Under the present system every line of transportation has a double character, partly national and partly local, and the traffic on every line is partly state and partly inter-state.
You can no more separate what is national from what is local in the railroads than you can in the Post-Office.
Every postal route is at once local and national. A letter may come five miles, five hundred or five thousand—the system carries it to its destination.
So with freight and passengers. The so-called local railroad will carry freight from the adjoining county, from the adjoining state, from the remotest section of the Union, and from the lands beyond our borders. So with passengers.
Why, then, should anybody be talking tommyrot about “local lines”?
Said Betsy Prig to Sairey Gamp, concerning the alleged existence of a certain Mrs. Harris, “I don’t believe there is no sich a person.”
Says I to W. J. B., concerning the alleged “local lines of transportation,” I don’t believe there is any such thing as a local line of transportation.
The reasoning which sustains government ownership of a part of the railroads inevitably leads to the ownership of all.
At such a cherry, why take two bites?