The exposure of the railway rebating evil by which competition had been destroyed, and great monopolies built up resulting in colossal fortunes for their principal owners, added fuel to the fire of this indignation; and similar abuses and unlawful practices by certain Trusts showed how strong combinations of capital had preyed upon, and killed off, weaker ones, and individual traders, to an extent that made the injustice of it a national scandal.
Owing to the inflamed state of the public mind, some of the laws enacted to remedy the evils complained of may have been too drastic for the purpose. But excesses of this kind correct themselves. Such laws are either not enforced, or repealed after being enforced. As General Grant once said to me,-“The surest way to repeal a bad law is to enforce it.” We have fortunately always a safety valve in public opinion, which never errs in the long run, and the public opinion of a nation is reflected in its laws.
The immensity of corporate interests in the United States is suggested by the fact that, including prominent city banks and Trust companies, there are more than 20,000 corporations reported in the manuals devoted to them. Of these 1,512 are active, operating railway companies, 1,129 electric traction companies, 1,158 gas, electric light and electric power companies, 267 water companies, 259 telephone, telegraph and cable companies, 1,510 active, operating and producing industrial and miscellaneous companies, 880 active or operating mining companies, and 13,500 banking, insurance and other financial companies.
The railway companies cover 222,013 miles, and they had a capitalization and bonded debt, on the 1st of January, 1908, of $13,908,456,846, at par.
The industrial and miscellaneous companies had at the same date a capitalization of $9,849,833,000, and the stocks of all the corporations in the United States aggregated more than $33,600,000,000 at par, exclusive of banks, Trust companies and other financial institutions.
In connection with the present enormous railway mileage of the country, it is interesting to note that as recently as 1865 there were only 3,085 miles in operation; and in 1879—the year of specie resumption, after the long civil war suspension from 1861—this total had only increased to 86,556 miles.
These figures remind us of the great rapidity with which new railway corporations were subsequently organized, and laid their tracks, while old ones extended their lines from Maine to California, and the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico.
We can also remember the nation’s phenomenal progress simultaneously in all other directions, and that, before 1880, Trust companies and industrial corporations were few and far between in comparison with the great multitude of those with which we have now to deal. The modern era of these striking features of our business life, and the development of the industrial Trusts which now cover the country, East, West, North and South, had then hardly commenced.
Yet our great corporations, and our great railway systems are still growing and multiplying, and will continue to grow and multiply to meet the wants of our rapidly increasing population for generations to come, till every part of our vast territory is thickly settled. Railways and manufactories represent our largest corporations, and are next in importance to our unlimited agricultural resources and mining interests.
They remind us too, that while these and all other corporations need regulation by law, this regulation should never hamper, or interfere with, their legitimate activities and expansion, however strict and severe it may be in prohibiting and punishing wilful violations of law and other abuses of power.