Sacramento daily record-union., 1881-03-11
RAILROAD CONSOLIDATION.

RAILROAD CONSOLIDATION
The alarm which is Just now being ex-
hibited at the East because of the recent
advance made in railroad consolidation
only serves to indicate that the railroad |
question has not been more carefully stud
led at New York than by the Western
Grangers. There is in fact nothing in the
agitation that has not been thoroughly ex-
plotted years ago, and it is merely fresh
instance of history repeating itself. 1t is,
nevertheless, satire upon the boasted en-
lightenment of the times, and damag-
ing exposure Of the defects of modern edu-
cational agencies, that the men who are
now denouncing railroad consolidation as a
menace to republican institutions do not
know that they are repeating stale and ex-
ploded fallacies, and that the problem
with which they think themselves doomed
TO wrestle, as with a new creation, is not
only old. but has been completely worked
out in other countries.
This terrifying monster Consolidation ap-
peared to the British public some twenty
years ago in much the same lurid hues it
has presented to the New York people.
The British public then thought, as some
Americans think now, that the consolida-
ton of great railroad interests must lead
to the erection of an overshadowing power,
which would control Parliament, laugh at
legislation, and bind the people hand and
foot in a new kind of slavery. The sub
iect was agitated with the usual hys.
terical camor, and all the stale claptrap
about corporation greed ard tyranny and
soullessness was fully employed. The
public worked itself into perfect fever
over the matter, and Parliament was urged
to take prompt and vigorous measures for
chaining the new Frankenstein monster.
By degrees however it was found that con-
solidation did not produce any of the evils
which had been anticipated from it. The
consolidated companies were discovered to
be just as amenable to the law as the un.
consolidated companies had been. Instead
of the elimination of competition pro-
ducing calamitous results, it produced dis
tinctly beneficial results. 1t began to be
perceived that consolidation had led to
increased sense of responsibility in the
railroad managers that the service had
been greatly improved by the change that
the rates of freight and fare had been re-
duced instead of raised that the elimina.
ton of competition had enabled the corpo-
rations to invest more capital in legitimate
ways upon the improvement of their prop.
erty; and that in short all the conse.
quences were good and not evil.
At the present time over two-thirds of
all the railroads of the United Kingdom
are operated by four corporations. each of
which represents a great consolidation. 1t
is the universal opinion of authoritative
judges that the railroad system of Great
Britain has never been so well, SO economi-
cally, 80 reasonably managed, as since
these consultations took place; and what
makes the present agitation in New York
the more preposterous is that all these
facts were long ago gathered and printed
for the special use of the American people,
by no less competent an authority on rail-
road matters than Charles Francis Adams,
Jr. That gentleman, in a little book
published some four years ago, discussed
this very question of consolidation thor
oughly, and showed from the experience of
England and other countries that the pop
ular notions in regard to it were erroneous
and misleading. The facts and arguments
which he then presented are in all respects
as cogent as when he collated them, and
they constitute complete and conclusive
refutation of all the loose and reckless
statements which have lately been made
on the platform by agitators, demagogues,
and generally ignorant persons.
Experience proves that consolidation is
not an intensi6cation of existing evils and
abuses, but remedy and cure for very
many of them. The fundamental fallacy
of all anti-railroad agitation is the notion
that railroads are not run upon ordinary
business principles. That fallacy mast be
disposed of before rational view of the
subject can be obtained, but it seems
necessary for every community to learn the
alphabet of railroad matters for itself, no
matter what conclusions have been reached
elsewhere through actual experiment. All
the wild talk about corporate greed and
rapacity may be disposed of by anyone who
will take the trouble to examine the Stats
tics of railroading in the United States
for the past ten years. For these statistics
show that the tendency has been steadily
towards the reduction of rates that this
reduction has always followed every con-
solidation movement; and that the public
have invariably profted by the extinction
of competition as between trunk lines.
The railroad problem in fact will solve
itself if it is left to itself, and all attempts
to solve it by coercive legislation must re-
suit in deferring the advantages sought, in
corrupting the Government, in disseminat-
ing the poison of communistic doctrines, and
in hampering investment and commerce.
AS, moreover, the tendency toward con-
solidation of railroad interests is accom-
panied by an equally strong tendency to-
wards the diffusion of corporate securities,
it follows that these anti-railroad agitations
strike at larger sections of the community
every time The truth is that it is the
American people themselves who own the
railroads and the telegraphs and all the
cornorate nronertv of the countrv and