Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/169

Rh always the shape of a duty and never the shape of a privilege—granted that railroads are quasi-public corporations, it would appear to follow—since they are only quasi-public, that they have still some elements of a private nature; and (since it is their private and not their public character which continues) that it is by this private character they must be continually judged. Granted that they must carry freights for the public in such a way as not to injure either the public or the freight in the carrying, most emphatically (it seems to me) it does not follow that they must add to the value of the freights they carry by charging only such rates as the public, or the owners of the freight, insist on. Mr. Hudson, as a member of society, has a presumptive right to light and air; to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Supposing that society should pass one law affirmatively compelling Mr. Hudson to recognize his neighbor's rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and, on top of that, another restraining him from interfering with these rights; still another compelling him to positively contribute in cash or services to the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness of his neighbors; and add to all these a still further law taking away his (Mr. Hudson's) own life, liberty, etc., because he had not in the past so contributed? "Would not Mr. Hudson begin after a while to consider the propriety of looking up his own constitutional privileges; or, possibly, the charter of the particular society that was enacting all these statutes?—or query, perhaps, if the mere grant of power to breathe himself were a fair consideration for the burden of seeing to it that the entire neighborhood breathed? But our laws are daily imposing upon the railway companies they have chartered (on account of this so-called quasi-public character which the once granting of this long-lapsed power of eminent domain has saddled upon them) the duty of carrying whatever of passengers or freight is offered—of reasonably accommodating the public—of forfeiture of their charter if, even at a loss, trains are not so run as to accommodate reasonably; of operating, whether at a profit or at a deficit (under penalties for refusal to perform services desired of them)—under a burden of proof always to prove a negative if the refusal is alleged of them under a disadvantage always before a jury—and of being obliged to accept the jury always of the locality where ideas of value and damage are the largest. Liabilities always to patrons, servants, abutters and adjoiners; to the State; compelled to pay damages for accidents caused by trespasses on their own rights of way; to maintain alert and vigilant counsel always to watch, lest at any moment they inadvertently overlook any of the thousands of statutes that thirty-eight Legislatures are annually pouring from the legislative mill; black-mailed on every hand, and always under the conviction that the average citizen sees no dishonesty in getting the better of them by dodging fares, or getting passes under false pretenses; and, if they receive a public gift of land, having it at once construed against them and carried to