The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1873-03-05
WEI N S Az 9vEN'r, MARCH 5, 1873
General Railroad Eaw.

work whenever an amount equal to $780,
900 per mile is subscribed and paid in.
This action on the part of the legislature of
that state has been taken independently Of
any outside pressure, but with view to
getting rid of the interminable wrangles
over special grants and charters, which
have occupied full one-half the time of the
legislature of New Jersey for the last four
or FIVE wears. The policy indicated by
this spontaneous action of that body is
one that has greatly relieved the
legislature of every state in which
it has been adopted and it is now the law
in most of the great railroad states of the
Union.
1t is idle to say that railroads cannot be
as well and advantageously built under
general law, suitably guarded in its pro.
Wis ons, as under special and privileged
charters. Almost every state has general
law provi6i g for the organ cation of jon :
stock companies of almost every descriI-
ton, and the effect has been to realize great
saving in expense and time to the state,
with large diminution in the number
of swindling companies which previously
sought existence under special grants and
privileges, with special leop-holes for ras-
cality to escape the clutches of the law.
No bona fide company, created for legiti-
mate business purposes, has ever found
any difficulty in organizing under these
general state laws {; and, generally, they
have been framed with such far-reaching
sagacity as to cover almost every case of
fraud which could possibly arise under
them.
And what is true OF these general laws
in regard to joint-stock associations may
be found equally true of and applicable to
railroads, and equally advantageous in
their construction and operation. The true
policy of the state is to leave railroad CAPT.
tai to the same open law of competition
which governs all other capital, in whatever
branch of industry it may seek investment.
No other interest is so securely protected
investment as the capital expended in the
construction of railroads. A line of road
once built secures to itself the largest pos
sible immunity, compatible at least with
the public good, against all competition
and rivalry by other and parallel lines Of
road. As long as an established line is
run in the interests of the public, and is dis
posed to extend all proper facilities to
other and naturally feeding and dis.
trbutng lines, there is no dan
ger that its franchise will be disturbed
By any such Improbable investment
as that seeking to divide traffic with
it, when its capacity is equal to ten times
the amount of business actually accommo-
dated by it. An enterprise costing forty
or fifty thousand dollars mile for con-
struction and equipment, before penny's
return can be realized in the way Of a re-
munerative profit, is not one that will be
undertaken every day in the year, nor by
every railroad king that leaps up to mil
lionare with the rapidity that Byron
became famous. Such petty "kings" are
are not generally such precpitate fools as
to rush in where even legitimate kings,
with the exchequer Of empires at their
command, would hesitate to tread.
If there is any species Of invested capi-
tai more thoroughly protected against i'm
proyident and ruinous competition than
another, it is that of railroads. The
whimpering pretence, therefore, that there
is danger to this great interest from such
general law as is found advantageously
applicable to capital invested in all other
great public undertakings, is childish in the
extreme, and has not particle of sense or
rason to support it. What would be
tn ught of the arge-minded men having
the management of the Tredegar Iron
Works, if they should come to the Legls-
lature with any such whimpering pretence
about threatened ruin to their great inter
ests, by general joint-stock law which
should authorize hundred other such es;ah-
lishments as theirs Such an appeal would
create regular guffaw in legislative cir
cles from one end of the Union to the
other and yet it would be no more child
ish and absurd than this out-c cry about the
destruction of chartered rights and inter-
ests IN respect to railroads.
But The Wing of this morning cries out
a ainst this system of free competition III
respect to railroads as one that will fright
fully impinge on "the sagacity and fore
sight" of Virginia's "world-honored
satesmen, who, from Washington and his
c mpatriots to those of this generation,
h Ne illustrated her annals and her legis a.
ito j wah rise and Vrginian system of
ifeinat improvements" Heaven save
tn mark! Spare US any compar-
son but that; for if there ever
was poor, hoodwinked, deluled state in
res )e,t to any system of internal improve
mems that a nine years old boy would
boa It of in district school debating soce-
ty, it is poor old Virginia, crippled and
pros rate under the system Of which The
Wing boasts.
And yet cur good neighbor insists that
the practice of the Northern and Western