The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1898-04-02
THE POWER OF RAILWAY MAG
MATES.


1t lies in the theory of modern soci-
ETY. that men should succeed or fail ac-
cording to their abilities. AS a matter
of fact, railway manager has it
within his power, through the manip-
ulation of rates, to make or to destroy;
to determine which persons in the COM
munity and which communities IN the
state shall attain commercial success,
and which shall struggle in vain for it's
attainment Suppose, for example,
that one cattle-dealer in Chicago is Sc
lected by pool of railways to control
the shipment of meats from Chicago to
the seaboard, and that, in order to Sc
cure him this control, he receives a
rate 10 per cent. less than the rates
charged other dealers; 1t is evident
that the favored shipper will quickly
destroy the business of other shippers
by bidding more for cattle than they
can afford to bid. Admitting that the
discrimination is not approved by COM
mon law, what remedy has the small
shipper which is sufficiently speedy in
it's action to rescue the business which
he observes to be slipping from him?
He has no remedy; and for this reason
it is essential that determinations of
the sort referred to should be made a
statutory misdemeanor, and that some
special method of procedure, more rap
id in it's operations than an ordinary
court, should be established to cause
! the railways to desist from their
| wrong dongs.
The merchant, them manufacturer,
| and the farmer, working under condi-
| lions of industrial liberty do not seem
| to require any peculiar supervision on
the part of the state for competition
is adequate to insure relative justice
| as between custom, as well as the sale
| of goods at a fair price. But in the
| railway industry competition does not
| work so beneficial a result. On the
| contrary, such is it's nature that it i'm
! poses upon railway managers the ne
cessity of disregarding equity between
customers, and Of fixing rates without
considering their fairness, whether
judged from the point of view of cost
or of social results. Were this not true
| there would be no railway problem.
But what, it will be asked, is there
peculiar about the business of trans
portation which renders it superior tt
the satisfactory control of competition
The railway industry is an extensive
and not an intensive industry. 1t con
forms to the law of increasing" re
turns rather than to the law of "con
slant or of diminishing" returns
This being the case, ability to perform
a unit of service cheaply depends NOR
upon the quantity of business trans
| acted than upon attention to minut
details Another way of saying tn
same thing is that the expenses Incl
dent to the operations of railway d
| not increase in proportion to the in
crease in the volume of traffic. AS a,
industrial fact, this does not pertai
| to the business of the manufacture
the merchant, or the farmer, but is pc
culiar to the business of transporta
ton; and it is adequate, when properl
, understood, to explain why all adyanc
ed peoples, without regard to the forr
of government they may have adopte
or the social theories they may enter
tain, have surrounded the administra
ton of railways with peculiar legal re
strictions. The necessity Of some sol
{ of government control lies in the ma
ture of the business itself.-Prof. H.
Adams, in the Atlantic.