any line) will have none of their reduced rates unless they reduce them from the proper motive. After all, the act is nothing. It is the motive which must govern. And doubtless we could nowhere elicit a more virtuous, certainly nowhere a better specimen than this of Mr. Hudson's public-spirited argument against railroads, from this most exhaustive and most entertaining of scrap-books. "No matter what you do, if your 'eart is only true," says the old song. And so says Mr. Hudson to the railroads of this republic. But let it at least be remembered in their behalf that, even if they did it with selfish motives, the railways were themselves the first to attempt their own reformation. Railroads are and must remain built for the private emolument of their owners, and not for charitable purposes. They were not proof against the temptation of charging more money for a short haul to non-competitive points than for a long haul to competitive points in the struggle to live alongside of paralleling lines which the people themselves have chartered. But, when the pool removed this temptation by making all points non-competitive—although no law, human or divine, compelled them; they did voluntarily resist the temptation to pool at maximum rates the rates not only fell, but became proportionate to cost of hauling, the competition remaining only as to those "long-haul" points in whose favor Nature has discriminated by establishing water communications. Mr. Hudson has, perhaps, read a great many books. He should not have omitted from among them the late Dr. Lieber's "Civil Liberty and Self-Government" (especially the chapter wherein is treated the principle of the "Freedom of Rivers"). Then, remembering that the United States has not only two ocean coast-lines, but great lakes and a system of navigable rivers more magnificent and more benign than that of any other country, he might possibly have perceived how in his railway problem so slight a consideration as our national geography might be at least as important a factor as a handful of selected individual hardships. Mr. Hudson does not relish the rates charged by our railway companies. He suggests no others, but is entirely clear, none the less, that they should be changed somehow. If rates are at present arranged upon a system, let us drop the system and make them arbitrary—according to Mr. Hudson's selection, if he would only agree to abide by it. If your present rates are robbing the people, low as they are—very well, lower them still more, and rob your stockholders. It is evident that Mr. Hudson, for one, is no stock-holder. But are not our stockholders parcel of the people? And so the old impossibility of finding standpoint—or rather, the necessity of shifting his point of view with each newspaper-clipping he pastes in his scrap-book—renders Mr. Hudson everywhere specious, inconsistent and absurd; which leads us up to our second head.
II. Stock-Watering.—But, says Mr. Hudson, you can not really rob your stockholders, you know, because your stock is "water," and
