The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-03-28
RAILWAY INFL UENOE.

IHE rnpld increase IN tne humDef anu
length of the railways of the United States is
commonly and justly regarded as one OF the
most conclusive evidences of national pros
perity, and of the speedy development of the
beundless resources Of the nation. The inn
agination may well be dazzled by the magni-
tude and utility of their vast operations.
Men can never cease wondering at the ease
with which journeys that formerly consumed
months are now performed in as many days;
at the immense tonnage carried by some of
the leading railways; at the celebrity
with which fast freight is conveyed between
distant points; and at the browning triumph
by which trip across the continent is made
in less than a week. The thoughtful observer
of the signs of the times, however, may well
pause to inquire whether the many benefits
conferred by the railways are not accompanied
by a serious danger. For veal or
for woe power is being concentrated
in the hands of few railway managers with
q rapidity that is only paralleled by the rapid
extension of the railway lines. They are not
only gaining control of the questions which
affect the interests of the gigantic corpora
tons they represent, but, in insuring this
end, they are acquiring absolute supremacy
over every branch of the Government. Poll
tics is becoming the mere plaYthing of these
powerful monarchs, and they hold legislators,
Congressman, Governors, and Senators of both
parties in the most abject vassalage New
Jersey has notoriously been enthralled for
years by one powerful corporation, and her
position is becoming the rule rather than the
,.olo unolt he
One by one they succumb to the iron grip
of railway managers, and the people are COM
PEELED to contemplate the melancholy specta-
Gle of the last remnants of independence
fading away from their State governments.
Instead of laws being made in the public
interest, the prime duty of the modern
legislator is to dance attendance in railway
Offices and to obtain in such quarters the
directions and rewards which control his
action. The National Government was for
merly free from these influences, but since
the completion of one railway across the con-
tinent and the commencement of several
others, and the agitation in Congress of mul-
tifarious schemes in the old States, the rail-
way kings have acquired power in
Washington scarcely less potential than that
which they WELD at the State capitals. AS
matters are now progressing, after few
years more have elapsed, there will be little
or nothing for conventions and elections to
decide except who shall be the subservient
slaves of gigantic railway corporations, and
these in turn will be so thoroughly inter
locked and consolidated that their entire
policy will be prescribad by loss than
a dozen of the leading rail-
way men of the country. Of all
the forms in which the old story of power
being transferred from the hands of the many
into the hands of the few could be repeated
in the United States, the one which is now
the most threatening would have seemed to
our ancestors the least dangerous. But this
danger is at this juncture thousand-fold
more imminent than any other species of
assault upon the wonted ascendancy of the
people. They have nothing to fear
from military chieftains or kings OF
the European stamp, but when they see judges
chosen to expound the laws, legislators who
make them, and Governors elected to execute
them, converted into lackeys of the lords OF
the locomotive, they may well pause to
inquire how long faint semblance of bona
! tide self government can be maintained. The
benefits that railways confer have con-
tributed largely to produce the present and
impending position. Whole communities
become SO eager to obtain full share of their
advantages that they do not stop to count
the cost or to scrutinize the terms attached to
the proffered boons 1t remains to be seen
how long this Indifference will continue, but
we shall not be astonished if the day is neal
at hand when every direct or indirect en-.
eroachment upon popular rights which may
be attempted by railway managers will be
sternly resisted The people are slumberins
now, but they will not slumber forever; anc
after they are fully aroused it will become as
difficult for railway managers to acquire un
challenged ascendancy here as it is in othel
countries. lr