Page images
PDF
EPUB

research, and an overhauling of returns, at once tedious and unsatisfactory. The expense of keeping an accurate construction account is a severe tax upon a wealthy company. To a poor corporation it is a burden. And here in a nut-shell lies an explanation of the neglect to keep such an account in many cases, except for costly improvements. And even with these we frequently notice lack of accuracy in important particulars, such as a charge for transportation, use of tools, compensation for equipment, superintendence, etc. Only important items are picked out; the others are disregarded. A volume might be filled with explanations of the influences that lead corporations to suppress or omit a part of the cost of their properties from their accounts. One more must suffice. Those familiar with the owners and managers know them to be extremely conservative. They are intent upon building up and strengthening their investment. Like the farmer who digs a ditch or plows a field, they know that every dollar judiciously expended is seed wisely sown. The instinct of gain and caution inherent in them, and to which they owe what they have, continually urges them to make improvements, but to defer capitalization; to keep such expenditures as a reserve—a margin against contingencies. In this way they are continually adding to the security of their property and its productiveness, without adding to its capital representation. Their sagacity cannot be questioned.

There are instances where those who represent

reckless men among this class, just as there are among bankers, manufacturers, merchants, and hack-drivers; men eaten up with the desire of immediate realization; men who can not await the processes of time, who want to become rich at once. But this class constitutes only an insignificant minority. Its antics have, however, created great distrust of railway enterprises generally; it is so much more daring and conspicuous than the better element, that it attracts attention where the other remains forever unnoticed. One is positive, the other negative. A drop of ink is sufficient to discolor a goblet of water, but a drop of water will occasion no change whatever in the aspect of a like quantity of ink. And so it is correspondingly with these classes. One unstable man will cast discredit over a railway enterprise employing fifty thousand men. Writers and others, to whom the public look for guidance, take advantage of these anomalies to throw discredit over the whole railroad world; to awaken and keep alive a feeling in the community that it is unworthy of trust. The result is mutual want of confidence. Nothing in the experience of men is more interesting and curious than the attitude the people and the railroad companies preserve toward each other. On the part of the former, it is one of aggression; of accusation, vituperation, abuse-volley on volley. On the part of the latter, it is that of deference, of explanation, of mild expostulation; they are noticeably careful to treat their traducers with forbearance and courtesy. Their policy is to temporize; to await

Is quite probable they have carried this policy too far; that they have been much too deferential to the demagogues who harass them; have offered too little resistance to acts of injustice and oppression. Indeed, their timidity has oftentimes been so marked that it has suggested attack-has invited interference and oppression.

CHAPTER XVI.

LOCAL AND THROUGH TRAFFIC-STATE VS. INTERSTATE-IMPOSSIBILITY OF DISTINGUISHING ONE

FROM THE
ACTION.

OTHER-EFFECT ON

LEGISLATIVE

The accompanying reflections in regard to State and interstate traffic are suggested by the divided duty that attaches to national and local supervision of railways, and the impossibility, in many instances, of determining where the jurisdiction of one begins and the other ends. The subject attaches to governmental supervision in America, and in other countries where federal and State authority exist side by side. It also treats incidentally of the inter-road traffic of railways. The theme is a practical one, of interest to those connected with railroads or concerned in their affairs.

When Percy was told that Glendower could call spirits from the vasty deep, he replied that he could also call them, but would they come? Legislation that assumes that the traffic of railroads may be classified upon the basis of State lines, excites in those familiar with the subject a feeling of incredu lity akin to that which the boast of Glendower excited in the breast of Hotspur. It can not be done.

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »