Litchfield enquirer., 1871-12-07
lFrom the New Englander.l RAILWAYS AND THE STATE.

RAILWAYS AND THE STATS.
 II.
 The question is for the people-not foI railroad presidents and directors, nor on ly for holders of railroad stock, whether fortunate or unfortunate. MT. Bishop, in one of his speeches, intimated tha. there are mysteries which ordinary minds cannot penetrate, but which are revealed to railroad hierophants ''The gentleman, ' he said-meaning one who had put to him an inconyenient fact-ssdoes not under. stand railroad matters. It is not possible for layman to do it." But Mir. Bishop and all others of that clerisy may be as- sured that the inquiry now proposed IS one on which the laity will use their right of private judgment; and that the more they find of mystery in railroad matters, and the more they are warned that cer- tain questions are too high for them, the more earnestly will they inquire how the state is to be rescued from subjection to a railroad heirachy We look with becom- ing awe upon the great experts in railway management. We do not invade the trans cendal region of their mysteries. We ad- dress the laity, and we deal only with mat ters which the people can understand.
 L In the inquiry how railroads are to be managed and what are the powers and duties of the state in relation to them, it must not be forgotten that the problem to be solved is new. Railroads are a novel ty; and the part which they are to have in the progress of civilization is only be- ginning to appear. A railroad corporation differs from all other corporations in the nature and extent of the power entrusted to it; and therefore, it's relations to the commonwealth and to government, are such as no other corporation ever held. Many a tradition of the lawyers, many a political maxim, founded on long expert ence, must be set aside in dealing with this problem. Steam navigation IS chang ing the commerce of the world; but, whether on the oceans or on lakes and rivers, 1t Is only an accelerated navigation. In it's bearings on political and interna- tional questions there is nothing new, its only peculiarity being it's rate of speed and it's independence of wind and tide. Transportation of goods or of passengers in vessels propelled by steam IS as inca pablo of becoming monopoly as trans portation in vessels moved by wind. Combination among owners of steamships is possible just as far as combination is possible among owners of cotton mills or owners of coal mines, and no farther. But railways, as the possibilities of legis- lation concerning them are now under stood-are in this respect exceptional. The ownership of them is not like the ownership of canals for navigation, nor like the ownership of turnpike roads. When the corporation chartered by the state has laid down it's track and con- pleted it's equipment, it begins to be a new and anomalous power; and whatever internal revolutions the corporation may experience whatever method the orig inal shareholders may be busted of their property, while more astute bondholders or other new owners come into possession
 the institution-the ''road"- continual ly becomes more powerful The state will soon begin to find that, like the suc- cessful yet unfortunate experimenter in the story of Frankenstein, it has created a monster which it cannot control All leg islation about railways hitherto has been (at least in our country) @ series of experi- ments working toward the solution of a problem entirely new. The novelty of the problem was not appreciated at first; but it is manifest now.
 11s tied that railways are to be planned, con- structed, held, and managed by voluntary associations under charters of incorpora- tion. A few experiments have been made in another direction, but the result has not tended to show that either state or municipality is competent to construct with judicious economy, or to man. age wisely, any considerable line of railway. A new era in what Americans call politics must begin-the miserable doctrine of rotation in office must be thoroughly exploded, and with it the cor. relate doctrine that all public employ. ments are to be distributed as prizes among political partizans, or as the legit- innate reward of services rendered to the party-before the government either of Q state or of a city can safely attempt to manage by its own officials such an insti- tuition as railroad. The underlying ides of our political institutions is the idea that individual liberty must be guarded and therefore we are careful to limit the functions of government. Socialism would merge the citizens in the State, and would so organize society as to leave no room for competition or for individual enter. prise. The American theory of the repub. lie requires that the government shall not undertake the burthen of doing what can be as we'll done by the spontaneity of in. dividuals or by citizens voluntarily asso. ciated for the purpose. We must have 8 larger experience than we have yet had o1 mischief and disaster from the misman. agement of railroads, before the Ameri- can people will believe that railroads can be constructed and managed better by the government, than by corporations respon- sible to the government and under its in spection.
 III. The tendency of connecting lines to consolidation, of competing or parallel lines to combination, and of the entire system of railroads to unity, cannot be resisted. Attempts to legislate against that tendency are futile. Perhaps what we have already told about the rail way history of Connecticut is enough or this point; but some facts we happen te remember which illustrate the progress oi popular intelligence. The time was wher a break in an otherwise continuous line o1 railway communication was thought te be benefit worth contending for. Wher it was proposed to make a railroad from Hartford to Springfield, many citizens oi Hartford were alarmed lest 1t should bt merely an extension of the road which haG recently been constructed to that point from New Haven, in which case traveller and freight would pass through their city without paying tribute to the hack-driver' and the draymen; and a public meeting was held to take measures against SC great an evil as the possibility of running train of cars all the way from Spring field to New Haven. That, some may say, was long ago; but it is not more thar twenty-four years since there was, at tn, city of Rochester. mile of hiatus be tween the railway from the east and tn, railway toward the west. Alta later period unless our memory deceives us, it was point in the policy of Pennsylvania tha certain railroads, meeting in the city o Erie, should not form any such connec ton as would permit trains to pass iron one to the other. In all such cases tn, convenience of travellers and the exigen cies of commerce have over-ruled the sup posed interests and the selfish opposition of particular localities. Nobody doubt now, even in Hartford, that continuou [.