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152 your capitalization "fictitious." Let us see about this. Many a good cause and many a good man have been slain by an epigram. It was a coup d'esprit of Wall Street to call the increased capitalization by a corporation a "watering" of its stock; and the phrase has doubtless often done yeoman service in the transactions by which Wall Street lives and thrives. But the old syllogism must be accepted very peremptorily here if we are to admit—because corporations sometimes do increase their capital on paper—that all railway companies are public enemies. Nobody can defend, and nobody ought to attempt to defend, the pouring of pure water into the capital stock of a corporation. But there are some four hundred railroad companies in these United States; and Mr. Hudson, to sustain the charge of universal watering against railway companies, instances two capital cases. One of these was one of the most flagrant cases on record (it would be difficult, indeed, to find one more flagrant). It dates back some twelve years; was first held up to public criticism by a gentleman who, more than any other one man, is in receipt of Mr. Hudson's constant and most unqualified strictures everywhere else in Mr. Hudson's pages for his own career as a railroad president; moreover, this very case became the moving cause of legislation which forever prevented a repetition of the particular process by which this particular stock was "watered." As to the other case cited by Mr. Hudson, the "watering," according to his own figures, amounted to one third of its increased capital. But I doubt if any shipper of the line of that particular railroad, or any patron of the line who remembers its previous condition, will agree with Mr. Hudson that a betterment of one third at least did not accrue at about the time of the "watering." Suppose a zigzag line of railways operated by half a dozen petty corporations, requiring endless delays, a change of cars for passengers and a breaking of freight bulks between two of the most important terminals in the country—metamorphosed into a system of four through tracks to conserve the safety of life and property by separating freight and passenger service. Suppose the improvement marked by increased prosperity, not only of the line but of the territory it traversed—would there have been no betterment to capitalize, or would the capitalizing of this. betterment be "water"? Would stockholders, in such a case, be apt to object to the company borrowing money to make their own stock more valuable? And which is Mr. Hudson's public just now, the public along the line of this improved railway, and who pay its tariffs; or the entire continent from Sandy Hook to the Golden Gate, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, for whom Mr. Hudson assumes to take up his parable? Another curious fact which Mr. Hudson may not be aware of (or if aware of, which he has inadvertently omitted to clip and paste in just here) is the fact that at present, in 1887, these two selected corporations are members of the same pool, serving respective but almost parallel territory at rates at least thirty-three per