great length upon the first five mentioned reasons, but
too much could not be said on the sixth. It is now nearly seven years
since James McHenry of London (and New York, Pennsylvania & Ohio
Railway litigation fame) openly charged railway managers, in an
interview published in the _Sun_, with criminal collusion in the
matter of securing extraordinary privileges and unapproachable
contracts with their several corporations for favored fast freight
lines, express routes, bridge companies, etc., etc., in all the
benefits of which such managers shared to a very great extent. On that
occasion Mr. McHenry was promptly cried down. Would he be cried down
to-day?"

[10] Mr. John P. Meany, editor of Poor's Manual of Railroads,
in the New York _Sun_ of January 12, 1891.

As a rule, American railways pay the highest salaries in the world for
those engaged in directing business operations, but such salaries are
not paid because transcendant talents are necessary to conduct the
ordinary operations of railway administration, but for the purpose of
checkmating the chicanery of corporate competitors. In other words,
these exceptionally high salaries are paid for the purpose, and
because their recipients are believed to have the ability to hold up
their end in unscrupulous corporate warfare where, as one railway
president expressed it, "the greatest liar comes out ahead." With the
government operating the railways, there would be no conflicting
interests necessitating the employment of such costly officials whose
great diplomatic talents might well be dispensed with, while the
running of trains, and the conduct of the real work of operating the
roads, could be left to the same officials as at moderate salaries now
perform such duties, and consolidation of all the conflicting
interests in the hands of the government will enable the public to
dispense with the services of the high priced managers now almost
exclusively engaged in "keeping even with the other fellow," as well
as with the costly staffs assisting such managers in keeping even, and
the savings resulting may be estimated at from $4,000,000 to
$5,000,000 per year.

Government control will enable railway users to dispense with the
services of such high priced umpires as Mr. Aldace F. Walker, as well
as of all the other officials of sixty-eight traffic associations,
fruitlessly laboring to prevent each of five hundred corporations from
getting the start of its fe