anticipations. As a matter of fact the transportation was conducted solely by the railway company. Even in those countries which earnestly endeavored to enforce the provisions, legislation was impotent to check the natural tendency. There were weighty reasons which did and always must militate against the success of any such scheme.

The most obvious objection, of course, is the technical one. The technical character of the railway undertaking renders it imperative to have unity of administration. If every shipper could run his own trains, it would be almost impossible to preserve order or avoid serious accidents. The private trains would have no means of enjoying terminal or other conveniences, and if the railway company were compelled to afford these conveniences, it would soon display such power of annoying the private shippers as to render the plan nugatory. At a time when the engineers were grappling with the problem and devising schemes for allowing two trains to pass each other on a single track, the project of competition between private locomotives might be plausible; to-day it is unintelligible and absurd. Entirely apart, moreover, from the objection of technical impracticability, is the vital difficulty of increased expense. The cost of service would be so enormously increased as to result in higher, not in lower, charges. All shippers would not be large shippers. The number of those who could despatch a train with forty cars would be exceedingly limited. The result would be the necessity of ten engines for small trains where one now suffices, as well as a vast increase in the extent and facilities of the terminals and a proportionate increase in operating expenses. The control of transportation is indissolubly bound up with the control of the roadbed.

But secondly, the scheme would not cure the great evils of the present system. What is sought is the abolition of unjust discrimination. It is difficult to see how free competition of the carriers would effect this. The railway would still be empowered to charge tolls, but it is impossible, as has been shown in the preceding essay, that these tolls should be alike for all classes or distances. The expenses of the pri

vate trains would of course be proportional to cost of service; the cheap goods would be more expensive to transport than the dear goods. In order, therefore, to render the transportation of cheap or distant articles at all possible, the tolls would have to vary in a large degree in their favor.1 According to the principle of value of service it would be requisite to have classification and local discrimination in tolls, as in the turnpike and canal tolls, but in a necessarily increased proportion. The private shippers of coal, e.g., would have to defray not only the operating expenses proper but also the fixed charges representing the capital invested in the rolling stock; the railway company, on the other hand, could afford to transport this coal at lower rates, because it could compensate by charging higher rates on other traffic which is better able to pay. Under a régime of competition of carriers, therefore, it will be necessary to differentiate the tolls correspondingly unless the present traffic in cheap or distant goods is to be entirely stopped. The discriminations represented by the tolls would be precisely equal to the present discriminations in the total rates. To fix the tolls by law would not mend matters, for if the law can successfully fix tolls, it can equally well fix the total charges as imposed at present. The principle involved is the same. if the extent of tolls is left to the discretion of the railway companies, then the condition of affairs is not improved a whit. The difficulties of regulation according to a well-digested system would not be diminished.

But

But thirdly, it is very probable that abuses would be engendered far worse than any which exist. There would be such an evident gain in the larger shippers combining to lessen running expenses that before long competition would again forcedly result in combination. This would practically intensify personal discriminations. The large shippers might through combination reduce the charges to a minimum, and, not being common carriers, would refuse to take the goods of the smaller shippers. The latter would thus be put at an immense disad

1 Mr. Hudson proposes equal mileage tolls (Railways and the Republic, p. 397). But the impracticability and inadvisability of this have already been shown.

vantage, while now they have at least an equal right to insist on transportation. If it be objected that the small shippers might also combine, the answer is that the practical difficulties in the way would be well-nigh insuperable; and that even if they were overcome we should no longer have the condition of free competition between the carriers. The very basis of the argument would fall away.

The legitimacy of such a conclusion is emphasized by the history of the English railways. For there, as in other countries, we find vestiges of an arrangement which is only a slight variation of the scheme proposed. That is, although we do not find cases of competition between carriers who own their locomotives, there have been instances of competition between shippers who own their own cars. This is technically known as the principle of separation of traction and carrier.1 The most striking example of the inadequacy of the remedy suggested is seen in the case of the coal companies. Each of these as a rule owned its own cars. Yet the result of the competition has been the building up of a few gigantic monopolies to the exclusion of the smaller shippers. The agglomerated companies always succeeded in procuring better facilities in the way of storage of coal, etc., in the depots than the isolated small shippers, and the inevitable tendency has reasserted itself. So far has this process been carried as to practically preclude small shippers from sending coal without the consent of the larger companies.2 Separation between motor and carrier would aggravate, not diminish, the abuses.

