class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="158"/> contribution in dollars to the fund used to enable congressmen to see the force of the arguments. When issues of railway shares are used for corrupt purposes it is certainly an impertinence for a citizen to make inquiries or offer any remarks in relation thereto.

The seventh objection to State owned railways is that they are incapable of as progressive improvement as are corporate owned ones, and will not keep pace with the progress of the nation in other respects; and in his Forum article Mr. Acworth lays great stress upon this phase of the question, and argues that as a result the service would be far less satisfactory.

There may be force in this objection, but the evidence points to an opposite conclusion. When the nation owns the railways, trains will run into union depots, the equipment will become uniform and of the best character, and so sufficient that the traffic of no part of the country would have to wait while the worthless locomotives of some bankrupt corporation were being patched up, nor would there be the present difficulties in obtaining freight cars, growing out of the poverty of corporations which have been plundered by the manipulators, and improvements would not be hindered by the diverse ideas of the managers of various lines in relation to the adoption of devices intended to render life more secure or to add to the public convenience. That such is one of the evils of corporate management is demonstrated daily, and is shown by the following from the Railway Review of March 7, 1891: “It is stated that a bill will be introduced in the Illinois Legislature, at the suggestion of the railroad and warehouse commissioners, governing the placing of interlocking plants at railway grade crossings. It sometimes happens that one of the companies concerned is anxious to put in such a plant and the other objects. At present there is no law to govern the matter, and the enterprising company is forced to abide the time of the other.” Instead of national ownership being a hindrance to improvement and enterprise, the results in Australia prove the contrary, as in Victoria the government railways are already provided with interlocking plants at all grade crossings, and one line does not have to wait the motion of another, but all are governed by an active and enlightened policy which adopts all beneficial improvements, appliances or modes of administration that will add either to the public safety, comfort, or convenience. It is safe to say that had the nation been operating the railways, there would have been no Fourth Avenue tunnel horror; and Chauncey Depew and associates would not now be under indictment, as the government would not have continued the use of the death-dealing stove on nearly half the railways in the country in order to save money for the shareholders.