red (and seemingly
proved) that he had acted only in retaliation and self-defence. As there
was no way of obtaining evidence from the shippers, in whose favour the
concessions had been made, it was impossible to sift out the truth. Each
Chairman or President could only say that he had entire confidence in
his own staff. There was no visible remedy except to discharge the
entire membership of the Traffic Departments of all the companies
simultaneously and get new men, to the number of several hundreds, who
would be no better able to accomplish the impossible than their
predecessors.

* * * * *

My reason for going into this, I fear, somewhat tedious narration is
that British distrust of American commercial honesty was originally
created, perhaps, more than by anything else, by the scandals which were
notoriously associated with the early history of railways in the United
States. It is not desired here either to insist on the occurrence of
those scandals or to palliate them. The point is that the conditions
which made those scandals possible (of which the incapacity on the part
of the North-western lines to keep faith with each other may be regarded
as symptomatic) were concomitants of a particular stage only in the
development of the country. Competition must always exist in any
business community; but in the desperate form of a breathless,
day-to-day struggle for bare existence it need only exist among railway
companies where lines have been built in excess of the needs of the
population. With the increase in population and the growth of trade the
asperity of the conditions necessarily becomes mitigated, until at last,
when the traffic has assumed proportions which will afford all
competitors alike a reasonable profit on their shares, the management
ceases to be exposed to any more temptation than besets the Boards of
the great British companies. Not a few railway companies in the United
States have arrived at that delectable condition--are indeed now more
happily circumstanced than any English company--and among them are some
the names of which, not many years ago, were mere synonyms for
dishonesty. In the North-western territory of which I have spoken the
fact that the current values of all railway shares had on the average
increased (until the occurrence of the financial crisis of the close of
1907) by about three hundred per cent. in the last ten years is
eloquent.

In the old days