Sacramento daily record-union., 1883-09-15

reduction in rates and the increased mile.
age that would flow from such consum.
nation. But no sooner is such thing
mentioned than the red flag of opposition
is hung out. We admit that the treatment
of the question of railroad crusades, a
cited in the outset, is philosophical but
we do not believe the right conclusion is
drawn in one respect. As we read the
history of the country, the rabid anti
railroad movement has resulted in much
damaging legislation, but it has done more
injury to the States indulging in it than to
the companies against which directed. In
most of the States where the fever has
sue@ded this fact has dawned upon the
people, while in those States where con.
servatism has prevailed the condition is
one of higher prosperity and more con.
servative relations between the transport
ers and the shippers, and as result COM
merce has in those localities been stimu-
lated. For fear that railroad corporations
might become oligarchies, there has been
substituted for an effort at just control a
system of persecution, with tendency to
destroy values and cripple efficiency.
This has led some to denounce rail-
roads as the enemies of public
liberty, as was done recently in the
French Chamber of Deputies, when
in fact, as Bishop O'Connor has shown SO
lucidly, every interest of railroad corpora
tions must be bound up with civil liberty,
and the broadcast freedom compatible with
republican institutions-in short, railroads
binding the country together are conserya.
tive ties and bonds that will not permit the
nation to be discovered, for they tend to
unity the interests of all the people, and
make the men and women of the nation
akin. We have it on the statement of a
distinguished English authority that un-
just interference with capital and the man.
agement of roads is increasing in England,
and is rendering railroading less desirable
there. There, it is prophesied, railroad
property promises to be put on an inclined
plane with dishonesty at the top and con-
fiscation at the bottom" In France Leroy
Beaulieu is translated by the New York
Post as saying that the growing hostility to
corporations is based on delusion, and is
doing great mischief He alleges that two
great railroads in Italy have been
ruined by hostile legislation, and that a
like cause in Spain has deprived that
country of 5000 miles of line it sorely
needs, capital having been driven from its
proposed construction. In France, even
street railroads in one place have been
forced into bankruptcy, and in Paris their
construction ia so circumscribed by hos
tility, that it is the most ll.supplied
city with tramways in the world.
Bsaulieu has not a grain of faith in the
doctrine that there is any danger in great
corporations, because the shares are small
in amount and widely difused. While
his field of view is not extended TO Amer.
lea, where the conditions are somewhat
different, his conclusion will epply here.
The fear that the corporation carriers of
the country will Bubvert the liberties Of
the people is absurd, and not justified by
any evidences. Nor will the unprejudiced
mind entertain any fear that the corpora
tions will, even if they desired, be per.
mitted by their own interests to impoverish
and Cypress the people. The highest pros
perity of the people of all the country is
the interest of the carrier, who thrives
best when the people thrive best. So, as
our New York contemporary concludes,
sit is no more likely that corporations
will work the ruin of any modern Govern
ment than that any modern Government
will persist in policy of hostility to
aggregated capital after it has plainly
appeared that the result is to
frighten capital and chill enterprise. :"
And we may add our own belief, which is
that the day of the anti-railroad fanatic is
rapidly passing, and thst the country is
coming TO that state where the relations to
be established between the great carriers
and the State governments will be har-
monious and friendly, and when conserva.
tive legislation will take the place of polit-
ical raneor and the mad demagogy of
masking reformers. This must be, else
our civilization is failure, and the popu.
lar estimate of the business sense OF the
country q delusion.