Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/161

Rh for the long than the short haul, we must primarily assume the two propositions: first, that the public are not at liberty to use any other means of transportation than the railways; and, second, that there is no such thing as competition. Does Mr. Hudson desire us to accept these propositions, or think that he has established them? What else does he mean by such a paragraph as this (page 40): "While the force of competition causes the railways to accept moderate or even narrow profits on the Western grain-traffic, the absence of that force allows them to collect what, by comparison, are shown to be exorbitant profits on the grain shipped by the farmers of the Eastern or Middle States." As a matter of fact, the figures actually show that it is combination, not competition, which has reduced the rates charged by the enemies of the republic and forced them to "accept moderate or even narrow profits." Surely, Mr. Hudson does not wish us to believe him guilty of catering to the general public by misstatements of fact in cases with which, from the least apparent foothold for grievance, he assumes such fluent familiarity. And yet, what else can we conclude from his retort to Mr. Fink's calm statement before the Senate Committee on Railroads in 1883, to the general effect above stated (viz., that geographical and not arbitrary conditions controlled pool-rates) in which he happens to mention Winona (using that town, as we have used Denver or Salt Lake City above, as an instance of a "short-haul" point)? "Why," says Mr. Hudson (page 161), "the road, if built for Winona, should have stopped at that place and given its exclusive attention to the transportation interests of that town." And, if this could be exceeded in artless incapacity, he meets Mr. Alexander's statement (page 162) that "no railway has ever raised its local charges to meet the loss caused by lowering its through rates," by the following: "When railway rates have been reduced fifty per cent on through traffic within the last ten years, and local rates have virtually remained unchanged, the burden of the local shippers has been practically doubled, no matter what sophistry is used to conceal the fact." Surely, it needs no expert in railway affairs to detect that the "sophistry" just here is not Mr. Alexander's. Lawyers of a certain grade sometimes talk to juries in this vein, but they are shrewd enough to know their jury pretty well before attempting it. An industry that employs seven or eight thousand millions of capital in these United States ought, one would say, to be reasonably suspected of employing brains here and there—certainly ought not rashly to be assumed to neglect the entire remainder of its continental field (to say nothing of the keeping of its own books), in order to concentrate its entire energies upon the commercial destruction of a single village! There has yet to be discovered, I suppose, a human institution in whose workings there was not hardship or inequality somewhere. But Mr. Hudson has only, it seems to him, to select his hardship to demolish the entire railway system—his principle being, not the greatest good