none whose returns
in the aggregate are less varying. Every other business in the country,
whether prospering or struggling, pays tribute to it. It rests on a cash
basis, and suffers probably less from hard times than any business of
its magnitude. Both the merchant and the manufacturer run large risks in
doing business largely on a credit basis. The farmer sows in the spring,
harvests in the fall, and often cannot realize on his products until
winter; but the railroad company always receives its pay as soon as its
work is done, and not unfrequently even before it is done. Statistics
show that railroad revenues are, in the aggregate, remarkably uniform,
and there is no reason why railroad securities should be less stable
than bank or insurance stocks. Mr. Jeans says:

"It is observable, in respect to the net profits from
railway working, that they have not fluctuated from year to
year in the same way as nearly all other profits have
done.... It comes, then, to this, that, next after land and
house property, the railway interest is the largest and most
important in the country. But it is superior to both of
these rival interests in its profit-earning capabilities,
yielding, as it does, more than 4 per cent. on the capital
expended, against a possible average of 2-1/2 to 3 per cent.
in respect to the others."

There may be some arguments in favor of bonding railroads, but this
practice is, upon the whole, productive of infinitely more evil than
good. The State should, therefore, compel railroad companies to
liquidate all of their bonded indebtedness without unnecessary delay. In
the proportion in which this is accomplished railroad shares will gain
in stability and value.

Railroad men complain that the small savings of the poor invested in
railroad securities do not yield adequate returns and are often lost in
consequence of the foreclosing of the roads in which these investments
have been made. Others complain that railroads are bankrupted in the
interest of designing bondholders. Still others charge that rich and
powerful roads contrive to obtain a controlling interest in the
depreciated stock of weaker roads and then manage these roads in their
own interest and greatly to the detriment of other stockholders. All
these evils would disappear if the law required the identity of actual
and virtual ownership. "Freezing-out" processes could no longer be
resorte