the world. But whence come these ten or a dozen (if so many) vast fortunes? Why, says Mr. Hudson, with admirable circumferentiality, from the domination of railways. Clearly we must get this kernel out of Mr. Hudson's crop if we are to proceed with him any further: and to dispose of it may require a moment or two of our attention.

The greatest of powers, undoubtedly, is the human brain; and, so long as it is the instinct of man to scheme for his own aggrandizement, certainly the greatest brain will scheme to the greatest profit to himself. A dozen men in the United States have been able to amass, from management (or, if the word is preferred, manipulation) of the securities of the railway systems of the country, the largest single fortunes known to history: not in land, in interests in estimated wealth, but in actual comfortable, convertible cash, representing no manual labor of their own, no commensurate investment of capital, and no proportional benefit to the race. But, because Mr. Hudson is virtuous, are there to be no more cakes and ale? Because Mr. Gould is very rich, are there to be no more railway companies? Because these dozen fortunes are beyond any heretofore conceived relation of reward for personal industry, is the material by manipulation of the securities of which they have been accumulated, noxious, bad in itself, and dangerous to the common weal? These fortunes are, for our present purpose, the pure result of brain-labor, the rewards of pure thought. Let us leave out of the reckoning whether they are honest or dishonest fortunes; or, if Mr. Hudson prefers, let us concede them to be dishonest. The fact, the only fact, necessary to the discussion of his own questions on his own ground is that they have been accumulated by the purchase, manipulation, and operation of railways. The people make the laws, not the railroads. To argue that railroads, quoad railroads, are hateful to public policy, dangerous to the public peace, threatening to public morals, and destined in time to destroy the commonwealth, as private luxury once destroyed old Rome, seems to me the simple fallacy which logicians call an "undistributed middle." As well condemn any other thing because at some time some

thing of its species has been manipulated to a personal and exorbitant profit. Banish corn, wheat, or coal, because great "corners "have been planned in those staples, and hundreds of thousands of dealers obliged to pay more than they ought to have paid, when a few schemers, who had schemed for months, had suddenly sprung upon these unsuspecting gentlemen their longperfected plans!

Shakespeare makes one of his characters put the question, "How do men live?" and another answers it: "Marry, as the fishes in the sea, the big ones eat up the little ones." The struggle for existence which our brute ancestors carried on with teeth and claws and fangs, we still perpetuate with interlocked and grappling brains. They strove and tore and trampled each other for the food their bellies craved, in specie; we fight for values instead. But the result is the same: the strongest brain, as once the strongest limb, wins. And when, as within the last halfcentury right here in the United States, in what is scarcely more than the close of the first half-century of the railroad, a few phenomenal brains have amassed more of these values than their share, more than they can consume with their own personal wants -while I admit that the problem looks serious to those whose brains have not taken part in the struggle the wrong seems to me one for which Nature, not art or science or schools, is at present mostly responsible, just as much as she is responsible for the lion that rends the ox, or the fox that pillages the farm-yard. The United States of America does not make treaties with individuals: and yet the treaty between the United States and the kingdom of Hawaii is, or was once, practically for the single benefit of one man. Why? Because there happens to be but one article of export from Hawaii to the United States; and because that one product happens, or happened, to be controlled by the brains and capital of one man. So this anomaly-this wrong, we suppose Mr. Hudson would call it-is to be charged to the crime of having brains, or to the domination of (not railways this time, but) sugar! Perhaps the situation can be made very clear to Mr. Hudson by a quotation from himself:

He says, page 1: "Watt could see in the steam which lifted the lid from the tea-kettle a force which might yield man some aid in his labors; but he could not foresee the immense application of that force to every phase of life. He could not dream of the millions of factories, the thousands of steamships or the myriads of railway-trains that lay dormant in his discovery." And yet it is simply and solely because a human brain here and there did foresee what Mr. Hudson says Watt could not or did not—that massive fortunes, larger than an aggregate of thousands amassed by mere manual labor and economy, have been accumulated. Shall the owner of such a brain assume that Nature in so endowing him endowed him with a curse to his fellow-men, and that it is his natural or moral duty to devise a means of redistributing this accumulation to the two hundred thousand or hundred thousand millions who, like Watt, could not foresee? I do not so understand Mr. Hudson to urge; but perhaps he will kindly indicate to what other duty his attempt at satire on the men who, by building, buying, controlling and operating railways, amass vast properties, surely and implacably points.

