Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/202

192 and passenger earnings are seen to have fallen off considerably since 1871, and the final effect of these changes is summarized by the item of dividends, which are seen to be less than fifty per cent of those paid during 1871.

The more complete statistics of the last ten years afford still more impressive results. The following data are for the year ending on June 30, 1803, and comparisons by means of percentages with 1884 are given:

It is thus seen that more than double the freight transportation of 1884 is now performed for a total compensation less than two thirds greater; that passenger transportation has increased eighteen per cent more than the sum paid therefor; and that the capital now invested in the stock of one hundred and seventy-six thousand miles of railway receives in dividends a sum absolutely less than did that invested in the one hundred and twenty-five thousand miles operated during 1884. These figures furnish a key to the reasons which justified Judge Cooley's epigrammatic summary of the financial condition of the railway interest when he declared that it "represents an enormous aggregate of wealth and an increasing aggregate of corporate poverty."

The natural query is, What is to be the result? Are railway rates to go still lower, and the return to invested capital become even less than at present; or are charges to remain stationary, and the public benefit from cheapening transportation be finally or even temporarily suspended?

Probably the best informed among railway managers would declare that their charges are already too low, and that it is highly important to discover some means for preventing further reductions. As to what means would safely accomplish this result there is great diversity of opinion, and not a few managers whose knowledge of the conditions governing the business of transportation has accrued during long years of practical experience are emphatic in the announcement of their belief that the tendency toward lower charges is the result of commercial laws which they have no power to restrain. If the latter opinion is the