Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 19.pdf/751

 THE GREEN BAG plaintiff demurs to this plea. In this case Roll J. said that it is the trespass of the party that carried the defendants upon the land and not the trespass of the defendant; as he that drives my cattle into another man's land is the trespasser against him, and not I, who own the cattle." The effect of the decision in the Burns case, allowing the owner of the land an action for trespass, was widespread. With remarkable unanimity it was followed and approved in every jurisdiction. There was a perfect flood of airships litigation. Suits became so numerous that in 1939 a special division of the Circuit Court in St. Louis, known as the "Air Division " was created for the purpose of trying nothing but this class of cases. Since necessarily only nom inal damages could be obtained, one might well wonder why so many suits should be brought on account of an infringement of a right that was purely technical and which could not result in material gain to the plaintiff. The answer must be sought in the history of aircraft. Although extensively used for passenger traffic for 15 years previous, it was only in 1934 that freight transportation by air craft became general, and then it was that the bitterest and most destructive conflict in the history of the economic world began. On the one side were ranged the railroads of the country with their tremendous invest ments, their control of the channels of com merce and of the financial institutions of the country together with all the political and legislative influence they had built up through decades. Against this aggrega tion of wealth, power and prestige the air ship companies had nothing to pit save their superior practicability and the reduced cost of transportation. But the importance of this latter consideration will appear when it is noted that when the fight was at its height, the air craft companies were able, without loss, to transport freight and pas sengers at rates that were about half the actual cost to the railroads. Every device

known to the courts of law was invoked by the railroads, every aid that could be wrung from the cupidity of legislators was brought into play. So effective and so costly was their fight that it is doubtful whether the aircraft companies would have won in the struggle in spite of their ability to transport at much lower rates than the railroads, had not the people been active in their favor. Public sentiment and public sym pathy expressed in many different ways were all allied against the railroads. The smaller railroads yielded first and went into bankruptcy and receiver's hands, receiver ships from which unlike those of former years they did not emerge. One after another the railroads became abandoned hulks of commerce and rotting ties and deserted stations dotted the country from one end to the other. In 1942 the great Atlantic and Pacific Railroad alone remained. It formed a continuous route from New York to Seattle and was organized in 1909. The final crash came in 1942 when the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad went into the hands of a receiver. Its subsequent sale did not real ize enough to pay its floating indebtedness. The collapse of the Atlantic and Pacific Railway marked the passing of the railroads as instruments of commerce; although in some localities electrical roads were still used for many years as a means of transporta tion for short distances and also for switching purposes, it being at first impracticable for the aircraft companies to load and unload freely in closely built cities. Today when railroads belong to the antiquated and superseded inventions of mankind and air ships literally darken the heavens, when the journey from New York to San Francisco is made between the rising and setting of the sun, when commodities are transported from one locality to another at such slight cost and with such rapidity as to make distances from the points of production practically no item in the ulti mate cost; when travel by steamship