The processes by which the fish with capital swallows the fish without capital-by which money attracts money, and foresight eclipses hindsight-stand possibly in bolder and nearer relief, just now, in the case of the three or five railway kings (whose fortunes may last another generation or two without division) than elsewhere. But, that they are processes unfamiliar in any given commercial undertaking or venture, I do not find any note in Mr. Hudson's indictment to assert. His indictment of railways and railway management is the constant and simple and single charge that they "dominate" the non-railway world by making the rich richer and the poor poorer; and this, principally, by piling up vast accumulations of wealth in the hands of the very few. Mr. Hudson is wary enough to see that railroads, not being per se illegal, the accident and consequence are not illegal; he, therefore, argues deftly that the railways, although legal, are illegally handled by their managers. This illegality he separates into seven counts-that the transportation business, legitimate in itself, has

been made pernicious to public and private rights, and "dominates" them by certain imported incidents, viz., by

I. Land-grants.

II. Pools.

III. Construction companies.

IV. Rebates and discriminations.

(a) by "drawbacks" or returns to shippers,

(b) by "long and short haul"—that is, by charging more money for the shorter service.

V. "Fast freight lines."

VI. Stock "watering "-or "(As Mr. Hudson terms it) "The Fictitious Element in Railway Policy."

VII. "Eminent domain."

Mr. Hudson does not add to these-sleeping, hotel, and parlorcar companies, railway-lighting companies, and all the numerous other auxiliaries to modern railway management, which save the time and economize the capital, while they accommodate the patronage of railways. I know not why, but since he has left them out of the indictment, we will follow his example. But Mr. Hudson does pause just here-by what logical process is not apparent -to fulminate to the length of many solid pages over and against the Standard Oil Company, its history, career, and the procedure by which, before the days of "pools," it was able to force favorable contracts upon the railways to its own vast advantage; accumulating thereby assets almost as enormous as either of the three or four private fortunes in which Mr. Hudson sees such imminent peril to the republic. As we are just now considering the railways, perhaps we might as well leave out the oil company. We may admit, I think, however, in passing, that the Standard Company was an accident—a thing by itself, like the moon or the Gulf Stream-from whose existence even a possibility of another can not be predicated, since the present system of "pooling" associations would render its repetition practically impossible. Mr. Hudson is perfectly right in announcing that this great corporation is not a charity or an eleemosynary foundation of any sort ; that it does business for the enrichment of its own stockholders

rather than in behalf of those of its rivals; that it takes all it can get-is soulless, grasping, and selfish. That it has been engineered by men of brains until it has become in certain localities a practical monopoly may also be conceded. That, so long as the laws under which it is incorporated permit other incorporations for like purposes, it is a monopoly, legally or derivatively speaking, I am afraid must be denied. And yet-it may surprise some readers to know-it is actually possible to say something even for the Standard Oil Company which shall not prate of selfishness, extortion and greed. Lest, however, I may be called an apologist for that "octopus," I prefer to use other words than my own in saying it, and so quote from the New York Tribune of 15 th, 1887:

The

"A good deal of the prejudice against great corporations is vulgar and ignorant. These organizations as a rule become powerful and rich in proportion as they serve the public efficiently, and confer upon it valuable benefits. If the corporation has realized many millions, there is a probability that the public has realized through its services several times as many millions, and only the stupid or the malevolent will forget the service rendered when they see the magnitude of the reward obtained. Standard Oil Company, for instance, has so improved the processes of refining that the price of refined oil has been reduced from 70 to less than 7 cents per gallon. Had the people of this country been able to obtain at any price as abundant, comfortable and convenient light as they now enjoy, it would have cost them $4 per capita in 1860, whereas it now costs them less than 40 cents per capita. That means an actual benefit conferred worth $216,000,000 yearly to a present population of 60,000,000, and if the company which made the investments, and took the risks that secured this result, obtains a large return for it, who will say it didn't deserve to ?"

In other words, whoever has been robbed by the Standard Oil Company, it is not the people. Whosoever it has crushed, it is not the consumer. If that corporation has made its product cheap to the consumer by domineering over and grinding the railways, Mr. Hudson, who loves not railways, ought to be found among the warmest admirers of the Standard Oil Company and even quoting it here by name as the greatest of Railway Reform