Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/198

138, instead of this reform which you seem to think of primary importance, I should be obliged if you would diminish the occasion for appeals, by making your laws such as it is possible for me to know, or, at any rate, such as it is possible for your judges to know; and I should be further obliged if you would give me easier remedies against aggressions, instead of remedies so costly, so deceptive, so dangerous, that I prefer suffering the aggressions in silence. Daily I experience the futility of your system. I start on a journey expecting (foolishly, I admit) that, in conformity with the advertised times, I shall just be able to reach a certain distant town before night; but the train, being an hour late at one of the junctions, I am defeated—am put to the cost of a night spent on the way, and lose half the next day. I paid for a first-class seat that I might have space, comfort, and unobjectionable fellow-travellers; but, stopping at a town where a fair is going on, the guard, on the plea that the third-class carriages are full, thrusts into the compartment more persons than there are places for, who, both by behavior and odor, are repulsive. Thus in two ways I am defrauded. For part of the fraud I have no remedy; and, for the rest, my remedy, doubtful at best, is practically unavailable. Is the reply that, against the alleged breach of contract as to time, the company has guarded itself, or professes to have guarded itself, by disclaiming responsibility? The allowing such a disclaimer is one of your countless negligences. You do not allow me to plead irresponsibility if I give the company bad money, or if, having bought a ticket for the second class, I travel in the first. On my side you regard the contract as quite definite; but, on the other side, you practically allow the contract to remain undefined. And now see the general effects of your carelessness! Scarcely any trains keep their times; and the result of chronic unpunctuality is a multiplication of accidents and loss of life."

"How about laissez-faire? I thought your notion was, that the less Government meddled with these things the better; and now you complain that the law does not secure your comfort in a railway-carriage, and see that you are delivered at your journey's end in due time. I suppose you approved of the proposal made in the House last session, that companies should be compelled to give foot-warmers to second-class passengers."

"Really, you amaze me. I should have thought that not even ordinary intelligence, much less select legislative intelligence, would have fallen into such a confusion. I am not blaming you for failing to secure me comfort or punctuality. I am blaming you for failing to enforce contracts. Just as strongly as I protest against your neglect in letting a company take my money, and then not give me all I paid for, so strongly should I protest did you dictate how much convenience should be given me for so much money. Surely I need not remind you that your civil law in general proceeds on the principle