, in
either case, upon recognition of responsibility. Only the relation of
master and slave implies the status of sovereign power vested in an
unaccountable superior. Nevertheless, it is in a relation somewhat
analogous to the latter, that the modern capitalist has been placed
toward his fellow citizens, by the advances in applied science. An
example or two will explain my meaning.

High among sovereign powers has always ranked the ownership and
administration of highways. And it is evident why this should have been
so. Movement is life, and the stoppage of movement is death, and the
movement of every people flows along its highways. An invader has only
to cut the communications of the invaded to paralyze him, as he would
paralyze an animal by cutting his arteries or tendons. Accordingly, in
all ages and in all lands, down to the nineteenth century, nations even
partially centralized have, in their corporate capacity, owned and cared
for their highways, either directly or through accountable agents. And
they have paid for them by direct taxes, like the Romans, or by tolls
levied upon traffic, as many mediaeval governments preferred to do.
Either method answers its purpose, provided the government recognizes
its responsibility; and no government ever recognized this
responsibility more fully than did the autocratic government of ancient
Rome. So the absolute regime of eighteenth-century France recognized
this responsibility when Louis XVI undertook to remedy the abuse of
unequal taxation, for the maintenance of the highways, by abolishing the
corvee.

Toward the middle of the nineteenth century, the application, by
science, of steam to locomotion, made railways a favorite speculation.
Forthwith, private capital acquired these highways, and because of the
inelasticity of the old law, treated them as ordinary chattels, to be
administered for the profit of the owner exclusively. It is true that
railway companies posed as public agents when demanding the power to
take private property; but when it came to charging for use of their
ways, they claimed to be only private carriers, authorized to bargain as
they pleased. Indeed, it grew to be considered a mark of efficient
railroad management to extract the largest revenue possible from the
people, along the lines of least resistance; that is, by taxing most
heavily those individuals and localities which could least resist. And
the claim by the railroads that they might do this