es. But it
appeared to work only in the alacrity of the strikers to submit their
grievance. The road; were as one road in declaring that there was nothing
to arbitrate, and that they were merely asserting their right to manage
their own affairs in their own way. One of the presidents was reported to
have told a member of the Board, who personally summoned him, to get out
and to go about his business. Then, to Fulkerson's extreme
disappointment, the august tribunal, acting on behalf of the sovereign
people in the interest of peace, declared itself powerless, and got out,
and would, no doubt, have gone about its business if it had had any.
Fulkerson did not know what to say, perhaps because the extras did not;
but March laughed at this result.

"It's a good deal like the military manoeuvre of the King of France and
his forty thousand men. I suppose somebody told him at the top of the
hill that there was nothing to arbitrate, and to get out and go about his
business, and that was the reason he marched down after he had marched up
with all that ceremony. What amuses me is to find that in an affair of
this kind the roads have rights and the strikers have rights, but the
public has no rights at all. The roads and the strikers are allowed to
fight out a private war in our midst as thoroughly and precisely a
private war as any we despise the Middle Ages for having tolerated--as
any street war in Florence or Verona--and to fight it out at our pains
and expense, and we stand by like sheep and wait till they get tired.
It's a funny attitude for a city of fifteen hundred thousand
inhabitants."

"What would you do?" asked Fulkerson, a good deal daunted by this view of
the case.

"Do? Nothing. Hasn't the State Board of Arbitration declared itself
powerless? We have no hold upon the strikers; and we're so used to being
snubbed and disobliged by common carriers that we have forgotten our hold
on the roads and always allow them to manage their own affairs in their
own way, quite as if we had nothing to do with them and they owed us no
services in return for their privileges."

"That's a good deal so," said Fulkerson, disordering his hair. "Well,
it's nuts for the colonel nowadays. He says if he was boss of this town
he would seize the roads on behalf of the people, and man 'em with
policemen, and run 'em till the managers had come to terms with the
strikers; and he'd do that every time there was a strike."

"Doesn't that rather sa