The president of an insurance company told me that if he did in Missouri what he was required to do in Texas, the penitentiary would await him, while if he omitted it in Texas, his punishment would be equally modest.
Severity of punishment in the United States has not yet reached the limit witnessed in France late in the eighteenth century when direct government was carried to its logical extreme. At that time the death penalty was prescribed for those who took food products out of circulation and kept them stored without daily and publicly offering them for sale. Failing to make a true declaration of the amount of goods on hand for eight days, and retaining a larger stock of bread than was necessary for daily wants, were punishable by death. Death also awaited the farmer who did not market his grain weekly and the merchant who failed to keep his shop open for business. We may or may not go to this extreme in America. I do not at the moment recall any punishment at the present time in this country more severe than six months in jail and a fine of five hundred dollars for spitting on the sidewalk.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE INEVITABLE RESULT
As soon as the government changed its policy and denied exceptional rewards for exceptional risks virile Americans refused to assume these risks and internal improvements ceased. A distinction is drawn between pioneer capital and improvement capital.
The effect of this changed attitude toward internal improvement and business generally is exactly what every thoughtful person foresaw. No railroad construction worth mentioning has been begun in the last decade. A few unimportant extensions have been made. About five years ago, John D. Spreckels attempted the construction of a road from San Diego to the Imperial Valley, but a possible six percent return, if it proved a success, and total loss if it failed, did not prove inviting to capital. Facing disaster, he turned it over to one of the old established lines to be builded on the accumulated credit of that system.
The United States was never in such great need of additional transportation as during the last ten years and never before was so little done to supply it. James J. Hill, the great empire builder of the Northwest, used to furnish figures to prove that we must invest two billion dollars new capital per annum to keep pace with the development of the country. It did not require a sage or a seer to discern that if we multiplied production from farm and factory, mill and mine, indefinitely, and failed to provide transportation facilities, we would ultimately reach a time when crops would rot on the ground while those who had grown them would be freezing and coal miners starving. Truly, the American people are “kin-folks.”
For more than three years, liberty hung in the balance simply because the United States, with all her development, had failed to keep her transportation facilities abreast of her production.
We had no merchant marine and during the entire period of the war were dependent largely upon the Allies to transport our troops and our munitions. Adverse marine laws had been passed rendering it impossible to sail an American ship in deep sea transportation except at great loss even if the ship had cost nothing whatever. It became necessary for the government to take possession of the railroads in order to avoid the effect of statutes filled with restrictive and prohibitive provisions. If the railroads had been operated under private ownership as the government is now operating them, every railroad president in the United States would be in the penitentiary. The roads asked an increase of fifteen percent in freight rates, which raised a furore of objection from both shipper and public, and it was denied. Government control and operation resulted in a loss of seventy million dollars the first month. Then both freight and passenger rates were increased twenty-five percent, generally, and in many instances, one hundred percent, and no one murmured. And still the loss continues. It was four hundred million dollars the first year of government operation.
WILL WE EVER BUILD MORE ROADS?