Railroad Company, the Commonwealth and the Troy and Boston Railroad Company into one corporation, with authority to purchase or lease certain other roads, which will make a capital of not less than twenty-five to thirty millions and give control to about five hundred miles of railroad. From this plan the minority have dissented and reported a plan which will place the direct line from Boston to Troy substantially under one direction, and subject it not to state management but to state control.

THE BILL OF THE MAJORITY.

To the bill reported by the majority of the committee we have the strongest objections.

First.—It sanctions an enormous inflation of capital. It authorizes a consolidation upon the basis of an appraisal of the value of the several properties to be made by the parties themselves. The railroads of this Commonwealth are prohibited by law from making stock dividends, and yet here stock dividends are allowed to such extent as the parties think proper. One of the greatest impositions ever practised upon the public, from which the people of this Commonwealth now suffer, is the watered stock of the railroads between Albany and Chicago. The amount of stock in these roads issued without any equivalent, upon which our traffic is now taxed, is variously estimated at from forty-four millions to one hundred and five millions. The annual tax levied is from three millions to six millions, of which we pay a large share. The majority bill provides for just such a watering of stock, to the extent of perhaps ten millions, according to the appraisal by the parties in interest. We believe this to be all wrong, and should not be sanctioned by the Commonwealth.

Second.—We utterly dissent from the opinion of the majority in allowing the Boston and Lowell Railroad to come into such a consolidation. The Boston and Lowell forms no part of the Tunnel line. Every witness before the committee, except the agents of the corporations themselves, was emphatic against such a consolidation.

The Northern line has been of very great value to the business of Boston and Massachusetts; more than any other it has effected that reduction of rates which has returned to Boston within the past few years a portion of the export trade. It forms the shortest line at present existing between Boston and the Lakes, and while lake navigation is open substantially controls the rates over the other lines. Mr. Nathaniel C. Nash says (9th hearing, page 6), "We have derived more advantage from that line than from any other source." (See Railroad Commissioners' Report of 1870, page 36.) While the Lowell railroad provided the terminus and the representation in this Commonwealth, the other railroads in the line have cooperated in producing this result. It has cheapened food to the people of this Commonwealth, and of all New England. The Lowell Railroad is bound by contracts to continue in this Northern line for twenty years to come. Although some of the corporations are under financial difficulties, this does not affect the operations of the line. The railroads still exist and must continue to do business, and so far as the advantage of the traffic extends, it matters little who owns or operates the railroads. So impressed are the majority of the committee with the importance of maintaining the northern line that they impose upon the Lowell Railroad Company, as they say, the conditions of withdrawing from the Northern line, and make provision for transfer of the business to another line—the Boston and Maine. They propose to do this in a manner which seems to us weak and futile. The majority bill provides for repeal of the charter of the Great Northern Railroad Company, passed in 1869, which authorized the Boston and Lowell Railroad Company to consolidate with certain companies in New Hampshire, with authority to lease or purchase other railroads leading to Ogdensburg and other points in the North and West, and lines of boats on the lakes. As all the other companies in this consolidated line are in New Hampshire this charter was ineffective without the cooperation of New Hampshire, and to this bill New Hampshire has never assented—not from any hostility to through lines, but because it contained objectionable features, such as the consolidation of competing lines, the creation of a monstrous corporation with power to combine in one gigantic monopoly all the railroads within her borders. This charter is mere waste paper, and its repeal would have no more effect than the burning of waste paper. The Lowell Railroad remains bound by contracts to the Northern line, and the majority bill effectually places the Northern and Tunnel lines under one control. The proposal to transfer the Northern line and northern business to the Boston and Maine Railroad seems to us an absurdity. The Boston and Maine is practically an Eastern line; of its whole length, one hundred and twelve miles, only twenty-six could be used in connection with the Northern line. It never could or would give that exclusive attention to the business necessary to make such a line successful. Its only means of connection is over the Manchester and Lawrence Railroad, the grades of which are too heavy for a successful freight business with the West.

The Boston and Lowell Railroad is the natural terminus of this Northern line, and no legislation can remove it from this position. Moreover the majority bill, placing the Boston and Lowell Railroad and the Fitchburg in the same control, and authorizing a lease of the Cheshire, gives the consolidated company such a substantial control of the whole northern business that its transfer to the Boston and Maine would necessarily be followed by such disastrous competition as to preclude such a connection. It must inevitably result in a consolidation of the Tunnel and the Northern line under one management. In creating a new line we destroy one which already exists.

Our true policy is to maintain unimpaired our four routes to the West, and under whatever management they may be, at all events maintain that they shall be independent of each other. If a consolidation is to be made of the Tunnel line we are clearly of the opinion that it should be of the direct line only between Boston and Troy, including the Fitchburg, Vermont and Massachusetts, Troy and Greenfield, and Troy and Boston, and the Massachusetts Central if it desires to form part of such a line. The Boston