A go through the form of renewing their control over it, is an illustration in point. From whatever side the discussion is approached it leads to the same result. The existing railroad system, both internally and externally, as regards the legislature, the exchange, and the stockholder, as serving the community by competition or through combination, is in an unsatisfactory and dangerous condition. Materially it is a great success; that fact has hitherto enabled it to support its abuses, and may continue to do so for some time longer. rapid change, however, is visible even to the least observant. Competition was the soul of our system; yet competition is steadily yielding to the desire for combination. The corporate principle has failed no less than competition, and the idea of management through representation has already given way to the one-man power. Regulation through State authority has proved the saddest failure of all, for the energetic whole can hardly be controlled by the incompetent government of a part. None of these propositions can be successfully controverted. It only remains, then, to pass to the other and far more difficult branch of the discussion. The remedy is to be treated of; the next phase of development is to be considered. The prospect of any great result attending the present effort in this direction is not brilliant; while, however, not much is likely to be gained through the attempt, little is jeopardized by it. That the national government must then, soon or late, and in a greater or less degree, assume a railroad jurisdiction, is accepted as an obvious conclusion to be deduced from the irresistible development of the system in a course it has hitherto pursued. The next question is when, and in what way, and to what extent, is this to be done? What is to be the basis of legislation? This now admits of almost infinite modification, ranging from public ownership on the one hand, to the most limited regulation on the other. The same may be said as to extent of jurisdiction. It may be assumed over all roads lying in more than one State, or it may be confined to certain trunk lines specially designated as military and post roads. These questions it is now premature to discuss. They constitute the final problem. All other proposed solutions of it, resting upon State regulation or State control, are but tempo rizing expedients, important simply as illustrating the practical value of certain theories. Such may prove instructive restingplaces; they can hardly be the final objective. To these, however, attention should now be confined, for through them the ultimate results are to be evolved. Fortunately the national field is yet clear. The utter breakdown of all the existing State systems should at least be full of instruction to those who must build up a national policy. They will be hampered by no precedents, trammelled by no machinery, inadequate and yet existing, but they will be free to create a system both adequate to the needs of the age, and in conformity with the character of our constitutions. It is a work which in all probability must soon be undertaken, and one which might well task the ability of a Hamilton. It is greatly to be hoped that until some man competent to deal with it shall present himself and quietly assume the task, the present local chaos will be suffered to continue; otherwise we may all perchance find ourselves involved in some general muddle such as now exists in more than one locality. The preliminary difficulty in the case is very evident. It needs now to be stated with all possible emphasis, for it will continually present itself throughout what remains of this discussion, and must ever be borne in mind. The whole difficulty arises from the development of a material and moral power, or rather, perhaps, combination of powers, in our social organism which our political system was not calculated to deal with. At the time the framework of our government was put together, a system of necessary monopolies was the very last thing which was expected to present itself on this continent. Our governments, state and national, grew up among, and were calculated for, a community in the less complex stages of civilization. Our whole machinery looked to dealing with individuals, and that only in the least degree which deserved the name of government at all. The idea of one man, or set of men, combining to own in absolute monopoly the great channels of internal communication as they then existed, the Hudson, or the Ohio, or the great lakes, would have been regarded as a wholly inadmissible supposition, a contingency impossible to occur. Consequently no provision was made for it. No machinery was devised calculated to - meet such an improbable emergency. Yet that very emergency is now close at hand, if not already here. To supply the national government with this supplementary power, to adapt it to the new exigency in order that it may not break down under it, is, however, the work of the morrow, and will be final in its character; that of to-day is fortunately not conclusive, but of a tentative nature; this, in short, is the period of transition. The roads are not yet out of the hands of the States; it is through them that the preliminary work is yet to be done. Something is to be derived from their experience in the past; the rest must come from their experiments in the future. The tendency of popular thought is now undoubtedly towards the ownership of railroads by the community. The success of this system in Belgium, and the agitation in regard to it in England and in certain portions of this country, make it eminently desirable that the experiment should be tried, if only with a view of testing a theory and giving a new direction to inquiry. The present is also a time peculiarly opportune in which to make the attempt, for it can now be essayed on a small scale, involving, at most, interests comparatively trifling. The result, as bearing on the final national problem, could not fail to be most instructive. It is impossible, in view of past experience, not to entertain grave doubts as to the result of any experiment of this sort, made through the political machinery which exists in America. As regards the construction of a railroad system, it has repeatedly been tried and uniformly ended in failure. