A POPULAR DISCUSSION OF THE RAILWAY PROBLEM IN THE UNITED STATES, BY WAY OF ANSWER TO "THE RAILWAYS AND THE REPUBLIC," AN ALBUM OF STATESMANSHIP. "We're going to lead the railroads a wild and lively dance, and make it lurid for them in the Legislature this winter." (The Editor of a Democratic Agricultural Paper in Iowa.) "We don't propose to hear the railroad side of the question now. We'll hang them first and try them afterwards." (A Reform Member of a Senate Railroad Committee.) "We will pass the anti-railroad legislation and hear the railroad men afterwards. The condemned are always allowed to speak from the scaffold." (Another Reform Senator of a Railroad Committee.) "I wrote a radical mining bill, and submitted it to the coalminers themselves, and told them that if it wasn't severe enough against the mine-owners, to add to it anything they wanted, and I would advocate and secure its passage in the House." (A Reform Member and Leader of the Lower House of a Legislature, and the owner of a Reform Newspaper.) "Let us make a secret compact of a pledged and sworn majority, and vote this legislation through without debate, right or wrong. If it hurts the railroads let them take care of themselves. Our leader has said, 'Organized capital may be depended upon to take care of itself."" (The next Reform Leader in rank in the Lower House of a Legislature.) "Light! Who wants any light on this subject? I am not open to conviction? But I am ready to vote for this bill to-day and hear the railroads to-morrow." (Another Reform Senator of a Railroad Committee.) "If the proposed legislation should bankrupt any of the railroads in the State, I will call an extra session of the Legislature to relieve them." (A Governor of a State lobbying before a Senate Railroad Committee.)-Iowa State Register, February 27, 1888. PREFACE. THE animosity towards the Railway Interest, shown in a volume, "THE RAILWAYS and the REPUBLIC," by Mr. James F. Hudson, has been so largely prevalent among our people; so many honest and worthy persons have conscientiously shared in it, that it has seemed to me that a conscientious attempt to allay it would not be looked upon either as surplusage or as mere assumption. If I have, therefore, in the following pages, personified this animosity as "Mr. Hudson," it has been purely for my own convenience, not in the least because I think his book either important or dangerous on the whole. In rejoining to Mr. Hudson's book, not the least of the labor has been the reduction of his rambling and riotous charges, statements and conclusions to some sort of classification as to their subject-matter, and so to avoid the necessity of an equally ponderous volume of six hundred pages. I have tried to point out that the viciousness of the Interstate Commerce Law lay, not so much in the changes it might or could affect in the present railway conveniences of this people (indeed, except that it has somewhat built up the Canadian Pacific Railway at the expense of our own railroads, I am unaware that it has affected any change whatever, anywhere, up to the present time), as in the risk of putting upon our national statute books a law under which wicked, artful or ignorant men might throw the transportation business of this continent, and so the continent itself, into chaos inside of twenty-four hours. Portions of this work having previously appeared in The Popular Science Monthly, The Railway Review, The North Western Railroader and Science, I am indebted to the proprietors of those publications for permission to use them here. NEW YORK, July 1st, 1888. A. M |