uld have been devised."

Speaking of the educational value of railroad competition, Mr. Adams
says: "Undoubtedly the fierce struggles between rival corporations
which marked the history of railroad development, both here and in
England, were very prominent factors in the work of forcing the systems
of the two countries up to their present degree of efficiency. Railroad
competition has been a great educator for railroad men. It has not only
taught them how much they could do, but also how very cheaply they could
do it. Under the strong stimulus of rivalry they have done not only what
they declared were impossibilities, but what they really believed to be
such."

Mr. Adams has, from his long association with railroad managers, imbibed
one heresy which is in strange discord with the general soundness of his
opinions. He holds that the railroad system was left to develop upon a
false basis, inasmuch as the American people relied for protecting the
community from abuses upon general laws authorizing the freest possible
railroad construction everywhere and by any one. It can therefore not be
surprising that Mr. Adams is an advocate of the legalized pool. He is of
the opinion that secret combinations among railroads, inasmuch as they
always have existed, always will exist as long as the railroad system
continues as it now is. Hence he proposes to legalize a practice which
the law cannot prevent, and by so doing to enable the railroads to
confederate themselves in a manner which shall be at once both public
and responsible. The reply might be made that there are many other
conspiracies which the law cannot always prevent, but that this is no
reason why conspiracies should be legalized. If pools and other railroad
abuses had, since the beginning of the railroad era, been treated as
crimes and misdemeanors, and punished as such by the imposition of heavy
fines, few people would to-day be ready to offer apologies for them. If
the time shall ever come when pools must be legalized it will be time
for railroad control equivalent to Government ownership.

Among the more recent writers upon railroad subjects is W. D. Dabney,
late chairman of the Committee on Railways and Internal Navigation in
the Legislature of Virginia. Mr. Dabney favors State control, and is, on
the whole, friendly to the Interstate Commerce Act. He sees danger in
the pool, but inclines to the belief that the public benefit derived
from the pooling system outweigh