welfare of the
roads than in speculation in their stocks, that the dose was well
administered, and should be repeated whenever the necessity for it may
again arise.

It is probably true that railroad managers have lost much of their
former influence in politics. As their means of corruption have become
generally known they have become less effective. The public is more on
the alert, and corrupt politicians often find themselves unable to carry
out their discreditable compacts.

But it is unreasonable to expect the evil to cease until the cause is
removed. The trouble is inherent in the system, and the fault is there
more than in the men who manage the business, and not till the great
power exercised by them is restrained within proper limits will the evil
disappear. All this can be accomplished when there shall be established
a most thorough and efficient system of State and National control over
the railroad business of the whole country.

CHAPTER X.

RAILROAD LITERATURE.

The cause of the railroad manager has never been without time-servers.
Not to speak of those newspaper editors who, for some consideration or
another, defend every policy and every practice inaugurated or approved
by railroad authorities, there has always been a school of literati who
felt it their duty to enlighten, from a railroad standpoint, their
fellow-men by book or pamphlet upon the transportation question, to
correct what they supposed to be false impressions, and to round up with
an apology or defense for the railroad manager, who is invariably
represented by them as the most abused and at the same time most
patriotic and most progressive man of the age.

The benefits derived from the railroad are great. It has been an
important factor in the development of our country's resources and the
advancement of our civilization. Its value is fully appreciated, but
there is no reason why the men who have utilized the inventions of
Stephenson and others, and have grown rich by doing so, should be
eulogized any more than those who are ministering to the wants of the
public by the use of the Hoe printing press, McCormick's reaper,
Whitney's cotton gin, or any of the thousands of other modern
inventions.

These authors doubtless are prompted by various motives. Some have been
educated in the railroad school and are therefore blind to railroad
evils. Others naturally worship plutocrats, because they hold the
opinion that capital is entit