Excerpt from The Importance of Competition Between Railways F one will trace the course of a public pol icy that has failed he can usually find the forks at which the wrong turn was taken; therefore, when a public policy becomes in effective, change should be preceded by a search for the causes of failure. To com prehend the conditions which required the Government to commandeer the railways in December, 1917, it is necessary to go back to the beginning of our railways. In that beginning when the railed way was an experiment our Governments, State and Federal, were eager and Willing that private capital should incur all the hazards of its development; and, when its utility was demonstrated, these Governments, being poor, induced investors to build the railways conformably to a public policy under which such investors, incorporated, were not only to build, and, to own, but, also to operatethe railways. Inconsistently, these privately owned and operated railways were declared to be highways. This incongruous arrange ment sprang from the assumption that the rail thoroughfares were to be a substitute for the common highways, which experience had shown might be owned by private corpora tions. Therefore, early railway legislation developed on the general lines prescribed for turnpikes and toll-roads, ignoring that it is not feasible for every person who may own a locomotive and a car to use a rail way in common with other like users. The seriousness of this mistake - which was soon corrected in practice - lies in the erroneous public view of the railway it induced without correcting: the public failed to see that the State was creating a private monopoly. The owners, of course, realized that every one was to have the right to ship and travel over their railways, and the public were aware that they must pay for the exercise of such right; but where men must use a thing controlled by a private monopoly, such as water, light, or a public highway, an nu ending struggle between owners and usersis inevitable. This affords, perhaps, a strong, yet not necessarily a controlling argument, in favor of ownership by the State of all public utilities. However, the need for rail ways grew so fast that their builders were everywhere welcomed as benefactors, and he, who prior to 1870 would have assaulted the basis of their credit would have been re garded as a public enemy. But when almost every town had its railway and earlier needs were satisfied and forgotten, the owners be came as unpopular as absentee landlords. \vhy this happened and to what extent the owners themselves were responsible for the change is not pertinent to the subject we are discussing, which is a study of causes, not an inquiry into the responsibility for their oc currence. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.