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RATE-MAKING AND THE GOVERNMENT

and failures in the management of railroad business, resulting, unfortunately, in much confusion of ideas, which may produce results very detrimental to the growth of business in this country, and therefore harmful to the railroads. On the Northern Pacific road, for example,—comprising about six thousand miles,—there are no rebates; there are no private-car abuses; there are no side-track abuses. There are, of course, differences of opinion about the relations of rates, as there always will be under any system. Railroad business, being conducted by human beings who are no more infallible than those in other walks of life, is not conducted with absolute perfection. For the errors made in the conduct of the enormous railroad business of this country, the plan of control and management should not be condemned and dislocated, any more than the general scheme of our government should be condemned because there are frauds in the administration of the Land Office and the Post Office Department, and inefficiencies in the administration of the government in places.

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