f to the warnings of
history. Their liberality knew no bounds. National, State and county aid
was freely extended to new railroad enterprises. Communities taxed
themselves heavily for their benefit, and municipalities and individuals
vied with each other in donating money, rights of way and station
buildings. This was especially true of the West, whose undeveloped
resources had most to gain by railroad extension. So large were the
public and private donations in several of the Western States that their
value was equal to one-fifth of the total cost of all the roads
constructed. To still more encourage promoters of railroad enterprises,
general incorporation laws were passed which permitted companies to be
formed and roads to be built practically without State supervision. In
their admiration for the bright side of the picture, the people entirely
overlooked the shady side.

Besides this, there was virtually an absence of all law regulating the
operation of railroads. It was, under these circumstances, not strange
that abuses early crept into railroad management which, long tolerated
by the people and unchecked and even encouraged by public officers,
finally assumed such proportions as to threaten the very foundation of
free government. Great discoveries that add rapidly to the wealth of a
country tend to overthrow a settled condition of things, and organized
capital and power, if not restrained by wholesome laws and public
watchfulness, will ever take advantage of the unorganized masses. The
people of those regions which the railroad stimulus had caused to be
settled thrived for years so well upon a virgin soil that they gladly
divided their surplus with the railroad companies. They looked upon the
railroads as the source of their prosperity and upon railroad managers
as high-minded philanthropists and public benefactors, with whom to
quarrel would be an act of sordid ingratitude, and they paid but little
attention to the means employed by them to exact an undue share of their
earnings. Railroad men did whatever they could to foster through their
emissaries this misplaced adoration. They posed before the public as the
rightful heirs of the laurels of Watt and Stephenson, insisting that
their genius, capital and enterprise had built up vast cities and opened
for settlement and civilization the boundless prairies of the West.
These claims have been persistently repeated by railroad men, though
they are so preposterous tha