Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/705

 REVIEWS 689

tions which have occasionally been made by a few of our magnates, from whose arsenal Mr. Meyer secured his weapons. Professor Meyer passes in silence over the proof, brought forward time and time again in parliament and elsewhere, how greatly these charges have been exrytferated. Altho '^h otherwise apparent y a diligent reader of the Archiv fiir Eisenbahnwesen, Professor Meyer has seen fit utterly to disregard the article published in the January number of the preceding year, on the development of the freight tariffs of the Prussian-Hessian state railways, in which these very questions were treated with great thoroughness, supported by a wealth of illustrative material.

These, in the main, are the arguments by means of which Professor Meyer attempts to prove the premises set forth in the opening chapter of his book. They are directed less against the tariffs than against the system of state railways as such. The author seems to occupy an entirely different viewpoint from ours, and it would be entirely superfluous were I in this place to take up with him the discussion of the question of the justification of the state railway system in Germany. For a long time there has been no difference of opinion in Germany that a state railway system deserves the preference over private railway systems. Professor Meyer apparently cannot realize that it is the duty of the state to administer the great monopolies of transportation as a unified system in accordance with the principle of the welfare of the great masses. The professor continually moves about in contradictions, declaring on one page that the state can make tariffs only with the yard-stick, and on the next criticising it for making certain excep- tions. He also confuses his readers continually by rehearsing the difficulties which are encountered in adjusting certain tariffs in such a manner that they will be beneficial on the one hand, and not injurious on the other, and then carefully omitting to tell how the state has succeeded, in nearly every case cited by him, in arriving at a satisfactory solution to be sure, only after a very careful investigation of all the circumstances entering into the situation. And whether this method of procedure, which may sometimes be a little tedious, deserves the preference over the practice obtaining in America, according to which the great railways judge economic questions chiefly by their own subjective estimates, and from the viewpoint of their own interest or that of favored shippers, is a matter with respect to which no German and, I am convinced, not all American traffic men are in the least m doubt.