PRACTICAL PAPERS. 
2 99 
the West are very low, as compared with what they are on the 
seaboard or in Europe, it affords strong presumptive evidence, 
though not positive proof, that some parties in production are be¬ 
ing overpaid for the service which they render. To adjust this 
difficulty is not so easy. If conditions were favorable, it would 
adjust itself. Of one thing we may rest assured, free and perfect 
■competition in all directions is not afforded, or this state of things 
would not long exist Those who control the facilities for trans¬ 
portation have an artificial monopoly of the market in them. They 
are practically masters of the situation, and are enabled to fix the 
, price of their services at just such figures as will secure to them 
the highest possible gross returns. The opportunities for combi¬ 
nations and consolidation, which are now afforded to railroads, 
seem to preclude, almost absolutely, the idea of healthy competi¬ 
tion. The class of railroad middlemen against whom immediate 
complaint is urged, is.not the great body of stockholders, but few 
of whom receive a respectable dividend upon their means invested, 
but the so-called transportation lines—the “ wheel within a wheel.” 
It is alleged that these monster freight lines have been permitted 
to plant themselves in the very gateways of commerce, and to bid 
defiance to the natural laws of traffic—that for some unaccount¬ 
able reason, they are allowed not only to fleece the farmer, but al¬ 
so the mass of stockholders themselves, and to fatten upon the in¬ 
dustries which the railroads were created to foster. These are 
serious charges, and ought not to be hastily made, but if substan¬ 
tiated, they call for immediate and searching remedies. If they 
be true, it looks very much as though some controlling parties some¬ 
where were interested in these abuses, and the fact that the private 
fortunes of a few railroad kings are annually enriched by millions 
goes far to justify suspicion. 
Eailroads at this day are too valuable an enginery in produc¬ 
tion to be perverted from their true ends and purposes. The peo¬ 
ple never chartered the right to any man or company of men to 
so dispose of the use of these great thoroughfares as to defeat the 
very object for which they were constructed. There is no regu¬ 
lating influence which everywhere and always will secure to the 
different parties in production a share in the returns exactly pro¬ 
portioned to the service rendered. Government is powerless to do 
