tly increasing, and it is more than probable that
before the end of the present century it will have reached a million.
When it is considered what importance is at present attached to the
political influence of a hundred thousand Federal officers, it is not
surprising that conservative citizens should hesitate to add to the
ranks of these officeholders a six or seven times larger force.
Dangerous as the railroad influence now is in politics, it would be ten
times more dangerous if under a system of Government management
considerations of self-interest should induce a million railroad
employes to act as a political unit and political parties should vie
with each other in bidding for the railroad vote. Could our civil
service ever be so organized as to divest it entirely of political
power, state management of railroads might still offer the best solution
of the railroad problem.

Mr. T. B. Blackstone, president of the Chicago and Alton Railroad
Company, has recently created somewhat of a surprise by declaring in
favor of Government ownership of railroads. That Mr. Blackstone's
programme will eventually receive the approval of a large number of his
colleagues there can be but little doubt. With the people wide-awake
upon this subject, the opportunities for railroad speculation are
lessening, and the scheme to early unload the railroads of the country
on the Government at a highly inflated value speaks well for the
financial farsightedness of its author. Mr. Blackstone proposes to have
railroad stockholders do here what the former owners of the telegraph
did in Great Britain, _i. e._, dispose of their property to the
Government, at a price representing several times its original cost or
even several times the cost of duplication.

Mr. C. Wood Davis, formerly general freight and passenger agent of one
of the leading roads east from Chicago, is one of the best informed and
clearest-headed writers upon the railroad question. He has, after much
experience and long study, been converted to the advocacy of national
ownership as a solution of the railroad problem. In a recent article
published by the Arena Publishing Company, entitled "Should the Nation
own the Railways?" he presents the objections and advantages of national
ownership. He says:

"The objections to national ownership are many, that most
frequently advanced, and having the most force, being the
possibility that, by reason of its control of a va