This certainly is a blessed state of affairs. We have given privileges to giant corporations, which they have improved so profitably, that they now can defeat, in our Legislatures, any attempt to revoke them, and can laugh at any demand for better management.
Disguise it how we may, the railroads have got the upper hand of the people, and they seem likely to keep it, unless, indeed, their rapacity shall react against themselves.
At the moment of this writing accounts reach us of the officers of a prominent railway line intrenching themselves against the officers of the law, and employing force to resist the service of precepts calling them to account for alleged frauds upon the stockholders.
That the Legislature of this State has the power to put a stop to these disgraceful proceedings, is certain; what it will do remains to be demonstrated.
THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE PRIZES AWARDED TO STEAM ENGINES.
If there is anybody satisfied with the action of the managers of the American Institute, in the matter of awarding prizes to the competing engines exhibited at the recent fair, we have yet to meet that complacent individual. Neither the exhibitors nor the general public could be expected to accept with equanimity such a report as the managers have made, because it is inadequate to give any real idea of the relative merits of the engines tested. The exhibitors, at a large expense, took their engines to the hall of exhibition, placed them in position, and with them drove the machinery exhibited there; and now, when in return they had a right to expect a decided, manly course on the part of the managers, the oyster is swallowed and the contestants are each politely handed a shell.
The conditions on which the general test was to be made contained, among other specifications, these: that "the water supplied to and evaporated in the boiler will be measured by means of a meter, and the coal burned may also be weighed."
Only one of the conditions quoted was properly complied with. The coal was weighed, but though a meter was used to measure the water, tests made, we are informed, after the trial of the engines, showed that the meter was so inaccurate as to completely invalidate any calculation based upon its record of the water supplied. Nevertheless this has, we are credibly informed, been made the basis of calculation; and the amount of coal consumed during each trial has been rejected either as a basis of calculation or a check on the inaccuracy of the meter.