uman agency. Their worst enemies will scarcely deny that
they are at least alive; so long as there is life there may
be growth, and we may hope to see them outgrow the faults of
their youth. The charge made against State railway systems
is that they are incapable of vigorous life. The old adage
which proclaimed that 'necessity is the mother of invention'
has been re-stated of late years as the law of the survival
of the fittest in the struggle for existence. If the
doctrine is true, the State railway system, relieved from
the necessity of struggle, must cease to be fit and will
fail to survive."

While it is not intended to enter here into a defense of a State railway
system, it may justly be questioned whether "the State railway system,
relieved from the necessity of struggle, must cease to be fit and will
fail to survive." The growth of the State system in Europe is in itself
a sufficient refutation of Mr. Acworth's theory. The mail service has
for several hundred years been a monopoly of the government; but, while
it is far from being perfect, it remains to be demonstrated that private
enterprise could give to the public a better service in the long run.

Mr. Acworth is an Englishman who in former years wrote many bitter
things concerning the abuses which he then thought he saw in the
management of the railroads of his native country, which, according to
his own statement, are, besides those of the United States, the only
roads in the world for whose regulation competition has been relied upon
in the past. Mr. Acworth has become a convert to the _laissez faire_
theory of dealing with railroads and now evinces an unusual, but perhaps
pardonable, zeal in the defense of his new position. In the preface to
his book, "The Railways of England," he says upon the subject:

"I have published before now not a few criticisms (which
were meant to be scathing) on English railways anonymously.
I find myself using, under my own name, the language of
almost unvarying panegyric. This is partly to be explained
by the plan of the book, which professes to set before the
reader those points on each line which best merit
description--its excellencies, therefore, rather than its
defects. Much more, however, is it due to a change of
opinion in the writer.... I have found in so many cases that
a satisfactory reply existe