t they scarcely deserve refutation. The
railroad, gradually developed by active minds of the past, and greatly
improved by the inventions of hundreds of men in the humbler walks of
life, is the common inheritance of all mankind, though no class of
people have derived greater benefits from it than railroad constructors,
managers and manipulators. Railroad managers are no more entitled to
the special gratitude of the public for dispensing railroad
transportation at much more than remunerative rates than is the Western
Union monopoly for maintaining among us an expensive and inefficient
telegraph service. No one believes that the disbanding of the Western
Union would leave us long without telegraphic communication. In like
manner railroads will be built whenever and wherever they promise to be
profitable. If one company does not take advantage of the opportunities
offered, another will. That large cities have been built up by the
railroads is true, but it is equally true that these cities by their
commerce and manufactures administer to the prosperity of the railroads
as much as the railroads administer to theirs. Commercial centers in
days gone by existed without railroads, but railroads could not long
exist without the stimulating influence of these busy marts of trade.
The same argument applies with still greater force to the agricultural
sections of our country, especially the great Northwest. The dry-goods
merchant might as well boast of having clad the public as the railroad
manager of having built up farming communities by selling to them
transportation.

And yet the American people have never ceased to be mindful of the
conveniences afforded to them by this modern mode of transportation. On
the contrary, they have been but too prone to credit railroad men with
being benefactors, when they were but beneficiaries, and this liberality
of spirit made them overlook, or at least tolerate, the abuses which
grew proportionately with the wealth and power of the companies.

The first railroad acts of England had contemplated to make the roads
highways, like turnpikes and canals. These roads were established by the
power of eminent domain. Companies were empowered to build and maintain
them and to reimburse themselves by the collection of fixed tolls. Had
the owners of the roads from the beginning been deprived of the
privilege of becoming carriers over their own lines, the system might
have so adjusted itself as to become e