ltogether
banished from the equation, and until the roads are brought under
complete Government control. There is no more necessity for pools among
railroads than there is among merchants and manufacturers. The capital
actually invested in railroads is now receiving larger returns than
investments in other lines of business, and their incomes are increasing
from year to year.

Every pooling combination of railroad companies for the maintenance of
rates is a violation of common law. From time immemorial the law has
stamped as a conspiracy any agreement between individuals to support
each other in an undertaking to injure public trade. The Interstate
Commerce Act reasserts this principle, and provides penalties for the
maintenance of such combinations among railroad companies. If, in spite
of this act, the evil still exists, it is no argument against the merits
of the law, but it does prove that the machinery provided for its
enforcement is insufficient. That railroad companies can be made to
respect the law there can be no doubt; but much cannot be accomplished
unless the people fully realize the magnitude of the undertaking and
vest the Government with sufficient power to cope with an organized
force whose total annual revenue is nearly three times as large as that
of the United States. The discussion of the question how this may be
done will be reserved for a subsequent chapter.

CHAPTER VIII.

RAILROADS IN POLITICS.

The question might be asked how the railroad companies for many years in
succession have been able to prevent State control and pursue a policy
so detrimental to the best interests of the public. One might think that
in a republic where the people are the source of all power, and where
all officers are directly or indirectly selected by the people to carry
out their wishes and to administer the government in their interest, a
coterie of men bent on pecuniary gain would not be permitted to subvert
those principles of the common law and public economy which from time
immemorial have been the recognized anchors of the liberty of the
Anglo-Saxon race.

The statement that under a free government it is possible for a few to
suppress the many might almost sound absurd to a monarchist, and yet is
it true that for the past twenty-five years the public affairs of this
country have been unduly controlled by a few hundred railroad managers.

To perpetuate without molestation their unjust practices and