Canton Register

The Railroad Problem.
The agitation for cheaper transportation still continues. Just where the ultimatum is, or whether it will ever be reached, is so problematical that nobody can venture an opinion thereon. The agitation has as yet brought us no practical results of a favorable character, but on the other hand has cost us in the aggregate much more than we have gained.
For our own part, we have more faith in the great principle of competition in the matter of regulating prices or regulating railroads, than we have in those cast iron rules which many people seek to impose by law. If the railroads charge us three cents and a half per mile for passenger fare, and the law requires them to carry us for three cents, they may comply with the law, but in doing so they may restrict us to one train per day, at reduced speed; or instead of cushioned seats in comfortable cars, they may provide us with plain cars and board seats. If, then, the law should seek to go further and prescribe the number of trains per day, the rate of speed, and the kind and quality of cars which should be used, we might as well ask the state to condemn the railroads at once, take possession, and run them on the state's account.
Herein is the solution to this problem. We may legislate eternally, but men won't build railroads and run them unless they can make money out of them. If we restrict their receipts they will reduce their expenses, even if the comfort and convenience of the public should suffer. If the railroads will not serve the public as the people think they ought to, then let the people in their sovereign capacity take possession of them, pay their owners a reasonable price therefor, and operate them. The power of condemnation is vested in the people, and we have the right to seize the railroads for public use by paying their owners a reasonable price.
But there is probably a better way than this out of the difficulty. Let the farmers who are the most clamorous upon this subject get control of the railroads by buying up a majority of the stock. The Railroad Gazette seriously advances this idea. Whoever owns the railroads may control them. Ownership is indispensable to complete control. Suppose, for instance, the people on the Chicago & Alton road should desire to secure control of it. This control could be secured by holding more than $5,667,750 of its stock, which is sold now at about par. The company works about 650 miles of road, so we may say that the average amount per mile of road which it would be necessary to purchase would be $8,750. Assuming that on an average the country for more than ten miles on each side of the lines use them, there would be 12,800 acres of land per mile tributary to the road, and the average expense per acre of securing the control of the company would be about 68 cents. Each owner of 160 acres would need to buy one share, and nearly all of them doubtless, could do so within a year or two, while a great many could buy two or more. The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, too, work a mile of road to about $14,675 on stock, so that $7,400 of stock per mile would control it. The last sales reported were at 90 or thereabouts, so that this amount is secured for $5,660, which is 52 cents per acre of land on each side of the road. But ordinarily, is on many accounts desirable that a large part of the stock of a railroad should be held by its customers. They would learn experimentally and in a manner not likely to be forgotten, the rights of carriers, the difficulties of conducting railroad business, the desirability and justice of earning an income on railroad investments; and, we say, the fact that railroad officers and managers are human beings, with some sense of justice, some public spirit, and some human failings. Not uncommonly now they seem to look upon them as a new species of demons, with satanic cunning and greed and more than satanic power.