property in the land which
requires the protection of the law? Are we to understand
these judgments and their indorsers to mean that because
railroad property will depreciate if certain principles of
justice prevail, therefore justice is to be set aside for
the benefit of railway property? If the magnitude of
interests involved is to be of weight in deciding such
questions, let us put against 'the hundreds of millions' of
railway property on the one side the thousands of millions
of private property on the other. Railway regulation,
according to a writer in the _Princeton Review_, is
'confiscation of railroad property;' but this puts wholly
out of the question the idea of private property which is
rendered possible by leaving unchecked the power of the
railways over commerce and manufactures through the
manipulation of freight rates. Of the two parties in
interest the shippers represent far greater property
interests than the carriers, although the latter, by their
organization, are more powerful. I have yet to hear of a
single case where restrictive railway legislation has
seriously damaged the honest valuation of any railway. I
have yet to learn of any seriously proposed scheme of
regulation that has proposed to cut down railway profits
below a fair dividend on capital actually invested. But the
entire Nation knows of one notorious case in which the
discriminating policy of the leading railways of the country
has resulted in the wholesale confiscation of private
property for the benefit of a favored corporation."

Concerning the inconsistency presented by the plea of railroad managers
for a legalized pool, Mr. Hudson says:

"It has been argued for years that the subject is so
delicate and vast that it must not be touched by legislation
in the public interest. To protect the rights of the
ordinary shipper against the favorite of the railway would
so hamper the operations of trade, it has been repeated
times without number, as to take away the independence of
the railways and destroy the freedom of competition. Yet,
after years of argument that Government has no
constitutional power to interfere with the railways, and of
demonstration that all such interference must be ill-advised
and injur