The cost to the country of the Commission Commerce in 1888 was $97,867, and in 1909, $988,936.
In the past, complaint has been made because the railways engaged in politics; to-day the country is confronting a danger which is just as serious, if not more so, because politics is now taking charge of the railways and other forms of business, and assuming the responsibility of many parts of the management, but with no responsibility for the financial results. The railway-owners and the railway officers and employees are just as loyal, high-minded, and energetic and industrious citizens of the United States, as a class, as any other body of men in the country. They have a great task imposed upon them, which they are manfully trying to carry out, and at times it seems as if every man’s hand was against them.
Edward Everett Hale, one of the grand old men of the nineteenth century, put into four short sentences some very sound philosophy about life:—
