hope to purify water by damming it, as to build up the internal commerce of a country by placing restrictions upon it. Every restriction placed on railroads cripples, to the extent it is enforced, the industries of a country.*

To restrict the right of carriers to change their rates at will, is like entrusting one's breathing apparatus to the will of another. The commerce of a country thus hampered can not be healthy and vigorous. The carrier must be in constant and familiar touch with markets and the local and general needs of business, and must be able to respond to them instantly, otherwise opportunity will be lost and business die from lack of attention and encouragement.

The belief that carriers may use the power to make rates to oppress others, is absurd. They are the creatures of circumstances. They originate nothing, and their prosperity depends upon their conforming quickly and accurately to the needs and equities of business.

The evils that attend railway management are ever in process of extinguishment, because they antagonize the interests of others and minimize the usefulness and profitableness of such properties. The management of railroads is neither blind, dumb, nor brutish. It is instinct with life, at once

*General supervisory and judicial powers, such as those belonging to the Interstate Commerce Commission of the United States or the Board of Trade of England, may be both wise and salutary, if the law under which they are exercised is not oppressive. The law in the United States is oppressive in many respects, but the Commission referred to is not responsible for this.

kindly and complaisant, because its welfare is inseparably bound up with those it serves.

The sins and shortcomings of carriers are those common to merchants, bankers, manufacturers, and farmers. They are not criminal. They are not such as to merit special mention or reprobation. Wherever harmful, they will be corrected much more effectively without legislative interference than with it. However, I do not by any means wish to say that they should be overlooked. Criticism is beneficial here as elsewhere. It is like a lash across the back of a lazy horse. It enlivens, but let it be intelligent and temperate-such as the case requires. Let us not damn them as a class, because of isolated instances of wrong, any more than we damn farmers as a whole, because one farmer seeks to repudiate his debts, or has been caught stealing his neighbor's oats. Above all, let us not mix up ignorance, jealousy, and hatred with our justice.

The era of railways precipitates new conditions. These are not yet fully understood. They affect governments as well as individuals. The constitutions of the last century are thought by many not to be able to cope with our gigantic interests, our concentrated efforts, and intense activity. If that is so, let us remodel them so that they will conform to our needs, rather than the needs of our grandfathers. If the central government is not strong enough, let us add to its strength; let us make its constituency represent a higher ideal; let us make its civil service more industrious, intelligent, and

honest; its judgeships a life tenure, to be filled by conscientious men. Every railway owner, employe, and manager will applaud, in common with others, such a resolve, and will aid in every possible way to bring it about. They are all interested in a stable, wise, and beneficent government. There is no antagonism here. They are as one with the community.

A prime factor in determining the rates carriers charge, is the value of the service to the shipper. This is the basis of remuneration for labor in every field of industry. Any other would be oppressive, if not prohibitory. Its operation involves the exercise of discrimination. But discrimination is the instinct of trade, its intelligent, directing, and governing force. The ignorant, the vicious, and the superficial speak of it, when exercised by railroads, as something oppressive, something to be discountenanced. This is because they do not consider the analogies of trade, or its methods. The charge of carriers can not be disproportionate to the thing handled. If more is charged than I can reasonably pay, it prohibits me from doing business; but if I am charged what I can afford, I am not treated unjustly, so long as the general profits of the seller are not unreasonable. It is not an act of injustice to me that a carrier charges a higher rate for my blooded horse than for my neighbor's mule, although they both occupy the same space. I can not afford to pay the same rate for the brick used in the construction of my house that I can for the carpets that cover its floors. Rates are based on dis

criminations of this kind, at once practicable, necessary, and wise.

Value is also the basis of discriminations between places. Thus, the numerous land and water routes between Chicago and the seaboard render the service of the carrier less valuable than it otherwise would be. It is a fact in political economy that competition lessens value. If such rates, therefore, are low, they have merely adjusted themselves to this well-known law. The carrier must, under such circumstances, take less. To prohibit him from doing so, will only be to enhance the profits of the water carrier, without lessening the burden elsewhere.

Any business a carrier can get that affords him a profit, however small, helps him to that extent to accommodate other interests. It does not matter how this profit arises, whether from concessions to a weak and struggling manufactory, or a city where competition between carriers is active. In either case, the rate is a special one.

Rates must at least equal the cost of operating and maintenance. They ought also to render a reasonable return on the original investment. How the amount shall be divided, how apportioned, is governed by economic laws that we must acquiesce in but can not govern. The adjustment is a natural one, based on the values of the things handled, and is governed by reciprocal interests. It is as unnecessary to say that railway rates shall be reasonable, as it is to say that men shall not drink when they are not thirsty. Rates conform, like every other par

ticular of business, to their environment. They are an incident merely; a link in a long chain. Anything abnormal that attends their operation, is corrected as quickly and as surely as abnormal action is corrected in other fields of industry.

A city on a highway is better off than one that is not. So, a city located at the junction of two or more highways, is better off than one by the wayside. It is, to a certain extent, a competitive point, and in commercial affairs every competitive point is more or less a point of distribution. Because of this, it is especially advantageous to the country round about. The value of what it has to sell is increased, while the value of what it has to buy is lessened. The advantage is a natural one. It affects the traffic of the carrier and modifies his practices. It prevents uniformity of rate. But this does not matter. No one is harmed.

A uniform rate is a delusion, the utopia of theorists, the hiding-place of those who seek through it to destroy or confiscate the capital of others. It is the delusion of dreamers and the weapon of their less honest brothers. Rates are governed by the markets of the world. Commerce reaches its destination by the most advantageous route. "Trade seeks the easiest path from the producer to the consumer. The history of a hundred generations shows great cities which have grown rich and powerful along the line, or at the termini, of some great transportation interest, sinking into decay and ruin when a nearer or easier route is discov-· ered. Commerce, like water, seeks the lowest level.