road officers take under it they may find after two or three years of litigation that they have made mistakes and incurred great liabilities. It is mischievous legislation to create any such situation.
The act is also producing a pooling system stricter than any which voluntary agreement could establish. Railroad authority of the highest rank has asserted that the effect of pooling in England has been to arrest railroad improvements there for the last fifteen years. Its effect must be to stereotype existing arrangements as to facilities and prices.
It is a characteristic of speculative legislation that it very generally produces the exact opposite of the result it was hoped to get from it. The reason is because the elements of any social problem which we do not know so far surpass in number and importance those which we do know that our solutions have far greater chance to be wrong than to be right. This act promises to be another conspicuous illustration — perhaps a stronger one than any previous instance, because in this case we did not know what we wanted to do, nor how we meant to do it, nor, when we got through, did we know what we had done.
Legislation among us is far too easy for us to endure speculative legislation. Among us the legislative machinery can be set in motion too readily and too frequently; it is too easy for the irresponsible hands of the ignorant to seize the machinery; a notion which happens to catch popular fancy for a moment can be too readily translated into legislation.
