Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/521

Rh such foreign enterprises; while, in the third class, the State and community, as a consideration for the privilege allowed, receive a benefit which is general and permanent. Without such 'special rates,' few of these enterprises could be made profitable, and the most of them would have to be abandoned. We state these facts, for such they are, and not for the purpose of entering into any argument or defense of the system. We found such 'special rates' existing between the railroad companies and these 'industrial enterprises' in the State at the time we entered upon our duties, and many have been made between them since that time. We have examined these 'special rates' very generally and particularly. The railroad companies have furnished them to us for this purpose. We think that in general they are such as are well calculated to develop and build up these 'industrial enterprises.' We have examined them for the purpose of ascertaining whether there was in any of them any 'unjust discrimination,' in favor of any and against others of these 'industrial enterprises,' and thus far we have discovered nothing that can be fairly construed to come within this category. These 'special rates' are, of course, as various as the different kinds of business to which they relate. We have notified the railroad companies that, under the statute, they have the right to make any such 'special rates' of this character as may be agreed upon by them and any of these 'industrial enterprises' in favor of one and against another, and they have all uniformly adopted the same view of this matter. They are matters of contract in every instance, and therefore are not in such shape that they can be tabulated in this report." The number of these pages might be indefinitely increased by additional quotations from the experience of Europe and America, illustrating the beneficial operation of the principle of discrimination between things in determining the rates of transportation. But enough has been said to show that the principle is based upon commercial necessity, and that under the operation of any other rule the railroad would fall far short alike of achieving its greatest usefulness to its patrons, and of yielding the largest profit to its proprietors.



T is a well-known fact that the influence of a strange climate upon the emigrant, however little the new medium may differ from the mother-country in more or less essential qualities, exhibits itself at first in a kind of recrudescence of vigor, which, however, in a very