ey paralyze trade. Competition stimulates every
competitor to offer the best at the lowest possible price. This
increases the demand for the commodity, and both the producer and the
consumer are in the end benefited by the operation of this law. On the
other hand, combinations, or, what is the same, monopolies, increase the
price, remove the stimulus to excellence, and reduce the demand, and
thereby affect injuriously the producer and consumer alike. Competition
in the railway service would mean an improved service and lower rates
and would speedily be followed by a large increase of business.

Another serious objection to pooling is that it invariably leads to
periodic wars, which unsettle all business, and but too often introduce
into legitimate trade the element of chance. These wars give, moreover,
to designing railroad managers an opportunity to enrich themselves by
stock speculations at the expense of the stockholders, whose interests
they use as a football for the accomplishment of their selfish ends.
When rates are reduced to a right level, and are properly adjusted, and
are equal to all, even railroad men will find no necessity for pools.
The desire for such a combination is a desire to impose upon somebody,
or some locality, or the public at large. The proposition to give legal
sanction to pools, made by railroad managers, is preposterous; and even
a pool to be approved by the Interstate Commerce Commission is out of
the question, as it would cause the railroads to increase their efforts
to control the appointment of the commission. However honest it may look
on its face, however plausible may be the arguments produced in its
favor, it should not be permitted.

There is no doubt but under the proposed pooling arrangement railroad
interests, watered stocks and all, would be cared for, but there is
every reason to believe that public interests would not be properly
protected.

So long as servility by a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission
to railroad influences serves as a stepping-stone to a high position in
the employ of railroad combinations, with a salary of three or four
times that of an Interstate Commerce Commissioner, so long will it be
unsafe to permit such powers to be vested in that commission.

Pooling by railroads should not be permitted, if permitted at all, so
long as representatives of speculative interests have a voice in their
management, and not until all fictitious valuations are a