t of all other interests, did not think that his
nonsensical mode of reasoning would apply equally well to them. Let us,
for instance, imagine for a moment that all of the farms of the United
States were at once annihilated. Can the imagination picture the
infinite sufferings that would at once result to every man, woman and
child in the whole country? Now, is not any step taken to impede or
cripple the business of farming a step towards just such a catastrophe,
and therefore of a destructive tendency? Mr. Dillon then avails himself
of an opportunity to give the people of the United States some
gratuitous advice when he says:

"We do not arrogate superior wisdom or intelligence to
ourselves when we suggest to the people of the United
States, and especially that portion of the country where
railroads have been the subject of what we consider to be
excessive legislation, that the rational mode of treating
any form of human industry that has for its object the
performance of desired and lawful service is to let it
alone, and that the railway is no exception to this
principle."

This is the very plea that Jefferson Davis made when he kindled the
flame of treason.

* * * * *

In the March, 1891, number of the _Forum_, Mr. W. M. Acworth discusses,
under the title "Railways under Government Control," the working of the
railway systems of the different nations. He holds that the management
of railroads which are the property of the State is, as a rule, greatly
inferior to the management of those roads which are the property of
private trading corporations; he assigns to the railway experts of
England and America the first places among the railway experts of the
world, and appears to attribute all the good in the railroad management
of these countries to the absence of State interference, and all the
evil in the management of the railroads of other countries to the fact
that such interference exists. He says of the railroads of England and
the United States:

"In speed and accommodation, in the energy which pushes
railways into remote districts, and in the skill which
creates a traffic where no traffic existed before, they
stand to-day in the front rank, as they have stood for the
last half century. To say that they are very far from
perfect is nothing; it is only to say that they are worked
by h