would pay fare, adding immensely to
the revenues. Few have any conception of the proportion who
travel free, and half a century's experience renders it
doubtful if the evil--so much greater than ever was the
franking privilege--can be eliminated otherwise than by
national ownership. From the experience of the writer, as an
auditor of railway accounts, and as an executive officer
issuing passes, he is able to say that fully ten per cent.
travel free, the result being that the great mass of railway
users are yearly mulcted some thirty millions of dollars for
the benefit of the favored minority; hence it is evident
that if all were required to pay for railway services as
they are for mail services, the rates might be reduced ten
per cent, or more, and the corporate revenues be no less,
and the operating expenses no more. In no other
country--unless it be under the same system in Canada--are
nine-tenths of the people taxed to pay the traveling
expenses of the other tenth. By what right do the
corporations tax the public that members of Congress,
legislators, judges and other court officials and their
families may ride free? Why is it that when a legislature
is in session passes are as plentiful as leaves in the
forest in autumn?...

"The corporations have ineffectually wrestled with the
commission evil, and any number of agreements have been
entered into to do away with it; but it is so thoroughly
entrenched, and so many officials have an interest in its
perpetuation, that they are utterly powerless in the
presence of a system which imposes great and needless
burdens upon their patrons, but which will die the day the
Government takes possession of the railways, as then there
will be no corporations ready to pay for the diversion of
traffic.

"As a rule, American railways pay the highest salaries in
the world for those engaged in directing business
operations, but such salaries are not paid because
transcendent talents are necessary to conduct the ordinary
operations of railway administration, but for the purpose of
checkmating the chicanery of corporate competitors. In other
words, these exceptionally high salaries are paid for the
purpose, and because their recipients are believed t