s the danger of public detriment from
its existence. The following is his chief argument for a legalized pool:
"Perhaps, so long as railroad companies continue to enjoy an absolute
monopoly of transportation over their own lines, so that free
competition is restricted in its operation to a comparatively few
favored points, it may be worthy of serious consideration whether it
would not be better to legalize than to prohibit pooling, taking care to
put the whole matter under strict public supervision and control. The
companies would then be left comparatively free to bring their local
rates into something like harmony with the long-distance rates, and
should they fail to do so where the needs of the local community and
their revenues make it proper to be done, then it is the function of
public regulation to compel it to be done."

Of the Interstate Commerce Act Mr. Dabney says: "The legislation
recently enacted by Congress for the regulation of commerce by railway
is the result of more careful and intelligent deliberation perhaps than
any other measure of similar character, and it is not unlikely that the
legislation of many of the States will sooner or later be conformed to
it."

He speaks at some length of the drift toward railroad centralization. A
few extracts from this passage may be here given: "That the tendency
towards the unification and consolidation of different and competitive
lines has been decidedly increased by the anti-pooling and the long and
short haul sections of the Interstate Commerce Law can hardly be
doubted.... The modern device of the 'trust' as a means of unifying
industrial interests and eliminating competition had not yet been
applied in the field of railroad transportation.... The scheme of trust
here briefly outlined would probably require for its successful
operation the concurrence of the entire stockholding interest of each
company embraced in it; and herein, it seems likely, will be found the
chief difficulty in perfecting such a scheme. Should it ever be
perfected, a far more stringent public supervision and control of the
railroad transportation of the country will be demanded."

Another author, Charles Whitney Baker, associate editor of the
_Engineering News_, suggests in his book, "Monopolies and the People," a
plan for the reorganization of our railroad system, to remedy the evils
of monopoly which are at present connected with railroad management. The
following quotation from his