Page:The truth about the railroads (IA truthaboutrailro00elli).pdf/137

Rh lard, so much for hoofs, so much for sparerib, nor can any one else. His prices are fixed for him by competitive conditions, and unless he receives, on the whole, for all of the different kinds of things obtained from the animals enough to pay the total cost of his business, and some profit, he ultimately abandons his business. The railroad business is very much more complicated than the business of the butcher, and there are an almost infinite number of prices in the business which are fixed and adjusted just as the prices for the butcher are fixed.

If one man, if the Government itself, owned all the railroads of the United States, the rates could not be fixed mathematically at a central headquarters, and permit any development of business.

Regulating is one thing, and fixing is another. The present law grants ample power to regulate, to say what is unfair and unjust, and if it were enforced fairly and if the powers now in the hands of the Commission were used, much of the alleged popular demand for giving Rh