difficulties in their fullest force. 
For years this railroad question has engaged the most careful attention 
