Page:Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne.djvu/125

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XV. PER-CENTAGE.
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imaginary necessities and popular desires, in order to gather its temporary profit from the supply of them. So that not only the persons who lend their money to it will be finally robbed, but the work done with their money will be, for the most part, useless, and thus the entire body of the public injured as well as the persons concerned in the transaction. Take, for instance, the architectural decorations of railways throughout the kingdom,—representing many millions of money for which no farthing of dividend can ever be forthcoming. The public will not be induced to pay the smallest fraction of higher fare to Rochester or Dover because the ironwork of the bridge which carries them over the Thames is covered with floral cockades, and the piers of it edged with ornamental cornices. All that work is simply put there by the builders that they may put the per-centage upon it into their own pockets; and, the rest of the money being thrown into that floral form, there is an end of it, as far as the shareholders are concerned. Millions upon millions have thus been spent, within the last twenty years, on ornamental arrangements of