Page:The Conquest of Bread (1906).djvu/193

, the delegates returned to their companies, not with a law, but with the draft of a contract to be accepted or rejected.

There were certainly obstinate men who would not be convinced. But a common interest compelled them to agree without invoking the help of armies against the refractory members.

This immense network of railways connected together, and the enormous traffic it has given rise to, no doubt constitutes the most striking trait of our century; and it is the result of free agreement. If a man had foreseen or predicted it fifty years ago, our grandfathers would have thought him idiotic or mad. They would have said: "Never will you be able to make the shareholders of a hundred companies listen to reason! It is a Utopia, a fairy tale. A central Government, with an 'iron' director, can alone enforce it."

And the most interesting thing in this organization is, that there is no European Central Government of Railways! Nothing! No minister of railways, no dictator, not even a continental parliament, not even a directing committee! Everything is done by contract.

So we ask the believers in the State, who pretend that "we can never do without a central Government, were it only for regulating the traffic," we ask them: "But how do European railways manage without them? How do they continue to convey millions of travellers and