as a matter of right
was long upheld by the courts,[2] nor have the judges even yet, after a
generation of revolt and of legislation, altogether abandoned this
doctrine.

The courts--reluctantly, it is true, and principally at the instigation
of the railways themselves, who found the practice unprofitable--have
latterly discountenanced discrimination as to persons, but they still
uphold discrimination as to localities.[3] Now, among abuses of
sovereign power, this is one of the most galling, for of all taxes the
transportation tax is perhaps that which is most searching, most
insidious, and, when misused, most destructive. The price paid for
transportation is not so essential to the public welfare as its
equality; for neither persons nor localities can prosper when the
necessaries of life cost them more than they cost their competitors. In
towns, no cup of water can be drunk, no crust of bread eaten, no garment
worn, which has not paid the transportation tax, and the farmer's crops
must rot upon his land, if other farmers pay enough less than he to
exclude him from markets toward which they all stand in a position
otherwise equal. Yet this formidable power has been usurped by private
persons who have used it purely selfishly, as no legitimate sovereign
could have used it, and by persons who have indignantly denounced all
attempts to hold them accountable, as an infringement of their
constitutional rights. Obviously, capital cannot assume the position of
an irresponsible sovereign, living in a sphere beyond the domain of law,
without inviting the fate which has awaited all sovereigns who have
denied or abused their trust.

The operation of the New York Clearing-House is another example of the
acquisition of sovereign power by irresponsible private persons.
Primarily, of course, a clearing-house is an innocent institution
occupied with adjusting balances between banks, and has no relation to
the volume of the currency. Furthermore, among all highly centralized
nations, the regulation of the currency is one of the most jealously
guarded of the prerogatives of sovereignty, because all values hinge
upon the relation which the volume of the currency bears to the volume
of trade. Yet, as everybody knows, in moments of financial panic, the
handful of financiers who, directly or indirectly, govern the
Clearing-House, have it in their power either to expand or to contract
the currency, by issuing or by withdrawing Clearing-Hou