Mr. Hudson maintains that if the pool were legalized it would only be a means of swelling railroad earnings. He says:

"If the pool would maintain equitable rates its success might be desired, but what guarantee is there that the complete establishment of its power would make such rates? Its very character, the functions of the men who control its policy, and its avowed object of swelling the earnings of railways by artificial methods, forbid such an expectation. Make the success of the pool absolute, so that it can work without fear of competition, and its rates will be uniform, but of such a character that their uniformity will be a public grievance and burden.... A grave effect of this policy, though not easily calculable, is the ability it gives to railway officials to control the prices of stocks, and the temptation to enhance their fortunes by so doing.... It is a heavy indictment against the pooling system that it gives power to avaricious and unscrupulous men in railway management to enrich themselves at the cost of shareholders and investors, both by forming combinations and by exciting disputes or ruptures in them."

The question whether the common law does not protect the public sufficiently is well answered by Mr. Hudson as follows:

"The common law is sufficient in theory, but it has failed in practice.... In practice, legal remedies against railway injustice can be applied to the courts only by fighting the railways at such disadvantages that the ordinary business man will never undertake it except in desperate cases. Every advantage of strength and position is with the railways.... This [the railroad] power has kept courts in its pay; it defies the principles of common law and nullifies the constitutional provisions of a dozen States; it has many representatives in Congress and unnumbered seats in the State legislatures. No ordinary body of men can permanently resist it."

But the remedy which Mr. Hudson proposes for the correction of railroad evils is one of doubtful efficacy. It is this:

"Legislation should restore the character of public highways to the railways by securing to all persons the right to run trains over their track under proper regulations, and by defining the distinction between the proprietorship and maintenance of the railway and the business of common carriers."

While it is admitted that the opening of the railroads to the free use of competing carriers is not necessarily impractical from a technical point of view, it cannot be admitted that the proposed remedy would cure the evil. There would certainly be nothing to hinder carrying companies forming a trust which might prove more dangerous to the interests of shippers than are to-day the combinations of the railroad companies.

Mr. Hudson devotes a chapter to the railroad power in politics, and shows how corporations, through their wealth, have secured the greatest and most responsible offices in the executive, legislative and judiciary departments of the Government. Speaking of their influence in the Supreme Court of the United States, he says:

"The assertion that Jay Gould paid $100,000 to the Republican campaign fund in 1880, in return for which Judge Stanley Mathews was nominated to the Supreme Bench, is denied as a political slander; but the fact remains that this brilliant advocate of the railway theories of law has been placed in the high tribunal, and that his presence there together with Justice Field, long a judicial advocate of the corporations, is expected to protect the railways in future against such constructions of law as the Granger decisions."

An English writer, Mr. J.S. Jeans, presents, in his "Railway Problems," a great deal that is of interest to American readers. The statistical data of his work are especially interesting. We learn that the United Kingdom has nearly twenty railroad employes per mile of road operated, to less than five in the United States, and that the average number of employes per £1,000 ($4,850) of gross earnings is on the railroads of the United Kingdom 5.4 to only about half as many in the United States. We further learn that the average earnings per train mile in America are over 25 per cent. higher than they are in the United Kingdom, and exceed those of most European countries.