ties on its
line a statement showing that at the then price of labor and
materials--rails were double the present price--their road
could be duplicated for $9,685 per mile, and, the materials
being much worn, the actual cash value of the road did not
exceed $7,725 per mile.

"In 1885 the superintendent of the St. Louis and Iron
Mountain Railway, before the Arkansas State Board of
Assessors, swore that he could duplicate such a railway for
$11,000 per mile, and yet Mr. Gould has managed to float its
securities, notwithstanding a capitalization of five times
that amount."

Among the advantages to be derived from Government ownership he names
the following:

"First would be the stability and practical uniformity of
rates, now impossible, as they are subject to change by
hundreds of officials, and are often made for the purpose of
enriching such officials....

"It would place the rate-making power in one body, with no
inducement to act otherwise than fairly and impartially, and
this would simplify the whole business and relegate an army
of traffic managers, general freight agents, soliciting
agents, brokers, scalpers and hordes of traffic association
officials to more useful callings, while relieving the
honest user of the railway of intolerable burdens.

"Under corporate control, railways and their officials have
taken possession of the majority of mines which furnish the
fuel so necessary to domestic and industrial life, and there
are few coal fields where they do not fix the price at which
so essential an article shall be sold, and the whole nation
is thus forced to pay undue tribute.

"Controlling rates and the distribution of cars, railway
officials have driven nearly all the mine owners, who have
not railways or railway officials for partners, to the wall.

"With the Government operating the railways, discriminations
would cease, as would individual and local oppression; and
we may be sure that an instant and absolute divorce would be
decreed between railways and their officials on one side,
and commercial enterprises of every name and kind on the
other.

"The failure to furnish equipment to do the business of the
tributary country promptly is one of the greater evils of