So incisive are the arguments against free competition of carriers that every careful scientific investigation of the question has abundantly proved the fruitlessness of the scheme. Already in 1839 an English committee reported, after an extensive review of the facts, that such a plan was no less undesirable than impracticable. In 1844 Gladstone's committee repeated the

1 Or of "motor" and carrier.

2 Cf. Royal Commission (1866), Evid. qu. 12,502-12,519; ibid. (1865), qu. 9772 et seq., 9853 et seq. Already in 1853 we find the same tendency. Cf. Joint Select Committee (1853), Fifth Report, pp. 201-206.

8 Select Committee on Railways (1839), Second Report.

elaborate refutation.1 But the attempt to enforce this competition was nevertheless found in the charters. Cardwell's committee of 1853 still discussed the project.2 But from that time the clauses in the charter were regarded as mere archaic curiosities. The Duke of Devonshire's commission abandoned the fiction once and for all. In Chichester Fortescue's committee the efforts of the early legislation are reviewed with a grim sarcasm; and, finally, in Mr. Ashley's recent committee the whole matter is not even deemed worthy of separate mention.5

But although England had been radically cured of her early misconceptions, ignorance of English experience led to a revamping of the old doctrines on the continent. The matter was taken up at the close of the sixties in Germany, and for several years would-be reformers and even economic congresses sounded the praises of the new panacea. It became, as has been wittily remarked, the enfant terrible of the railway question in Germany and Austria. Thrown out of one window, it came bobbing in at the next.7 Book after book was written to explain the advantages of the system, but science and commonsense again triumphed, and to-day the project is considered as definitely laid to rest. Yet scarcely has the matter been finally decided on the continent when we are called upon to go over the same tedious ground in the United States. Here too the plan is elaborately set forth with a naive confidence in its

1 Select Committee (1844), p. 19, Appendix to Evidence.

2 Joint Select Committee (1853), Fifth Report, p. 8: "In theory the railway is like a common highway; in practice, no one can carry upon a railway but the owners of the line."

3 Royal Commission (1867), Report, § 7.

4 "Committees and commissioners, carefully chosen, have for the last thirty years clung to one form of competition after another," etc. Select Committee (1873), Report, p. xviii.

5 Select Committee on Railways (Rates and Fares), 1882.

6 Technically known as "Die Freiheit der Schiene."

7 Sax, Die Verkehrsmittel, Bd. II, S. 112.

8 Cf. the discussions in Reitzenstein, Die Gütertarife der Eisenbahnen (1874), S. 42-59; Perrot, Die Eisenbahnreform (1871), S. 34-47; G. Cohn, Streitfragen der Eisenbahnpolitik (1874), S. 17-32: Bilinski, Die Eisenbahntarife (1875), S. 14 et seq.

9 Hudson, The Railways and the Republic (1886), ch. x, esp. p. 400. Mr. Hudson is just about twenty years behind the times. His arguments are almost word for word those of Dorn, Aufgaben der Eisenbahnpolitik (1874).

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novelty and efficacy· a confidence that can be excused only on the assumption of woful ignorance of the literature or absolute incapacity to learn from experience. But it plainly cannot be the duty of a scientist to refute in detail what has been disproved time and time again. The practical character of the American public, moreover, is so well assured as to render the necessity of any such refutation extremely improbable.

Another variation of this form of competition deserves a passing notice, viz., the demand for the enforcement of running pow. ers. This theory is supposed to uphold competition by allowing the trains of any one railway to pass over the tracks of the other. The English Parliament, after having abandoned all the other theories of competition, still clung to this; and one of the main features of Cardwell's act of 1854 was an attempt to realize this idea. In the United States also it is advanced as a panacea. But Robert Stephenson already in 1853 emphatically condemned such running powers as incompatible with safety and practical administration.1 The committee of 1872 finally forsook the old position and came to the conclusion that in all cases where running powers existed they were the result of voluntary agreements. It is practically impossible to compel the railways to grant such powers against their will, and if it were possible it would not be wise. It would be far more expensive and dangerous, and it would put a check to all railway building by powerful capitalists, for it would render the quantity of traffic carried by any one line absolutely uncertain and subject to the discretion of the government. In France, likewise, there have been repeated attempts to enforce these running powers, but the only case in which they have not ignominiously failed has been that of branch, not competing, lines.

1 Select Committee on Railway and Canal Bills (1853), Evid., pp. 115, 116. 2 Select Committee on Railway Cos. Amalgamation (1872), Rep., pp. xlv, xlvi. 8 Hudson, Railways and the Republic, p. 382, gives a few familiar examples of one track being used jointly by two railways. But that is quite another thing from allowing one track to be used by all the other lines, especially if the first one does not consent. Voluntary arrangements are not enforceable running powers.

4 Thus in the revision of the cahiers de charge imposed on all the "great companies" in 1857-59 these running powers were reserved to all branch lines and prolongations on payment of a fixed droit de péage. Cf. the documents themselves, titre vi,