Page:Challenge of Facts and Other Essays.djvu/200

Rh often raise questions in which there is no simple "justice" — the competing lines may not be subject to the same legislative regulations. A country three thousand miles in extent is not much troubled by the extra prejudice which is imported into the question of long and short haul when it seems to include favor to foreigners at the expense of citizens; but if there is anything real in the latter grievance it is difficult to see why it should not also exist in a concealed form here. Finally, it cannot be forgotten that the railroad issue includes the question as to how those who have contributed the capital to build the road are to obtain their remuneration. If the state undertakes to regulate all the rest, it will see itself forced at last to regulate this also. Hitherto the stock-holders have been left to get their remuneration out of their own enterprise if they could; if they could not, they have been left to make the best of it. If, however, the state interferes with the whole management of their enterprise, how will it at last escape the justice of the demand that it compensate them or secure them a return on their investment?

In the present state of the case it behooves us to remember that, in the varying phases of the industrial world of our time, first one interest gets a chance and then another; it is not in human wit to stand over this system and correct or adjust it so as to offset all the special combinations of industrial advantage and disadvantage. It is no question whether we like living in an age of steam or not; the steam-engine was invented in the course of time, just when all the antecedents which were necessary for it had been provided; it has come to stay and we must learn to live with it. We have sung a great many paeans over it, but it may be doubted whether we have found out yet what an uncomfortable