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and many other States went through the same sad experience. Every section with us had its claims, and those claims could not be disregarded. "Log-rolling," and the legislative "truck and dicker," were rapidly developed into an intricate study and lucrative profession. In Belgium, in France, or in Russia a government engineer can locate a railway, and there an end; it was found to be otherwise in America, and an impartial disregard of the figures of the census by no means resulted in a commercial success. It is, however, argued that it would be otherwise in the case of a completed system; that if our State governments could not construct, they could at least manage - NO. 230. VOL. CXII. 4 railroads. This remains to be seen. That the government should engage in any business, whether as producers, as carriers, as bankers, or as manufacturers, is opposed to the whole theory of strictly limited governmental functions. Whether it is possible to secure a board outside of politics which would manage our railroads with a shrewdness and zeal equal to that displayed by individuals, stimulated by the hope of gain, is only to be decided by experience. That experience we probably shall soon have. Should, however, the experiment succeed when attempted by a State, no conclusion could safely be drawn as to its results in a national form. The Federal government is peculiarly and obviously unfitted for any work of the sort,certainly until a thorough and sweeping reform of the civil service is effected. A purified political atmosphere may be imagined in which at some future time it would be safe for Congress to assume the management, through supervising boards, of certain designated continental routes; but any movement in that direction would certainly, and very properly, encounter a strong and determined opposition so long as the present condition of affairs exists, and could only result in increased corruption and commercial disaster. It is difficult also to see how even experiments at State management can succeed, except under most favorable auspices and on a very limited scale. They will inevitably be attempted, not on the local roads, but upon fragments of the great trunk lines. These no one State can wholly control. It can only possess itself of the fractional portion of the whole within its own limits. This cannot answer the requirements of the community, which distinctly demands a correction of the abuses existing in the main thoroughfares. Here is where the difficulty lies. Local lines can scarcely be purified and controlled, while the through lines are amenable to no law. Any effective reform must be tested in its application to these last, and these are already beyond State jurisdiction. While, therefore, an attempt at State ownership could hardly fail to be of great illustrative value, there are probably other directions in which experiment could more usefully be tried. A safer solution of the difficulty may not improbably yet be found in effective regulation, than in State ownership. This last looks to the destruction of the principle of private corporate life as the basis of the railroad system, and to the adoption of the whole of it into the body politic. Regulation, on the other hand, proposes to have the government, while preserving the separation between the body politic and all private industry, yet exercise an active control over its own creations. This is the tendency of legislation in many of the Western States, where the results of government meddling are still fresh in the popular memory. Foremost among these States is Illinois. In the remarkable Constitution just adopted there the great principle is for the first time recognized that the railroad system is exceptional among all industrial pursuits, and must be recognized and dealt with as such. This in itself is an immense stride in advance. It is the concession of a starting-point, the recognition of that new social and political force for which no provision had been made. When a deficiency is fairly acknowledged, we can in America feel a tolerable confidence that it will shortly be supplied. The provisions introduced into the Illinois Constitution are, indeed, crude and unsatisfactory, but they are a beginning, and they at least indicate vigorous minds at work upon the subject in the Northwest. A discussion of these provisions would bring into view at once the very point upon which our State systems have hitherto broken down in their attempts to deal with the railroad development. The probabilities are enormous also that the national system, whenever it takes the form of law, will break down on that same point. The one striking feature of the Illinois Constitution is the strong resolve of its framers to do away with what are known in England as "private bills," and in this country as special legislation. It is unnecessary to dilate upon the nature of this abuse, which may safely be set down as the greatest danger to which any system of government is liable; it may almost be said to be the root of all political ills. Legislation should know nothing of individuals. All modern thought tends to the conclusion that the universe is controlled by general laws; and the belief in special providences is entertained only by the most superstitious. A sound system of government should recognize individuals no more than the laws of nature recog |