Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/171

Rh would be necessary did every man, woman, and child possess the inalienable right to place upon their tracks their own locomotives, their own passenger-coaches and freight-carriages, and to run them at their own sweet will hither and thither. Nor can my fancy devise where all this rolling-stock would be stored when not in use (unless, indeed, means were devised to suspend it, by balloons or other aerial contrivance, over the railways themselves). Mr. Hudson does not discuss these questions at all, but leaves them, possibly, to the inventive genius of the race. And there, perhaps, we may also rest them.

But, taking leave of Mr. Hudson and his chimera, we have yet before us the railways themselves. Against the inequality of their own rates and the hardship of the long and short haul (in other words, against the discriminations of Nature and of physical laws), no less than against the peril of bankruptcy and the consequent speculative tendency of their stocks (after which may come the wrecking, the watering, and the vast individual fortunes), the railways of this republic have endeavored, by establishment of pool commissions, to defend both the public and themselves; and, whatever their motive may have been, their record as to that can not be disturbed. As to the effect of the Interstate Commerce Law upon the shipper and the passenger, time and trial alone can testify. But it is precisely such literature as Mr. Hudson's, and the sentiment it manufactures, which have made railway-wrecking, stock-watering, and their concomitant disasters possible; while for these disasters, down to date at least, the pool has been found the only and entirely adequate remedy. That remedy, drastic as it is, the railways (far from being public enemies) have themselves applied. The honest administration of railways for all interests, the payment of their fixed charges, the solvency of their securities, the faithful and valuable performance of their duties as carriers, can be conserved in but one way—by living tariffs such as the pools have guaranteed. But we want no living tariffs, says our Mr. Hudson. Give us a governmental control, and we will pay no tariffs—only a trackage-fee! Supposing this revolution accomplished, and how many years or months would, perhaps, elapse before another declamation in five hundred more pages of close type against the excessive trackage-fees, the favors to public officials or private cronies, or a formulated demand that the Government provide terminals at its own expense (another planet, possibly), sumptuous rolling-stock, motive power, and accident insurance policies for its passengers would arrive from the constant, sleepless, and irrepressible Mr. Hudson? Is it not, after all, Mr. Hudson and his kind—and not the Wall Street operator who trades on the sham public opinion they manufacture—who are the true stock-waterers, railroad-wreckers, and enemies of this republic?