"It is seen in Iowa to-day, where, as a result of radical legislation with regard to rates, railroad construction has almost entirely ceased, the average for the years 1888-90 being less than fifty miles."

Now Professor Hadley hails from the State of Connecticut, where railroads are permitted to make their own tariffs and where legislators are supposed not to be hostile to them. According to Poor's Manual, that State had 1,004.02 miles of railroad in 1888, and just 2.52 miles more in 1891, while Iowa had 8,364 miles in 1888, 8,436 in 1891, and 8,505 miles on January 1, 1893. Will Mr. Hadley please explain why railroad construction has ceased in Connecticut? Iowa has one mile of railroad for every 227 inhabitants, and Connecticut has one for every 741 inhabitants, although the per capita valuation is $473 in the latter, and only $273 in the former State. Nor have other Eastern States done much better than Connecticut. During the three years 1888-1891 there were built 74 miles of railroad in New Hampshire, 50 in Vermont, 23 in Massachusetts and 9 in Rhode Island. Iowa has an area of 56,000 square miles and a population of 1,911,896, an assessed valuation of $520,000,000; New England has an area of 66,400 square miles, a population of 4,700,745, and an assessed valuation of $3,500,000,000. Yet Iowa has 1,576 miles of railroad more than all the New England States together. She has a railroad net as close as that of the Empire State, having one mile of road to about 6-1/2 miles of territory, although the population of that State is three times as dense as hers. Nevertheless, railroad construction is at present active in Iowa, several lines of road are in the process of construction at the present writing, and there is every indication of still greater activity in the near future. The Railway Age of March 17, 1893, in a detailed list of new lines projected or under construction in the United States, gives for Connecticut only 32 miles, while it gives for Iowa 930 miles.

Mr. Hadley continues:

"It is seen to some extent in the Northwest as a whole. At the close of the year 1887 the States included by Henry V. Poor in the Central, Northern and Northwestern groups had 25,040 miles of road, while those of the South Atlantic, Gulf and Mississippi Valley had but 24,567. To-day this relation is reversed: the Northwest has but 27,294 miles, while the South has 30,696."

Had Mr. Hadley taken the pains to look up the population of these groups he would have found that the "South" is fully three times as populous as the "Northwest," and that therefore his figures prove nothing beyond the fact that at the present rate of gain the railroad facilities of the South will in a quarter of a century be equal to those of the Northwest to-day.

But the argument is weak in another respect. The State in the Southern group that made by far the greatest gain in railroad mileage during the period mentioned by Mr. Hadley is Georgia, which gained about 1,000 miles in three years, yet that State prescribed rates for railroad companies six years before Iowa did, and has for many years exerted a more thorough control over her railroads than perhaps any other State in the Union. The smallest increase is in West Virginia, which during the period given gained an average of only 69 miles per annum; and yet in West Virginia railroads charge their own rates and usually have their own way.

Finally Prof. Hadley says:

"Where are we to find the limit to such unwise action? The United States Supreme Court can do something and has shown a disposition to do something. In the Minnesota cases it repudiated the doctrine of uncontrolled rights on the part of the legislature to make rates, as emphatically as it repudiated the doctrine of uncontrolled rights on the part of agents of the corporation in the Granger cases, twelve years before."

It is evident that Mr. Hadley is as much mistaken in his interpretation of the decision of the court as he has been in his other assertions, as will be seen from the following extract from Judge Blatchford's opinion in Budd vs. New York, in which he says, "The main question involved is whether this court will adhere to its decision in Munn vs. Illinois."

The court first quoted from the opinion of Judge Andrew of the Court of Appeals of New York, as follows: "The opinion further said that the criticism to which the case of Munn vs. Illinois had been subjected proceeded mainly upon a limited and strict construction and definition of the police power; that there was little reason, under our system of government, for placing a close and narrow interpretation on the police power, or restricting its scope so as to hamper the legislative power in dealing with the varying necessities of society and the new circumstances as they arise calling for legislative intervention in the public interest; and that no serious invasion of constitutional guarantees by the legislature could withstand for a long time the searching influence of public opinion, which was sure to come sooner or later to the side of law, order and justice, however it might have been swayed for a time by passion or prejudice or whatever aberrations might have marked its course."