Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/603

Rh Why, say's Mr. Hudson, with admirable circumferentiality, from the domination of railways. Clearly we must get this kernel out of Mr. Hudson's crop if we are to proceed with him any further: and to dispose of it may require a moment or two of our attention.

The greatest of powers, undoubtedly, is the human brain; and, so long as it is the instinct of man to scheme for his own aggrandizement, certainly the greatest brain will scheme to the greatest profit to himself. A dozen men in the United States have been able to amass, from management (or, if the word is preferred, manipulation) of the railway systems of the country, the largest single fortunes known to history: not in land, in interests in estimated wealth, but in actual comfortable, convertible cash, representing no manual labor of their own, no commensurate investment of capital, and no proportional benefit to the race. But, because Mr. Hudson is virtuous, are there to be no more cakes and ale? Because Mr. Gould is very rich, are there to be no more railway companies? Because these dozen fortunes are beyond any heretofore conceived relation of reward for personal industry, is the material by manipulation of which they have been accumulated, noxious, bad in itself, and dangerous to the common weal? These fortunes are, for our present purpose, the pure result of brain-labor, the rewards of pure thought. Let us leave out of the reckoning whether they are honest or dishonest fortunes; or, if Mr. Hudson prefers, let us concede them to be dishonest. The fact, the only fact, necessary to the discussion of his own questions on his own ground is that they have been accumulated by the purchase, manipulation, and operation of railways. The people make the laws, not the railroads. To argue that railroads, quoad railroads, are hateful to public policy, dangerous to the public peace, threatening to public morals, and destined in time to destroy the commonwealth, as private luxury once destroyed old Rome, seems to me the simple fallacy which logicians call an "undistributed middle." As well condemn any other thing because at some time something of its species has been manipulated to a personal and exorbitant profit. Banish corn, wheat, or coal, because great "corners" have been planned in those staples, and hundreds of thousands of consumers obliged to pay more than they ought to have paid, when a few schemers, who had schemed for months, had suddenly sprung upon these unsuspecting thousands their long-perfected plans!

Shakespeare makes one of his characters put the question, "How do men live? "and another answers it: "Marry, as the fishes in the sea, the big ones eat up the little ones." The struggle for existence which our brute ancestors carried on with teeth and claws and fangs, we still perpetuate with interlocked and grappling brains. They strove and tore and trampled each other for the food their bellies craved, in specie; we fight for values instead. But the result is the same: the strongest brain, as once the strongest limb, wins. And when, as within