Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1888-08-18

responsibility, and consequently no division
OF power. The safety of passengers abb
solutely demands military system of per
fect and unquestioning obedience
Railroads have made the rapid develop
ment of our great country possible. There
Is uniformity in the history of that de-
velopment which is interesting and in
structiVe. AT first new State cannot do
enough to attract capital to come and
build roads. Grants of lands, of immu-
nifty from taxation, of municipal bonds,
OF rights of way, and even of money
these show how fully the people under
stand their absolute dependence upon rail-
roads. But when these have been ac-
cepted, the capital from the East has been
finally and permanently invested, and the
road Is in full operation, then gradually a
feeling of intense antagonism springs up.
Those who should be friends, whose inter
ests are identical, become enemies. No
doubt the fault exists very largely in the
railroads themselves. But the feeling that
displays itself in legislative antagonism, in
Judicial narrowness, and in the popular
hostility which finds its constant vent in
the jury-box, is little to the credit of an in
telligent and high-minded people.
The troubles with employees may prob
ably be considered as settled-at least I'M
til bitter experience is forgotten. For the
strike, as an instrument for lettering the
condition of the employee, is now an ad-
mitted failure. For a number of years
there has been but one result-iniury to
the road and ruin to the men. And Just
here 1t Is well for us to remember that
wages have been for years increasing and
railroad profits diminishing. Roads which
used to pay bonded interest of seven and
eight per cent. now pay only four or FIVE,
but there has been no corresponding in
crease in dividends. On the contrary sta
tlstlcs show that the average of railroad
dividends in the country has gone down
about one per cent. since 1880. Roads
which then paid six per cent. now pay five
with difficulty, notwithstanding the fact
that interest charges are largely reduced.
Compensation to employees has increased,
and yet the cost of living is rather less
than in 1880.
The object of this paper is chiefly to
protest against the notion that the railroad
Is child of the people, subject in all re-
spects to the peoples will, and to insist
that 1t Is just as much property as any
other kind of investment. The writer
would suffer as little as most people if the
the Government, National or State, were
to undertake to steal the railroads, as the
Italian Government stole the property of
corporations of an entirely different kind.
But attacks upon railroads in the Legis-
lature cannot fail to operate most dis
astrously on the holders of their securities,
and very many of these holders are per-
sons of small means. a few years ago it
occurred to some great capitalists in New
York (for the mind of the capitalist works
strangely at tines that great deal of
money could be made in building a
parallel road to the New York Central.
1t was built, and the inevitable crash
came, deeper and more terrible because the
folly of the enterprise was so stupendous
At the end the bloated bondholders "
were invited to come and receive from the
wreck, in full of all demands, Just one
half of their investments, in new bonds.
And they came, mostly farmers along the
line, and some of them old men, handing
in their five and six bonds with trembling
hands, and begging, before they consented
to the new arrangement, that they might
not be deceived, for what they brought was
all the savings of lifetime. The story is
no exceptional one. Railroads are built
with the peoples money. When the story
of railroad reorganizations comes to be
told, it will be found that it is not the la
boring man or the railroad employee who
has suffered. For them our Courts have
invented and enforced peculiar principles
OF law, preferring their debts to those Sc
cured by mortgages on all the property
The sufferers are the bondholders, mostly
people of very moderate means, whose
little savings have been too often swept
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