mous. Railways alone cost
hundreds of millions for equipment and service, and there are periods
when commerce slackens and earnings fall away. It is easier to cut
wages than to postpone improvements or to raise freight or passenger
rates. In the United States an interstate commerce commission
regulates rates, but questions of wages and hours of labor are between
the management and the men. Friction frequently develops, and
hostility in the past has produced labor organizations that are well
knit and powerful, so that the railroad man has succeeded in securing
fair treatment, but there are other branches of transportation service
where the servants of the public find their labor poorly paid and
precarious in tenure. Teamsters and freight-handlers find conditions
hard; sailors and dock-hands are often thrown out of employment. Whole
armies of transportation employees have been enrolled since
trolley-lines and automobile service have been organized. Fewer
persons drive their own horses and vehicles, and many who walked to
and from business or school now ride. Transportation service has been
vastly extended, but there are continually more people to be
accommodated, and motor-men, conductors, and chauffeurs to be adjusted
to wage scales and service hours.

214. =Monopoly.=--A persistent tendency in transportation has been
toward monopoly. Express service between two points becomes controlled
by a single company, and the charges are increased. A street-railway
company secures a valuable city franchise, lays its tracks on the
principal streets, and monopolizes the business. Service may be poor
and fares may be raised, unless kept down by a railroad commission,
but the public must endure inconvenience, discomfort, and oppression,
or walk. Railroad systems absorb short lines and control traffic over
great districts; unless they are under government regulation they may
adjust their time schedules and freight charges arbitrarily and impose
as large a burden as the traffic will bear; the public is helpless,
because there is no other suitable conveyance for passengers or
freight. It is for these reasons that the United States has taken the
control of interstate commerce into its own hands and regulated it,
while the States have shown a disposition to inflict penalties upon
recalcitrant corporations operating within State boundaries. It is the
policy of government, also, to prevent control of one railroad by
another, to the added in